Richard Lester Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Richard Lester was born in Philadelphia in 1932. While studying clinical psychology at Pennsylvania State University, Lester cultivated a passion for music and began playing with a rock band. Read the full biography

Richard Lester was born in Philadelphia in 1932. While studying clinical psychology at Pennsylvania State University, Lester cultivated a passion for music and began playing with a rock band. After graduation, he joined CBS in Philadelphia, but due to the events of McCarthyism in the 1950s he decided to leave the United States. After several travels, Lester settled in London in 1954 and began working for the BBC as a writer, director and composer for highly successful television shows and comedy series.
Lester's success came when he directed two manifesto films for the Beatles: A Hard Day's Night and Help!, which brought the band's freshness and humor to the cinema. The first film features Free Cinema-style formal inventions, while the second plays with British iconography through frenetic, Dadaist imagery.
The first film Lester made in the United States was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), based on the musical by B. Shevelove and L. Gelbart, with Zero Mostel and Buster Keaton. The director blends peplum clichés with slapstick humor. But Lester's most ambitious project is How I Won the War (1967), based on the novel by P. Ryan and starring John Lennon. The film is an anti-militarist farce full of Marx Brothers gimmicks about the disastrous attempts of a British platoon to build a cricket pitch behind enemy lines in Egypt during the Second World War.
Lester then directed a series of period films, demonstrating his ability to move from fantasy genres to adventure films. Thanks to his masterful sense of desecration and spectacularity, Lester was able to reconcile commercial cinema with the more cultured one.