The Bishop's Wife

Description: This auction is for an original 1947 signed contract agreement between Charles K. Feldman Group Productions and Samuel Goldwyn Productions. This contract agreement was in regards to the main actor Cary Grant in his role as ‘Dudley’ in the 1947 film “The Bishop’s Wife”. It is hand signed on the bottom of the last page by Charles K. Feldman and also Marvin Ezzell, who was Samuel Goldwyn’s attorney at the time. This item includes the complete 3 page contract agreement shown in the photos above. This contract has 2 punch holes at the top edge. If requested I will provide the document’s measurements. Please view all of the pictures above carefully. More Information: Charles K. Feldman (April 26, 1905 – May 25, 1968) was a Hollywood attorney, film producer and talent agent who founded the Famous Artists talent agency. According to one obituary, Feldman disdained publicity. “Feldman was an enigma to Hollywood. No one knew what he was up to – from producing a film to packaging one for someone else.” Charles Kenneth Gould was born to a Jewish family in New York City on April 26, 1905. His father was a diamond merchant who immigrated to New Jersey. Both of his parents, however, died of cancer and he was orphaned at age six, along with his five siblings. He was taken in by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Feldman at age seven. Feldman was from Bayonne, New Jersey and was a furniture-store owner. A few years later, the Feldmans moved permanently to California. Charles Feldman studied at the University of Michigan and later became a lawyer, earning his degree from the University of Southern California. He earned money to put himself through college by working as a mail carrier and a cameraman in a movie studio. He became a lawyer for talent agencies, and by age 30, he had become known as a Hollywood attorney; however, he became an agent instead. In 1932, Feldman left his job as a lawyer and co-founded with Adeline Schulberg, the Schulberg-Feldman talent agency which was soon joined by Schulberg’s brother Sam Jaffe and Noll Gurney. In 1933, Schulberg left to form her own agency and the company was renamed the Famous Artists Agency. Feldman combined his background as a lawyer with his celebrity connections to help find and contract jobs. Among his first clients were Charles Boyer and Joan Bennett. Feldman’s Famous Artists was bought by Ted Ashley’s Ashley-Steiner agency in 1962 and renamed Ashley-Famous. Feldman began using new tactics in his field. He would buy story ideas and contract them to unemployed writers to make into a screenplay. He would also negotiate one-picture deals for a star rather than a long-term studio contract, as was the custom, so clients could work at multiple studios simultaneously. Feldman also combined several clients into one package and sold them to a producer or studio as one unit. Another tactic was the use of overlapping nonexclusive contracts with clients like Irene Dunne and Claudette Colbert, demonstrating flexible alternatives to the so-called iron-clad studio contract in the classical Hollywood era. In 1942, Feldman was in charge of the Hollywood Victory Caravan for Army and Navy Relief. As an agent, he became friends with major Hollywood figures like Jack Warner, Sam Goldwyn, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, and John Wayne, among others. In June 1942, Feldman signed Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott and John Wayne and presented them to Universal for Pittsburgh along with the script and director as a “package”. This idea was the beginning of Hollywood’s “package deal”. One of his greatest successes was The Bishop’s Wife which was produced in 1948. He bought the rights to the book by Robert Nathan for $15,000 and sold the screenplay for $200,000. Feldman held considerable sway in the making of some films. It was Feldman who suggested to Jack Warner (as a friend) that he recut Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946) and add scenes to enhance Lauren Bacall’s performance, which he felt was more or less a “bit part” in the 1945 cut. He later produced his own movies instead of selling the screenplays and created Charles K. Feldman Productions in 1945. In 1947, he announced a deal that his company would help make three films at Republic Pictures: Orson Welles’s Macbeth (1948), Lewis Milestone’s The Red Pony (1949) and Ben Hecht’s The Shadow. At Republic he also helped produce Moonrise (1948). The Shadow was to be produced through Kirk Douglas’ Bryna Productions, with Douglas starring in dual roles of twin brothers, but the film was never made. On March 1, 1948, Feldman filled a $1,000,000 damage lawsuit against ten people and companies associated with the production of the film Kiss the Blood Off My Hands: Universal-International Pictures, Norma Productions, Eagle-Lion Productions, Harold Hecht, Burt Lancaster, Joan Fontaine, Richard Vernon, Gerald Butler, Phil Berg-Bert Allenberg (Berg was Fontaine’s agent, who had little to do with the film but was reputable enough to attract attention to the suit), and Allan Collins (president of Curtis Brown Limited’s American division, who sold the rights to the novel). Feldman claimed that his film production company, Charles K. Feldman Group Productions, owned the filming rights to Butler’s novel Kiss the Blood Off My Hands and demanded that the picture’s production be shut down. Feldman also claimed to have purchased the novel’s rights from Eagle-Lion Productions, whereas, in defense, Vernon claimed to have procured the rights directly from Butler (through Curtis Brown Limited). Feldman may have been holding a grudge against Lancaster, who had been approached to co-star in his production of Red River, right before its shooting began in September 1946. At the time, Lancaster was wrapping up Desert Fury and was already booked to film two more