A rare, 8 x 10 Glossy Photo of The Beatles, signed by all four members, band manager Brian Epstein and host Ed Sullivan following the group’s historic appearance on his program, sold for $125,000 in Heritage Auctions’ $1.9 million Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Signature Auction in New York. The two-day auction, April 26-27, offered a trove of personally owned items that belonged to the late actor and director Orson Welles, which sold for a combined $180,000.
Consigned directly by Welles’ youngest daughter, Beatrice, the collection was stored for decades in Arizona. The group included a Bell & Howell Model 240 16mm Movie Camera, used by Welles to film home movies and the documentary “The Land of Don Quixote,” which sold for $37,500; and a Working Script for the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane,” sold for $15,000. Another script, featuring a different ending for the 1942 film “The Magnificent Andersons” sold for $10,625.
Additional personal items included Welles’ 1970s-era Smith-Corona model 2200 electric typewriter, used daily for notes, scripts, and correspondence, hammered for $9,062 and a Silver-Plated Cigar Ashtray gifted by Ernest Hemingway was pursued by 12 bidders to end at $5,000.
Additional special collections include nearly 180 lots of memorabilia devoted to The Beatles as a signed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Original Fan Club Poster sold for $59,375, and a copy of Meet the Beatles, signed by all four at the Deauville Hotel in Miami, sold for $56,250. John Lennon’s complete “Bag One” Suite of 15 signed limited edition lithographs, No. 124/300, closed at $53,125 and a signed copy of the album Please Please Me, obtained by a British newspaper reporter shortly after its release in 1964, sold for $40,625.
Memorabilia from giants of rock and roll include a multi-colored, velvet vest owned and worn by Jimi Hendrix that more than doubled its estimate to hammer for $43,750. A “Li’l Red” Gibson Electric Guitar owned and played by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons sold for $37,500 and a red full-length coat with fur trim and cape, circa 1970s, owned and worn by Elvis Presley brought three times its estimate to end at $30,000.