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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 Dennis on March 16, 2011 at 10:37am

Hi all

Looks like the new guy opened up a can of worms :-)

 

I'll add more information tonight when I get home after work, but for now... I'm not an autograph dealer and I have no motive to disprove your thread topic. I can completely relate to your stories about ebay sellers and their "in person" autographs. As a horror autograph collector, I avoid an ebay seller who gets a new Boris Karloff in his inventory every 3 weeks.

 

The autographs were signed in person when I met Heston in Dallas TX, fall of 1999 if I recall correctly. I have the program somewhere in a box. If I find it I will scan it for the group.

 

I met Heston opening night of the play, drove home, and 5-6 nights later drove back and had him sign more photos. I also stayed in Dallas and saw him a third night (the closing performance). For the week of the play, Heston probably had more than one blue marker for signing. I remember him signing the b/w Omega Man photo as the last photo. He said, "This is a book signing so this is the last one"

Permalink Reply by Dennis on March 16, 2011 at 10:42am

I asked if we could take a photo together and he said no. Had he said yes, I'd be in the photo holding the photo with him. Since he said no photos, I chose not to take pictures of him signing but an audience member took photos from the stage floor that I will share later. I think that answers all of the questions. I want to show 2 more autographs.... This poster was signed through the mail that I sent to him.

Permalink Reply by Dennis on March 16, 2011 at 10:48am

I wrote to Heston in 1985 and got this signed index card in the mail plus a small signed photo. I know if was signed in 1985 because it has my old army rank (PFC) and duty station address of Germany written on the back plus a .14cent stamp. It has the "LL" . My question for all of you is this... Forget about everything you read about Heston having a secretary sign. What is more likely... Heston sometimes looped his 'r'? Or that Heston's secretary has been mis-spelling his name since 1985.

Dennis

PS Many of those Heston ebay autographs look like forgeries!

Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 16, 2011 at 10:56am

those two examples come close to my "es" theory (also the second onein your earlier post)

 

based on my own findings with other secretarial signatures, the mid 80's has changed something, my findings on Eastwood are that he use a secretary since about 1984/85 and on Schwarzenegger definately since 1984.

Permalink Reply by DB on March 16, 2011 at 10:56am

and then on a number of in-person and thru the mail books etc...  he remembered to sign his R on them.... including one of your first ones.   tonight came awful fast ;-)

 

We have had information from two sources that he has had "his people" sign for him.  That appears to be irrefutable and they were long time members of his "staff" so to speak.

 

and no you didn't open the can of worms - that was opened when the 1st post went up.

Permalink Reply by DB on March 16, 2011 at 7:21pm
Mike, not sure as it wasn't  a physical ailment perse like Ali's parkinson's but rather dimentia.  In those instances there is a point in time they are just fine and then boom the world becomes smaller and they don't sign whatsoever... as they, perhaps you know, start failing to remember who they are, what they did or for that matter who anyone is and it goes in stages...  I believe that would have started in earnest for Heston in the 2005 years with perhaps some smaller noticeable decline in 2002 when he announced he was retiring from "public life".   I'd bet that anything from 2005 on would not be a Heston signature no matter what it looks like.
Permalink Reply by DB on March 17, 2011 at 2:46am

C'mon ozzy would fit in perfectly in a Tim Burton movie...

Must have been alot of editing going on as Zaius didn't come across that badly.

 

publish the ones you have with a watermark as it would be good to see some real variations other than the one I put up in the earlier pages.

Permalink Reply by Michael Barrucci on March 16, 2011 at 11:11am

No, the secretary didn't consistently "misspell" Heston's name; it's just that her "r's" look like looped "L"'s.

 

And yup, many of the sigs on Ebay probably ARE forgeries -- and I'll bet many don't even know it. The signatures DO look very much alike, and I myself never even considered they were different until this article here. Now, the differences are quite distinctive.

 

So what do y'all think -- did Heston only "loop" double L's when signing photos at home, but not on the road? And yet these LL's somehow never presented themselves when signing books at home? 

 

Look -- I want this whole thing to be proven false more than anyone... I have 7 autographs on favorite photos that I really would like to be proven authentic at the end of all of this. And also the one personal letter typed to me on CH's own stationery. But evidence is really proving otherwise. 

 

Permalink Reply by Michael Barrucci on March 16, 2011 at 10:52am

Dennis, photos of the star signing (even with us in the pic with them) don't really make anything conclusive. I have two photos of Charlton Heston standing next to me and signing autographs outside ABC on a beautiful NYC morning in 1993...  however, I could still show one of my "Chall" secretarials and claim they were signed at that event.

 

Also, I'm afraid that LE SURVIVANT signature may be a fake. 

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 16, 2011 at 11:39am

For someone to believe that the double Ls are just a variant, you'd also have to believe that every time he signed the double L variant, he also signed on a straight baseline and didn't make an "es." 

 

This just doesn't add up. 

 

By the way, Dennis is admittedly a TTM collector as well. I do not think he is a liar... I simply think he's probably mis-remembering the source of signed photos obtained over 10 years ago. It happens.

Permalink Reply by Michael Barrucci on March 16, 2011 at 11:57am

I didn't want to say this up to now, but the "es" theory has me baffled. Whether it's the 3 "in person" sigs I have or the 7 "TTM" ones, I'll be darned if I can decipher an "es" formed in the majority of them. In just about every case, the "Heston" is a mess, compared to "Charlton".

 

I really wish I was able to scan some of these for you. The OMEGA MAN lobby card (from the live at ABC signing) is really sloppy, and quite a disappointment since most of Heston's autographs were quite satisfactory, even when the man was catering to a crowd such as this time. Of course, I know it's his signature because he signed it for me and made his "now, that's a gun!" comment -- but man, it is the one single time where even "Charlton" is muddy. Looking at this in-person one right now, it almost appears like "Chmm" (LOL) ... and no, I don't mean to start another theory about double "M"s. :-)   However -- it certainly doesn't look anything like two tall looped "LL's".

But I think Mr. Zipper describes the secretarials well when he says they look like they're on a straight baseline.

 

Permalink Reply by DB on March 16, 2011 at 1:18pm

mis-remembering hmm... thats a good one.

I have seen in the past (including myself) that I have obtained a number of in-person signings and then over time have acquired others that were not from the signing...  some might then go to the next step and claim they came from that signing.  It has nothing to do with "mis-remembering".

we have seen a rushed one from one of the best in-person collectors of all time.  We have seen some on the border.  we have yet to see a conclusive "dbl L" brand one however the ones I had with the "dbl L" brand secretarial or sister signed have been refunded while the other ones that don't have this stand strong all by themselves. 

Thus, I drew my conclusion.   That's the nice part of this - there are two complimenting perspectives that rule out the "variations" and this "he made a "dbl L" instead of an "R". 

Is there an exception out there - perhaps but I haven't seen one that seems to clear the hurdle here.  For that matter it appears just the opposite.

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