‘Citizen Kane’ script sold at Orson Welles auction
NEW YORK — Scripts for “Citizen Kane,” Orson Welles’ camera and a cigar ashtray were among the late director’s belongings sold at a New York auction.
Sixty-seven lots fetched $180,000 at Heritage Auctions on Saturday.
Margaret Barrett, Heritage’s director of entertainment-linked auctions, called the items “a piece of cinema royalty.”
Two dozen pages of scripts for the 1941 masterpiece “Citizen Kane” went for $15,000, far surpassing the $2,000 presale estimate.
Welles’ old Bell & Howell movie camera used to record a bullfight in Spain sold for $37,500, against a $2,000 estimate.
And a silver-plated cigar ashtray Ernest Hemingway gave Welles fetched $5,000. That’s six times the expected price.
Also on the block were memorabilia the director’s daughter, Beatrice Welles, kept for decades in Sedona, Ariz.
