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David Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey, England in 1908. His parents were Quakers, and he was not allowed to go to the movies! But he got a job in a studio when he was 19, and he worked his way up from lowly jobs to become a film editor, working on some top movies by the end of the 1930s. In 1942, Noel Coward hired Lean to co-direct his movie 'In Which We Serve'. The success of this movie led Lean to direct This Happy Breed and Blithe Spirit. In 1945, Lean directed Brief Encounter, the best "little" movie ever made, and if you like romantic movies and have never seen these, I want you to promise to see this just as soon as you can (it IS that good!), Lean followed with two Dickens' movies, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. After several more fine movies such as Summertime (nominated for the Best Director Academy Award for this film), Lean made the epic The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957, followed by the even more epic Lawrence of Arabia. These cemented his reputation as THE epic director, and he followed with Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter and finally A Passage to India in 1984, his last movie and he passed away in 1991 at the age of 83. David Lean made wonderful epic movies, but I equally enjoy his pre-epic smaller movies, and highly recommend those as well!

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by David Lean! Also note that this is an original vintage still from 1970, but that it was signed at a later date.

Note that this autographed 8x10 is part of a remarkable new collection we have been consigned, and we are auctioning nearly 500 items from this collection in this set of auctions (we will have more from this collection in our next few sets of autograph auctions).
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a high school teacher who taught a film class, and one day a week (and all through the summer) he ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits and one-sheets from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s, but increasingly greatly in the early 1980s, he hit on the idea of writing to famous celebrities, and enclosing an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He often was able to locate an 8x10 still from his collection that was from a really good movie from that star, or one that had a really good image of that star. In a relatively small number of cases, he did not have a still in his collection to send, so he bought a reproduction from a photo shop, and sent that instead, which is why some of the items that have this notation on them are reproductions.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the mid-1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775