The America-Jewish filmmaker is renowned as one of the towering figures of cinema, and also made Paths Of Glory, Dr Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange.
2001: A Space Odyssey: The Original Star Child Prop (Credit: Bonhams)[Missing Credit]
Claire Tole-Moir, the head of popular culture at Bonhams, said of the “star child” prop: “It is the final, enigmatic image of one of cinema’s most influential science fiction films.
"It represents evolution, new beginnings, naivety and ambiguity. 2001: A Space Odyssey is not just one of Kubrick’s finest films, it is a cinematic masterpiece, and so to be able to offer this iconic prop from the final scene of the film is incredibly exciting.”
The axe that appears in The Shining is expected to be one of the auction’s most high-fetching items, with a list price of between £30,000 and £50,000.
The Shining: Jack Torrance's Special Effects Axe From The Dick Hallorann Murder Scene (Credit: Bonhams)[Missing Credit]
Other lots from the 1980 horror classic include two sky-blue dresses worn by the creepy “come play with us” twin sisters, Alexa and Alexia, and a clapperboard used for the film.
Kubrick’s director chair is valued at up to £12,000, and his film scripts, complete with his personal annotations, drawings and alternative scenes are among the other lots.
Tole-Moir said the auction gives “fans, collectors and historians the chance to own a piece of this remarkable collection” and that the exhibitions were “a landmark moment to get closer to some of the most iconic films ever made”.
The Shining: The Grady Sisters Unique Production Used Costumes (Credit: Bonhams)[Missing Credit]
The item that best illustrates Kubrick’s personal life and personality was his chess set, Tole-Moir said.
She said he valued the game “for its combination of strategy, patience, discipline and intellectual precision – qualities that would become hallmarks of his filmmaking.
“Later on, during breaks in filming, he would play games with members of the cast and crew, and has often been photographed alongside a chess board.
“Other directors’ collections have appeared at auction over the years, but Stanley Kubrick’s archive is truly distinctive in its depth, quality and intellect.
It encompasses not only the extraordinary objects themselves, but decades of scholarship, research, documentation and deliberate preservation.
“It is hard to think of another collection of this calibre, nor a director who has inspired so many.”
Stanley Kubrick: Personally-Owned Chess Set (Credit: Bonhams)[Missing Credit]
Born in New York in 1928 to secular Jewish parents, Kubrick was raised in the Bronx. Although Kubrick was not religious, his Jewish ancestry was considered by his family and some critics to be an important influence on his worldview and films.
After his death, his family stressed that he “did not deny his Jewishness, not at all”.
One of his daughters recalled his years of research for The Aryan Papers, the book about the Holocaust he once intended to adapt for the screen.
Kubrick abandoned the project he had been working on for so long when Steven Spielberg made Schindler’s List and he feared his own film would be over-shadowed
Many of his closest friends and early collaborators were Jewish, as were his first two wives.
3rd January 1971: American film maker Stanley Kubrick (1928 - 1999). (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)Getty Images
Screenwriter Frederic Raphael, who worked with Kubrick late in his life said it was “absurd to try to understand Stanley Kubrick without reckoning on Jewishness as a fundamental aspect of his mentality”.
Kubrick died in 1999, aged 70, shortly before the release of his final film Eyes Wide Shut, for which Raphael co-wrote the script.
The auction will take place on February 3 at Bonhams in London. It will follow public exhibitions starting next week at Bonhams in New York, before going on to Los Angeles, Paris and then London on January 18.