films, Variety Girl and I Walk Alone, back-to-back for Wallis at Paramount Studios. It is unknown under which circumstances he and his agent turned Feldman down, but Lancaster’s part was quickly offered to Montgomery Clift. Universal-International Pictures proceeded with the production of Kiss the Blood Off My Hands as planned, paying little attention to the lawsuit, which was eventually sustained by Judge Stanley Barnes at the Los Angeles Superior Court on July 6, 1948, long after filming had wrapped up. When his company produced A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Feldman had to fight to protect the script from censorship. He later produced The Seven Year Itch (1955) starring Marilyn Monroe when he was her agent from 1951 to 1955. In 1956, he sold the filming rights of six books to 20th Century-Fox Films, including Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, The Wayward Bus, Hilda Crane and Bernadine. In 1960, Feldman acquired the film rights to Casino Royale following the death of Gregory Ratoff who had purchased film rights to the property from Ian Fleming in 1955. A 1967 profile on Feldman said “he still sounds much like an agent when he talks.” He died May 25, 1968. This hand signed item is 100% original and authentic. Furthermore, this item DOES NOT INCLUDE a PSA/DNA or JSA authentication. This item can be returned within 90 days for a full refund with proof that the autograph did not pass from a legitimate certification company like PSA/DNA. If requested, this item will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity issued by our eBay company. We stand behind our COA. The Movie Wizard specializes in rare and collectible movie scripts. Our scripts are genuine, authentic and screen used. We also carry movie props from no genre in particular. Furthermore, all of our items that are not props or scripts can be found in our Other Memorabilia category. We do not sell reproductions or fakes. • PLEASE VIEW THE PICTURES CAREFULLY • THIS IS BEING SOLD FROM ONE COLLECTOR TO ANOTHER. • THIS IS BEING SOLD AS MOVIE MEMORABILIA ONLY, MEANING NO RIGHTS ARE GIVEN OR IMPLIED. • PLEASE message me if you have any questions BEFORE BIDDING, Thanks. We have one of the largest collections of original movie screenplays in the world. We also carry scripts used in Television, Broadway, Radio and other forms of entertainment. Every script that we own was hand-picked one at a time over the many years of which we have been collecting. All of the scripts that we own are original and we do not buy or sell any reproductions or fakes. A lot of people, new to collecting, are confused about the word “Original.” In terms of movie scripts, the term “Original” means that it was used by the production company in the early stages of production or that it was issued out to the cast and crew members during filming, and used at the time of production. Any scripts printed or used in any fashion after filming has completed are known as either a reproduction or a post-production script. These two types of scripts are much less valuable and desirable. All of our scripts are “Original.” • An original movie script has a lot of character in the item itself and every one of them is different in some way or another. There is usually only one script given to each crew member during production, however, sometimes they do get more than one. This makes original movie scripts very desirable because of how scarce they are. Any changes made to the screenplay during production are known as revisions and these revision pages are inserted into that one script that was issued out to them. For example, if we are talking about a low-budget film with a small cast and only a few crew members, there are actually only a small number of scripts in existence around the world for that film. This aspect of collecting makes it fun but also difficult because there may be a certain writer or director that you love to collect and there may only be a handful of movie scripts that still exist from that specific film that you are looking for. We have some of the rarest movie scripts in the world. Each film project has a different total number of scripts that are issued. The older a film is you also have to figure in the fact that a lot of the original movie scripts have been thrown out or destroyed over time. We do our best to provide the widest selection of original movie scripts in the world. Whatever actor, producer, director, writer or specific film department you are looking for, we probably have a movie script related to the person you are looking for in some form or fashion. We are constantly adding new movie scripts to our eBay store as often as we can. Please, be patient and really go through all of the listings that we have, and I am sure that you will find something that you love. I know that there are a lot of items to search through, but there is definitely something for you. THIS IS IMPORTANT. When searching for an item in our eBay store, you can either search the “title of the movie” or the “writer’s name” from that movie for best results. Furthermore, there is a small box that says “Include Description” which is underneath of the large eBay search box. Once you check off this little box it will allow you to search for a specific word that is contained in any of our listings’ actual description. Most of our listings DO NOT include the Actor’s name anywhere in the title line or description, so please, do your research beforehand to see what film titles you are looking for from a specific Actor, or Writer, but be sure to search for the “movie title” when looking through our eBay listings. Another search option is to click on my eBay store logo which will bring you to my eBay store page. Here all of the original movie scripts will be categorized by decade, which will help you to narrow down what you are looking for by the year it was made.