Blessings in Disguise

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. With a Fine Inscribed Black & White Photograph of Alec Guiness

GUINESS, Alec. Blessings in Disguise. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

First American Edition. Octavo ( 9 1/4 x 6 3/8 inches; 235 x 159 mm.). xiv, 238, [2] pp.

Publishers quarter pink cloth over blue boards, front cover initialed in black, spine lettered in silver, fore-edge uncut. A fine copy in the original pictorial dust jacket. Affixed to the front free endpaper is an inscribed black & white photograph of Alec Guiness “Every good wish, Alec Guiness 1977”.

"The long-awaited autobiography of one of the (truncated) greatest actors of our day - a memoir that in its scrupulous intelligence and accuracy of observation, its modesty mingled with wild and dancing humor, and its sweet idiosyncrasy, is pure Guiness." (Cover flap).

Sir Alec Guinness CH CBE, born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; (1914-2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played eight different characters, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, and The Ladykillers (1955). He collaborated six times with director David Lean: playing Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won both the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984). In 1970, he played Jacob Marley's ghost in Ronald Neame's Scrooge.

He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy; for the original 1977 film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards. (Inventory #: 05865)