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Harvey Keitel was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. His parents were Romanian and Polish Jewish immigrants. He joined the Marines at 16, and when he got out, he became a court reporter, and he held that job for nearly ten years! But what he really wanted to do was to become an actor, and he studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, but he had very limited success until he was 34! He had a role in Martin Scorsese's student film, Who's That Knocking at My Door, in 1967, but his first real success was in Scorsese's Mean Streets in 1973. But while co-star Robert De Niro went on to immediate success, Keitel had limited success, although he had memorable roles in Taxi Driver, Welcome to L.A., The Duellists, Blue Collar, and Fingers (this is one of my favorite films of the 1970s!). He rapidly become known as someone who only took odd offbeat roles in odd offbeat movies, often by new directors, and he mostly continued this in the 1980s, mostly playing secondary roles. His career had a major resurgence in 1992, when he played a major role in Reservoir Dogs, and followed with the lead in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano, and an important supporting role in Pulp Fiction. But through it all, he stayed true to himself, playing very few commericial roles in mainstream movies. He was married to Lorraine Bracco for over a decade, and they have a child, and he has two other children by two other women. While many of his movies can be quite dark and violent, and some can be downright repellent, I think few people could dispute that Harvey Keitel is a wonderful actor who has delivered many great performances. And if you like ultra-gritty film noir movies, I suggest you seek out Fingers, a really fascinating movie by James Toback, where Keitel is a mobster's son torn between his father's profession and that urged on him by his genteel mother, as a concert pianist! As of 2021, he is still alive at the age of 82!

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

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In many of our past all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning many more signed items!
     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 item (and the vast majority of the other photos and other items 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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