1964 "Rawhide" Sculptures
GUEST: These heads were sculpted by my mother to be used for the series Rawhide, and they used them for the titles. They pay, commissioned her to make them, and then they rented them from her, and there's a rental agreement for $150. We've got Clint Eastwood...
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: Eric Fleming, and Paul Brinegar. She did the sculpting on set.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And so she was there a lot. Word has it that my little sister and I were actually taken there, uh, to meet Clint Eastwood and meet the actors and visit her while she was doing this. And she just talked about how friendly they are.
APPRAISER: Did you have any memories of that at all, or...
GUEST: No-- I was four? Three? My mom was a sculptor, so the house was filled with sculpture, art. As she got older, she'd ask me, "Well, what do you want for your birthday?" And I'm, like, "Just give me some of your art." I think Clint I got about 30 years ago?
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: Uh, as a birthday gift from my mom.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
GUEST: Wishbone, uh, a few years later.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And then when my mother passed away in 2017, we found this other one in, among her, uh, garden shed. She studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London. That's where she was born and raised. And so she started in the program when she was about 16, uh, she finished at 20, and then was a professor there for a few years before she emigrated to the U.S.
APPRAISER: And how did she get into Hollywood?
GUEST: When she first came to the U.S., she lived in the Midwest and didn't love it. Went to California, and to find work, she worked for the Knickerbocker Toy Company making boxes for toys, designing them, and then also doing movie titles.
APPRAISER: And she made these in 1964, according to your documentation here. These were only used in the last few seasons of Rawhide. Rawhide was one of the most popular American Western TV series. And throughout it all, we had Clint Eastwood. Now, he was second-billed. We had Eric Fleming playing the trail boss, and the second-in-command was a very young Clint Eastwood. And before that he'd done a lot of smaller roles in smaller movies here and there, and a few Westerns. But he wasn't the big iconic star and director that he is now. When the series started to wind down in its last year, Clint Eastwood finally became the trail boss. And then they canceled the show. (chuckles) He went to Spain, started shooting, uh, spaghetti Westerns...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...as the Man with No Name. And then his career just took off in 1967, when those movies got released. And then you've got Eric Fleming. After he got let go from the show, uh, he went on to go, try to have a movie career, but it was very short-lived because he drowned in a canoeing accident in South America while filming High Jungle.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: You don't see very many props from this era, let alone props as important to the, as these. Because as you tuned in to CBS, you'd be watching the opening credits, and the sculpture would appear, so they were heavily featured.
With any television or movie props, provenance is very important to the value. And you've got this receipt here. It adds and solidifies the story. So somebody c, can be absolutely confident on what we believe is true is now documented. And we believe a good, good auction estimate would be $8,000 to $12,000.
GUEST: Wow. (laughs) Wow-- thank you. (laughs): That's awesome, thank you.
$8,000 - $12,000 Auction
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