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Paul Scofield was born David Paul Scofield in West Sussex, England in 1922. He began acting while still in high school and turned professional when he was just 18, acting on the stage in Desire Under the Elms. For the next 15 years, he acted in English stage productions, from 1946 at Stratford-upon-Avon, where he excelled in the top Shakespeare roles, including Henry V, and Hamlet, and was considered one of the top Shakespearean actors ever. In 1955, he appeared in his first movie, That Lady, opposite Olivia de Havilland, and over the next 40 years he would only appear in around 30 movies, spending most of his time on stage. He obviously chose his film roles very carefully, finding excellent scripts and working with top actors and directors, He stood out in 1964's The Train, opposite Burt Lancaster, and directed by John Frankenheimer, as a Nazi villain. It is a really excellent movie, and if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it! In 1960, Scofield took the lead role of Thomas More in Robert Bolt's play, A Man For All Seasons (winner of the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), and it was a huge hit, first in London, and then on Broadway, where Scofield again played the lead. In 1966, Scofield played the lead in the film version, directed by Fred Zinnemann. It was expected to be one of those prestigious movies that won lots of awards and praise from critics, but with mediocre box office receipts, for it had no sex, no violence, no action, and worst of all, it was a movie of ideas! Yet while the movie did win all sorts of Awards (including the Best Picture Oscar and Best Actor Oscar for Scofield), it confounded the experts by being a major box office success, taking in over 25 million dollars (on a 2 million dollar budget). If you have never seen this wonderful movie, you really should! Scofield married at 21, and he had two children and remained married to that same lady until he passed away 65 years later. His personal life made no headlines, and when he was offered a knighthood he turned it down! In 1994 he took the role of Ralph Fiennes' father in Robert Redford's Quiz Show (nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film), and he stood out as always. If you have not seen this fine movie, I recommend it. Scofield passed away in 2008 at the age of 86.

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by Paul Scofield!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last three all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 224 more items (mostly 8x10 stills and repro 8x10s, but also 54 small photos)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) 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 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 late 1970s or 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.

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Bruce Hershenson,
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