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Charlton Heston Secretarial Signature Study

 Hi:

At Steve Cyrkin's invitation, I'd like to call your attention to a signature study I've posted on my blog, Charlton Heston signature study by Steve Zarelli.

I believe I have identified the "tell" in Charlton Heston secretarial signatures, and if I am correct, the news is not good for most collectors. It appears that most  Heston signed photos are secretarially signed.

 

Here is a synopsis:

The Theory
Photographs and other memorabilia sent to Mr. Heston's office were signed by a secretary. However, Mr. Heston did authentically sign books through-the-mail.  

Real vs. Secretary
In authentic signatures, the R in "Charlton" is distinctly a lowercase "r" and less than half the height of the L. The first four letters are clearly "Char."

In secretarial signatures, the R looks much more like a lowercase "l" and is about the same height as the L. So, the first four letters appear to be "Chall."

I have attached two images to give you a small sampling.  

For more details and images, please visit my blog at the link below.

I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this. I fully anticipate some resistance to the theory, because denial is always the first step. In fact, I would love to be proved wrong, because that would mean I wasn't sitting on a bunch of secretary signed photos!

By way of introduction, I have been collecting since the early 90s and I am the UACC Ethics Director.

I look forward to the discussion.

The Collecting Obsession

Regards,

Steve Zarelli

 

Tags: Charlton, Forgery, Heston, Secretary, authenticating, autograph, secretarial

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 14, 2011 at 5:52am

I just had a phone call with the promotener who organized the signing in Germany with Charlton Heston at a store, he told me it was in 1996 and not as I assumed earlier in 1998.

 

So those are three 100% genuine examples from the 1996 signing in Germany :

 


Permalink Reply by DB on March 14, 2011 at 7:06am
Rolf, it is amazing how that R jumps out at you in the 2nd & 3rd one.  Not so pronunced in the 1st one but still distinguishable when compared to the earlier examples of the "dbl L" brand.
Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 14, 2011 at 7:17am
The funny thing is, once I caught the R, it just seemed so obvious. It's like the whole hobby was sleeping on this one. And once you pick up on whats good and what's not, you really start to see the difference in "Heston" as well.
Permalink Reply by Bob Shinn on March 14, 2011 at 7:24am

Greg...

When you get ready to look for a Jerry Lewis, please email me .

I have been collecting Jerry for many years as well

and have an extensive library of genuine exemplars of his authentic signature.

I will give you my opinion free of charge of course.

BTW 99% of the Jerry Lewis Signatures on ebay are Secretarial.

Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 14, 2011 at 7:38am

We have a good small study of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin's on Isitreal as well

 

http://www.isitreal.com/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=viewlin...

 

Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 14, 2011 at 11:43am
A few days ago I emailed Steve C. and wrote a "can of worms" has been opened as the Heston autograph issue progressed.  I meant it as a figure of speech.  I have to believe now that a real "can of worms" has been opened.  As more and more entertainment autographs get scrutinized the wild fire will spread.
Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 14, 2011 at 12:01pm

Greg,

What about moving Jerry Lewis and Jackie Gleason to separate discussions in Entertainment Autographs and Memorabilia? Call them something like "Jackie Gleason Autographs: What's Real? What's Fake?"

This will allow us to highlight the discussions, too, and will turn up higher in search engines.

You can upload the images and sort into albums, and then paste the embed code in the discussion. What's cool about albums is that members can comment on each photo in them.

Unfortunately, we can't categorize albums yet like we can discussions. Hopefully we'll have that in the future, but not yet.

Thanks

 

Permalink Reply by Federico De Gennaro on February 10, 2012 at 4:04am

Hi there! It seems the Isitreal.com study on Jerry Lewis is not impeccable. If you type JERRY LEWIS SIGNED THE JAZZ SINGER on eBay right now you'll find items personally signed by Mr. Lewis two days ago in LA (video proof also). Some of the remarks on this study aren't perfectly fitting with the "in person" signature we can see (he signed "Jerry" only with his usual addition of month/year). What do you all think about it? Cheers.

 

Permalink Reply by DB on March 14, 2011 at 7:16am

The likelihood of that occuring IMHO is slim - possible but slim.

Then again, the exemplars that were relied upon is what at the core of this and regardless of how these became universally accepted it seems it may have been known in some circles but a reluctance to publish the information as suggested earlier.  The study that Roth did apparently ran into a buzz saw as it could have all been prevented years ago.

I don't have an issue with someone sticking by 3rd parties but they are in for a major shock as well as collectors around the world.  One thing for sure is that Heston didn't do anything different than that of most major stars with thousands of requests by his fans. 

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 14, 2011 at 7:30am
Rolf was obviously right, but the issue is he seized on the "es" in Heston, which is not as clear or as easy to discern as the "r."  I showed Rolf's study to a few dealers last year, and the response was that is was a signature variant. I wasn't convinced either way, so I kept digging... and that's when the R jumped out at me.
Permalink Reply by DB on March 14, 2011 at 7:42am

Steve - excellent as I could see how the "es" could be in debate as it was difficult to discern on a number of them but now with the "R" analysis it is far beyond the signature variant.

 

when Mike Sibley posts the information he has and with confirmation of authentic to follow it will put the kabash on the whole variant discussion.

Permalink Reply by Bob Shinn on March 14, 2011 at 7:51am

When I read Rolf's study in German, what I focused on was all the variations and similarities in both the original examples of Heston signature and the secretarial examples.

"Signature Variant" never crossed my mind. A serious study of Rolf's Study combined with the 100's of authentic exemplars I had in my library led me to agree with Rolf completely.

Dealers today IMHO need to know the material they sell intimately, and concentrate on making sure their customers are buying the real deal!!!!!

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