Remarkable pairing of items: a DS signed "Ayn Rand" and "Barbara Branden," four onionskin pages, 8.5 x 11, February 1, 1968, by which "Author grants to Dramatist the exclusive right to dramatize The Fountainhead into a stage play," with stipulations involving writer's credits, changes to the text, and the production of the play; and an original draft of Branden's script, 122 pages, 8.5 x 11, initialed on the title page in ballpoint by both parties, "A.R." and "B.B." The script features changes to the dialogue on four pages, all done in Branden's hand. In overall fine condition, with light edge creasing to the document.
After the publication and initial success of The Fountainhead in 1943, Rand adapted the novel into a screenplay—a format with which she was well familiar, as she worked as a reader and script-doctor for Paramount. She completed the screenplay in 1944, and the film was released some five years later by Warner Bros., starring Gary Cooper as Howard Roark. Several years later, she authorized her friend and follower Barbara Branden to adapt the novel for the stage, to be produced by the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), an organization founded in 1958 to promote Rand's philosophy of Objectivism; the project was ultimately shut down in 1968 after the Brandens' public falling-out with Rand, and the play remained unstaged.
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