Item #4689 The Children of Sanchez. Cesare Zavattini, Hall Bartlett.
The Children of Sanchez
The Children of Sanchez
The Children of Sanchez
The Children of Sanchez

The Children of Sanchez

Zavattini, Cesare and Hall Bartlett

Los Angeles: Hall Bartlett Films, n.d. (1977).

First printing. 195 pp., 8.5 x 11 inches.

A specially bound copy of the script for the 1978 film The Children of Sanchez, produced, co-written, and directed by Hall Bartlett. Inside the front cover a small bookbinder’s label shows that the book was bound by Ronnie Gousman in Hollywood. Save for one tiny spot of wear on the back side of the spine, essentially as new. Item #4689

Hall Bartlett (1922–1993) wrote, directed, and produced dozens of films, as well as writing two novels and serving as a founder and board member of numerous Los Angeles cultural organizations. His films received ten Best Picture and Best Director awards at various international film festivals, seventeen Academy Award nominations, eight Hollywood Foreign Press Golden Globe Awards, and more than seventy-five national and international awards from publications and organizations.

Bartlett is perhaps most famous for his adaptation of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but a dedication to exploring contemporary social issues was a constant in his career, resulting in such notable films as All the Young Men (1960, starring Sidney Poitier) and The Children of Sanchez (1978), as well as films concerned with Native Americans, prisons, mental health, and youth in the 1960s.

Based on a classic study of a Mexican family by Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez, starring Anthony Quinn, Dolores del Rio, and Lupita Ferrer, was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival, and featured a Grammy-winning score by Chuck Mangione. President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynne Carter attended the premiere, the proceeds of which went to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

This custom-bound copy of the script bears the presentation inscription (gilt tooled into the cover leather):

“For Pepé / With my deep gratitude for the talent / and the spirit you have brought to our film. / Hall”

Though it has not been possible to determine with certainty the recipient, it was most likely one of two Mexican actors in the film, José Carlos Ruiz (born 1936) or José Chávez (1916–1988), both of whom had extensive careers on both sides of the border.

A unique copy of a scarce script; WorldCat locates no copies of this version, and only two copies (one in the US and one in France) of a later version published by one of the film’s distributors, Lone Star International.

Price: $350.00

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