Christie’s to sell James Dean letters at auction in November

A collection of personal handwritten letters from film icon, James Dean, are to be sold in Christie’s Popular Culture: Film and Entertainment Memorabilia sale, which takes place in South Kensington on 23rd November.

Each of the letters, which have never been offered for sale before, were written to Dean’s on-off girlfriend of two years, Barbara Glenn. The letters were sent when Dean was out-of-town during auditions for ‘The Immoralist’ in Philadelphia, and from behind the scenes on ‘East of Eden’, his first major Hollywood film.

The letters provide candid accounts of Dean’s private life before becoming a star. The emotional letters, which reveal the strains of Dean’s work and details of the couple’s long distance relationship, are to be offered along with copies of unpublished private family photographs of the couple directly from the son of Barbara Glenn, filmmaker Keith Gordon.

This auction story was first published in the November issue of Collectors Gazette. To see which issues of Collectors Gazette are available to buy online, click here.