[LITTLE PRINCE THE]: WELLES ORSON (1915-1985) American actor & film director, Academy Award winner. A significant ...

[LITTLE PRINCE THE]: WELLES ORSON (1915-1985) American actor & film director, Academy Award winner. A significant D.S., Orson Welles, two pages (separate leaves), 4to, Los Angeles, California, 16th June 1943. The carbon typed document represents an agreement between Welles and Antoine de Saint-Exupery in which the French writer acknowledges receipt of the sum of $1250 from Welles, continuing 'I hereby give and grant to you the sole and exclusive right and option for the period of sixty (60) days from the date hereof to purchase all of the silent, sound and/or talking motion picture rights in and to my original story entitled ''The Little Prince'' for the total purchase price of Twelve Thousand Five Hundred Dollars ($12,500.00)….' and further setting out various terms and conditions in a number of clauses, in part, 'The rights to be granted to you in and to said story shall be the exclusive, complete and entire motion picture rights (including all sound and talking motion picture rights) in and to said literary material together with the right to televise direct from the motion picture photoplays to be produced based upon the said literary material (as distinguished from televising from living actors) for advertising and exploiting such motion picture photoplays and the right to broadcast by radio from the said literary material……You shall also have the right to reproduce in said motion picture photoplays any and/or all of the drawings contained in the book entitled ''The Little Prince'' as published…..' Signed by Welles in red fountain pen ink at the conclusion and countersigned by Maximilian Becker, Saint-Exupery's agent. With a further typed clause stapled to the first page, additionally signed by both Welles and Becker with their initials. Some light overall age wear, and a couple of very small tears to the left edge of the second page, otherwise VG Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944) French writer and pioneering aviator whose most successful work, The Little Prince, was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943. Welles reputedly moved to secure the film rights for The Little Prince the day after reading Saint-Exupery's novella, and the young director, who had already made Citizen Kane, set about writing a screenplay. His intention was to make a live action film with animated sequences to represent interplanetary travel. In the 1940s this meant working with Walt Disney, the master of the genre, and the two men met to discuss the film. Welles brilliantly presented his vision, however Disney remained cold to the idea and apparently stormed out of the meeting declaring 'There's only room in this project for one genius'. And so the whole venture fell apart.