How I Won the War Film Script, Thought to be John Lennon's Working Copy, with Film Call Sheet.  A 128-page (single sided) printed script of 8.5" x 11", two-hole punched and bound inside a plain soft-cover folder. Much of the dialogue and scene-setting for the character "Gripweed" (Lennon) is underlined, circled, or crossed through. The included "Call Sheet No. 51" dated October 24, 1966, outlines a day of shooting at Almeria in Spain and has Lennon's name and character underlined with a handwritten "JL." at upper left. Lennon participated in this odd anti-war movie's filming during September-November 1966 at the behest of the director Richard Lester. The Beatles had just finished their last-ever concert tour and each went their separate ways for awhile to work on individual projects. It was just after the filming that the group reunited and started work on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Purchased from a June 1987 Christie's New York auction. The script shows signs of heavy use but is in good condition. It is encased in a shadow-box display case.

This film script is a unique piece of Lennon (and Beatles) memorabilia. Director Richard Lester had been hand-picked by the Beatles to direct their first film A Hard Day's Night and would also direct their second Help! Roy Kinnear, who co-starred with John in How I Won the War (as "Clapper") was one of Lester's favorite actors; he had appeared with the Beatles in Help! as "Algernon." An interesting fact relating to the time John Lennon spent in Spain during the filming was that he rented a villa there called Santa Isabel. Its wrought iron gates and lush plant life brought back memories to John of a Salvation Army children's home near where he grew up in Liverpool, one of his favorite places to play as a child. In his off-time during the shoot, Lennon expressed those memories in the form of a song. You may be familiar with it: "Strawberry Fields Forever." In his last major interview (with David Sheff in 1980), Lennon spoke of this film and the above-mentioned song: "Dick Lester offered me the part in this movie, which gave me time to think without going home. We were in Almeria, and it took me six weeks to write the song. I was writing it all the time I was making the film. And as anybody knows about film work, there's a lot of hanging around. I have an original tape of it somewhere. Of how it sounded before it became the sort of psychedelic-sounding song it became on record."