"Contract Bridge Legend" Ely Culbertson Hand Signed Album Page For Sale

Up for sale "Contract Bridge Legend" Ely Culbertson Hand Signed Album Page. 

ES-7243E

Elie

Almon Culbertson (July

22, 1891 – December 27, 1955), known as Ely Culbertson, was an

American contract bridge entrepreneur and personality dominant

during the 1930s. He played a major role in the popularization of the new game

and was widely regarded as "the man who made contract bridge". He was

a great showman who became rich, was highly extravagant, and lost and gained

fortunes several times over. Culbertson was born in Poiana Vărbilău in Romania to an

American mining engineer, Almon Culbertson, and his Russian wife, Xenya

Rogoznaya. He attended the École des sciences économiques et politiques at

the Sorbonne in Paris, and the University of Geneva. His

facility for languages was extraordinary: he spoke Russian, English, French,

German, Czech and Spanish fluently, with a reading knowledge of five others,

and a knowledge of Latin and classical Greek. In spite of his education, his

erudition was largely self-acquired: he was a born autodidact.

After the Russian Revolution (1917),

Culbertson lived for four years in Paris and other European cities by

exploiting his skill as a card player. In 1921 he moved to the United States,

earning his living from winnings at sale bridge and poker. In 1923 he

married Mrs. Josephine Murphy Dillon, a successful teacher of sale bridge

and a leading woman player, in Manhattan. They were successful as both players and

teachers, and later as publishers. Josephine Culbertson retained

the surname after their divorce in 1938; indeed, a revised edition of Culbertson's

Contract Bridge in Ten Minutes was published under her name in 1951. Gradually

the new game of contract bridge began to replace sale bridge, and Culbertson

saw his opportunity to overtake the leaders of sale bridge. Culbertson

planned a far-reaching and successful campaign to promote himself as the leader

of the new game. As player, organizer, offerding theorist, magazine editor, and

team leader, he was a key figure in the growth of contract bridge in its great

boom years of the 1930s. Culbertson

was a brilliant publicist; he played several famous challenge matches and won

them all. Two were played in the U.S., against pairs led

by Sidney Lenz in 1931–32 (the so-called "Bridge Battle of the

Century") and by P. Hal Sims in 1935, the latter between the married

couples Culbertson and Sims. Four teams-of-four matches

were played in England, against Walter Buller's team in

1930, against "Pops" Beasley's

team in 1930 and 1933, and against Col. George Walshe's team in 1934. These

matches were typically accompanied by noteworthy publicity in newspapers, on

radio and on cinema newsreels, and the hands became the subject of intense

discussion on offerding methods. Later,

a match did not materialize against the leading American team of the mid-1930s,

the "Four Aces".

Culbertson was finally beaten in Budapest, June 1937, in the final match of the first world

championship teams tournament, by the 6-man Austria team led by Dr. Paul Stern. It was his last appearance in a tournament or

match.

Culbertson founded and edited The Bridge World magazine, which is still published

today, and wrote many newspaper articles and books on bridge. He owned the

first firm of playing card manufacturers to develop plastic cards, Kem Cards,

and developed and owned a chain of bridge schools with teachers qualified in

the Culbertson offerding system. He continued to play high-stakes rubber bridge

for many years, but gave up tournament and match competition in 1938 to write

and to work for world peace.[ Total Peace (1943)

and Must We Fight Russia? (1947) were his most important

books.