Tonight:
5°c
Citizen Kane Oscar set to fetch £600,000
Sam Lyon, Evening Standard11 Dec 2007
Orson Welles's Oscar for Citizen Kane is expected to fetch nearly £600,000 when it goes on sale today.
The Academy Award for best screenplay will go under the hammer along with Welles's personal working copy of the script at Sotheby's in New York.
The Oscar, which he won in 1941, is expected to fetch up to $1.2 million (£585,000) and the 156-page script could bring in $120,000.
Welles's masterpiece was voted the number one film in history by the American Film Institute this year, and by the British Film Institute in 2002.
A Sotheby's spokeswoman said the Oscar, once believed to be lost by Welles himself, resurfaced in 1994 and was returned to the Orson Welles Estate.
The award was bought from the Welles Estate in 2003 on behalf of the Dax Foundation which is now selling it.
Leila Dunbar, director of Sotheby's collectable department, added: "The Citizen Kane script is the most important screenplay of all time. It was a collaboration where Herman Mankiewicz gave the story life but Welles made it immortal."
