LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2007 Oct. Sig. Entertainment Memorabilia #648  / 

22217

Darryl Zanuck's Love Letters from Bella Darvi

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia / Autographs - Original Start Price:80.00 USD Estimated At:320.00 - 480.00 USD
Darryl Zanuck's Love Letters from Bella Darvi
<B>Darryl Zanuck's Love Letters from Bella Darvi.</B></I> One of the most pitifully grim of all Hollywood tragedies was the scandal and suicide of Bella Darvi. Born Bayla Wegier in Poland in 1928, she was a stunningly beautiful brunette who survived a World War II concentration camp to become a discovery of producer Darryl F. Zanuck. Both Zanuck and his wife Virginia originally sponsored her -- indeed, "Darvi" was an abbreviation of their first names -- and she became a Hollywood star, notably as "Nefer" in Zanuck's lavish 1954 <I>The Egyptian.</B></I> However, after Virginia learned Darryl and Bella were lovers, she threw her out and sent her back to Europe. Bella acted sporadically, but never recovered emotionally from her affair with Zanuck and, in 1971, killed herself in her Monte Carlo apartment by turning on the gas. Her body wasn't discovered for ten days. These three intensely private and heartbreaking letters from Bella Darvi to Zanuck reveal her harrowing torment. The first letter, three pages long, is on Elysee Park Hotel of Paris stationery, and Bella desperately writes, "...I live like nobody else does, alone every night and thinking too much!! Darling...You will never be able to leave her and if you do she will always be after us!" It concludes, "I love you. I kiss you. and I sometimes hate you to make me cry!" The second letter, two pages, includes her words "I want to be free!!" and "...I have to change my life now, or else I will kill myself... " concluding "...I just want to be alone - and try to forget you. B." The third letter, one page, insists "I love you with all my heart but I realize I can not make you happy...I wish I was dead! It is finished!...," and concludes "good bye my love - B." All three letters are written in fountain ink; none are dated, but the similar paper and ink suggest all were penned within the same brief period. Attesting to the tragic potency of this packet (and also included) is a scrap of paper from Zanuck himself, who had entrusted these letters to a confidante, writing, "Jack - Destroy without reading - Please - D.Z." The letters escaped destruction and survive as intimately personal testimony to an epic case of Hollywood scandal and self-destruction. All are in Very Fine condition. <I>Accompanied by LOA from PSA/DNA.</B></I><BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Flat Material, Small (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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