DALLAS, TX.- Over three days at July's end, Heritage Auctions will offer a breathtaking assortment of memorabilia spanning entertainment history: some of the rarest artifacts from The Land of Oz, a never-before-seen assortment of props and paintings and even a robot from Disaster Master Irwin Allen, collector John Azarian's out-of-this-world assemblage from the Star Wars franchise, some precious nyuk-nyuks from The Three Stooges, and Hawkeye's boots and dog tags from M*A*S*H star and national treasure Alan Alda. Which, believe it not, is only the beginning of the beginning of treasures available throughout this remarkable three-day event.

Indeed, Heritage's July 27-29 Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction contains myriad marvels — almost 800 — spanning the first spark of cinema to the dawn of Disneyland to the multiverses contained within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And it counts among its estimable lot several treasures from what's arguably the greatest — and, inarguably, the most influential — film ever made, Orson Welles' 1941 Citizen Kane.

"This is an auction filled with scripts, sketches, models and costumes that define the greatest filmmakers — the greatest writers, directors, actors, costumers and Imagineers — of every generation," says Heritage Auctions' Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena. "Every item is a piece of history possessing that spark of magic, and bringing them to auction is thrilling. This event might be the Hollywood blockbuster of the summer."

Even now, Welles' film, which he directed, produced and co-wrote with Herman Mankiewicz, plays like something made the day after tomorrow, from its bold opening credits to its prescient storyline about a media mogul undone by hubris and avarice to its visual tricks and audio delights. "Citizen Kane is more than a great movie," Roger Ebert wrote in 1998, "it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound" — and a fertile training ground still for anyone telling stories with moving pictures.

Among this auction's grails are two screenplays from Kane: the original typed-carbon "Sixth Draft" dated July 9, 1940, and, from around the same period, the original "Correction" script, with the latter the closest known screenplay that so closely hews to the finished film. Iterations of the screenplay abound in institutions, each as significant as the other for a film whose authorship became the subject of heated debate 30 years after its release. In 1971 The New Yorker published revered film critic Pauline Kael's 50,000-word essay "Raising Kane," which argued that Mankiewicz should have received sole credit; a year later, Esquire gave Peter Bogdanovich's plenty of real estate for his furious rebuttal "The Kane Mutiny."

From the Estate of Orson Welles comes one of his Royal typewriters used during the period when he wrote Citizen Kane — as well as the terrifying War of the Worlds radio play in 1938, his unproduced adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness the following year and, in 1942, The Magnificent Ambersons, which received raves even after RKO butchered the film without Welles' approval. A letter of provenance from the estate says this was one of two typewriters stored in Madrid before being returned to Welles' youngest daughter, Beatrice, and it has remained in her possession ever since. Beatrice writes, "My father was never without a couple of typewriters. ... He wrote everything with his typewriters. ... This vivid memory was part of everyday life during the 28 years we spent together."

After its release, Citizen Kane was nominated for nine Academy Awards but won just one statue — for Best Original Screenplay. Yet its award-winning days were far from over: Thirty-seven years later, in 1978, Welles made an audio recording of Citizen Kane for which he won the Best Spoken Word Recording Grammy Award. His competition during the 21 annual ceremonies was fierce and included Richard Nixon (for his interviews with David Frost), Henry Fonda (for Grapes of Wrath) and the original Roots soundtrack. Welles' estate offer that Grammy Award in this auction and the Best Spoken Word Recording award he won at the Grammys in 1981 for Donovan's Brain.




From Kane, too, comes the three-piece suit Charles Foster Kane wears as he dismantles his second wife Susan's room, bedsheet by bookcase, upon learning she's left him. This is the suit, designed by Edward Stevenson, into which Kane stuffs just about the only thing he doesn't destroy during his rampage — the snow globe that reminds Kane of the last happy moment of childhood. Welles, then in his mid-20s but made to look like a man at his life's end, peers at the snow globe and utters the word that drives the entire movie: "Rosebud." The jacket, waistcoat and pants — each bearing Western Costume Company labels identifying Welles as their wearer — are among the few tangible survivors from one of the most evocative scenes from one of the most significant American films ever made.

Kane's suit is but one of many extraordinary and significant costumes offered in this auction.

Here, as well, is the turquoise and green dress Julie Andrews wears in Sound of Music as Maria returns from the abbey and reunites with the Von Trapp children as they're reprising "My Favorite Things." This dress, among those once in the famous collection of Debbie Reynolds, bears a 20th Century Fox tag noting its use by "J. Andrews."

This auction is also alive with the sound of Ming: From the earliest Flash Gordon serials, not to mention the planet Mongo, comes the floor-length orange velour robe Charles Middleton wore as Ming the Merciless in the 1930s. Middleton made his mark tangling with Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers before tangling with Buster Crabbe, and he wore this royal robe with the upturned collar in the first two Flash Gordon serials: 1936's Flash Gordon and 1938's Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars. Like Kane's suit, Ming's robe maintains its Western Costume Co. tag, with Middleton's name and size written on it, and remains in superior shape for an artifact this old; as the catalog notes, there is just some "very minor toning of the felt applique, infinitesimal occasional openings at seams, and normal wear from production use."

Among the iconic costumes in the event are more than two dozen sketches from the hand of the most lauded costume designer in history, Edith Head. Her work garnered eight Academy Awards, the most Oscars won by any woman in Hollywood history and a testament to her 50-plus years designing some of cinema's most unforgettable looks. Look no further than some of the sketches here, among them Grace Kelly's skirt suit from Rear Window, Audrey Hepburn's little black dress from her turn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast and Tiffany's and Tippi Hedren's famous green skirt suit from The Birds. Each is a work of art made for a work of art.

Speaking of: One of this auction's centerpieces is the first conceptual maquette of Sleeping Beauty's castle, designed in 1953 by Walt Disney's master planner Marvin Davis and built by Imagineer Fred Joerger. This sculpture remained with Disney until he died in 1966, at which point Walt's brother Roy gave the castle to the Emmy Award-winning Davis, the architect and master planner who helped Walt bring Disneyland to life. This castle, which is chief among the numerous recognizable attractions designed by Davis that came to define the Happiest Place on Earth, remained with Davis and his family, perched on a base bearing the plaque celebrating its creators.

"I was working on virtually everything to do with the Disneyland plan, but especially on Main Street, the Castle and the exterior of the Haunted House," Davis said in a 1997 interview. "I was involved with everything that was to go into Disneyland because I had to allow space for it in the overall park layout. I'd be on my stool, and Walt would come in, and he'd sit on a stool next to me and look at everything. He'd put a piece of tracing paper over the work and say, 'Marvin, let's do it like this.'"

This is the first time this model has been offered at auction, which means this is a castle at long last fit for a new home.