Authenticity is Everything
Another Charlie Chaplin - 80th Birthday Letter - Opinions?
Here's a Charlie Chaplin that is signed in a fine felt tip in 1969 thanking a film club for their birthday wishes on his 80th.
Does felt tip seem to be unusual to have been used by an 80 year old Chaplin in 1969? It strikes me that, from his home in Switzerland, he might have instead retained using a more traditional steel nib pen for through the mail correspondence.
(Sorry for the poor scan. The paper is engraved with his name on the top and is real....even though it's hard to tell from this low def. scan.)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by eddy on
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Thanks, KaiMi. Nope, it's not printed. It is original. I guess by the time it was signed in 1969, the use of felt tip was becoming standard in correspondence.
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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on
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This was listed as "black ink" not felt tip - yours is very hard to see to read the pen type.
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Permalink Reply by Nick Dimeo on
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Looks good to me.
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Thanks, Nick. With someone with Chaplin's fame and resources, secretarial signatures or even autopen seems like it could be a possible concern in a TLS. It brings a smile to see that he would have had the kindness to personally sign these notes.
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Good sleuthing, Eric. Yes, the scan that has been provided to me is really not helpful to pick up the fine details.
By chance, I found yet another one of these "Thank You" notes that was included in a past auction sale. A comparison of this one with the one in my first post as well as yours seems to rule out the use of an autopen as there is variance in the signatures.
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A long time ago I was planning on writing a book about silent film autographs and I can tell you definitively that Chaplin signed most all fan requests, TTM, fan club items from the late 1960’s till his death. He was a very insecure man that felt the public was going to forget him when he got to be wheelchair bound. The autographs of when he was portraying The Tramp from 1910’s to 1940’s are where you will find your fakes. It’s not uncommon to see these fan mail autographs and they usually sell under $1000 whereas something from the Golden Age is big money.
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That idea for a book (or even a website) is a great idea. If you revive the idea and want a collaborator, keep me in mind!
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I was going to trot the book out pre internet and had some interviews conducted with people like James Karen, who owned a bunch of Buster Keaton memorabilia as he was his “right hand” man. I became friends with James and that’s where I acquired my Keaton autograph.
If only kids and life didn’t get in the way, lol.
I’d love to update Joe Franklin’s Classics of the Silent Screen book. It was my favorite book as a kid and a lot of films have been found that Joe Franklin talked about in his book.
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