This listing includes:
Screenplay, 2 vol set:  The Young Mr. Churchill
and
Bryan Forbes’ autobiographical book Notes For a Life

This 2 vol set: Bryan Forbes’ 1962 screenplay ‘The Young Mr Churchill’ is very interesting and rather unusual. The screenplay was intended to portray Winston Churchill’s early life on the big screen. This 2 vol set, being an unpublished full-length screenplay on the early life of Winston Churchill by the actor, director and writer Bryan Forbes, is truly unique.

By 1962 Forbes had already written for stars such as Richard Attenborough in movies such as ‘The League of Gentlemen’ & ‘The Angry Silence’ but the script he considered his best, for Attenborough’s ‘The Young Mr Churchill’, was rejected.

The Young Mr Churchill:
Screenplay in 2 Vols. 1962
Original full blue single gilt line paneled morocco by Asprey & Co. Ltd. of Bond Street, London.
Gilt lettering on spine. All edges gilt.
From Bryan Forbes’ library – his bookplates to front pastedown
Screenplay script printed on pale blue paper on rectos only, with original binding holes in gutter.
Spines very slightly faded otherwise a very good set.

Notes For a Life:
by Bryan Forbes, 1974
pp. 384
Beautifully rebound in 3/4 turquoise morocco, raised bands, paper patterned boards
Top edge gilt. Gilt paneling and gilt titling to spine
Bookplate of Burnell to front pastedown
Includes many B/W photographs of Forbes with movie stars
Pages bright and clean. Internally, firmly bound. Externally, in excellent condition.

Background
In 1962 Forbes was engaged by Jimmy Woolf to write two screenplays for Paramount Pictures. Of Human Bondage, and an epic account of the early life of Winston Churchill. Forbes met with the Churchill Family and received unofficial approval from the Churchill Estate for the film. Paramount Pictures however were not happy with it. “Treatment disappointing from our point of view. Feel lacking in personal drama” read the telegramme that Forbes received from Marty Rackin at Paramount. Paramount never formally submitted the work to the Churchill Estate and the project died, only to be revived when Colombia and the writer producer Carl Foreman purchased the rights for the film from the Churchill Estate.

Carl Foreman’s film Young Winston came out in 1972 starring Simon Ward.

The whole affair hurt Forbes deeply and he related the events in chapters 47 and 48 of his autobiography Notes For A Life, ending poignantly “I had my script bound in full morocco, an expensive conceit perhaps and placed it on my shelves alongside those other unsung efforts I alone thought worthy of preservation. Carl wrote his own script and years later asked me to direct it. I felt at the time his gesture, however well intentioned, betrays a certain lack of sophistication (or too much sophistication, depending on your point of view). I had a legitimate reason for declining his offer and the eventual honour fell to Bunter. I have never seen the film he made form Carl’s script, which is disloyal of me, but there are some places you never want to return”.

Amongst Bryan Forbes’s screenplay credits are I was Monty’s Double (1958), The League of Gentlemen (1959), The Angry Silence  (1960), Whistle Down The Wind (1962), Only Two Can Play (1962), Of Human Bondage (1964), Séance On A Wet Afternoon (1964), The Stepford Wives (1975).

Item #401