Faulkner Letter Sells for $18,000

According to the Washington Post, a letter by William Faulkner complaining that he had been “conned” into a screenwriting contract with Warner Brothers sold yesterday for nearly $18,000, according to auction house Bonhams & Butterfields. Faulkner was the credited screenwriter on adaptations of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep—both directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Of course, he also contributed to the screenplay of Land of the Pharoahs (a Hawks flop starring the young Joan Collins as Princess Nellifer—“Her treachery stained every stone of the Pyramid!”). No wonder he felt conned.