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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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Attachments: No photo uploads here

Figure 1.jpg, 60 KB
Secretary 1.jpg, 37 KB

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on August 23, 2011 at 7:37pm

RE HARVEY Sketch - The black signature appears to be good. The other side (blue signature) is a bit small to judge. I have seen a number of these Harvey sketches where the sketch is in black and the signature is in blue. Does this strike anyone else as odd? Why would this be?

Given the number of Harvey sketches for sale at any given time, if they are real, one would have to presume that Mr. Stewart was doing these sketches full time for a number of years.

HINT: Light board.

RE Heston - I don't think they are fake (although, there appears to be one secretarial in the bunch). They look in-person to me. Heston's signature is very complex, and I have yet to see a truly deceptive forgery (other than the secretarial).

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Permalink Reply by Herman Darvick on August 23, 2011 at 7:48pm

I have seen printed Harvey sketches on which Jimmy Stewart personally added the whiskers and signed the printed sketch.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on August 23, 2011 at 7:49pm

Great info! Thanks for sharing.

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Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on August 23, 2011 at 8:41pm

Any idea why he'd add the whiskers in black and then sign it in blue? I can't think of much of anything James Stewart signed in blue besides the sketches. I'm glad to hear he was actually signing at least some of these.

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Permalink Reply by Herman Darvick on August 23, 2011 at 8:53pm

Maybe because the drawing was printed in black? and he decided to sign his name with a blue pen?

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Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on August 23, 2011 at 8:39pm

I'm glad I was hallucinating when I thought that James Stewart signed card looked good. The back is harder to tell because it is smaller. This is just a card though, what's with the Harvey drawing and the two signatures? I find that very strange. It looks a lot more legit to me than most of the ones I see with JSA certs. I'm not sure how many are real but I rarely see ones (for the amount that are listed) with as convincing signatures.

Thanks for the opinion on the Heston's too. Do you mean the "Chall" looks secretarial? His signature was complex. Elegant too. I usually see a big difference between books signed by him and pictures. He took the time to give the books nice signatures, probably because he wasn't being pestered by other people at the time for an autograph. Do you think the Heston's I linked to were just signed late in life?

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on August 24, 2011 at 5:52am

Do you mean the "Chall" looks secretarial?

Yes. It's not just the "LL" formation. It has the other secretarial tells as well.

Do you think the Heston's I linked to were just signed late in life?

Probably. They are a little sloppy and have similar characteristics to exemplars from the private signing he did. The key however, is that these signatures show significant variation from each other. If they were forgeries from the same source, I tend to think they would look more similar. Forgers tend to "learn" the signature and repeat it almost identically each time.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on August 24, 2011 at 8:19am

BTW, the Heston findings will be an article in an upcoming issue of the UACC's Pen & Quill.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Sibley on August 24, 2011 at 9:52am

Hello to every one over there...Mike from the UK here...

In my opinion the seven (as I write this) Heston signatures being sold by 'silentsaregolden' are all genuine Heston signatures barring one - the one numbered #BTG1770. This one for me is a secretarial. I agree with Mr. Zipper that there are significant variations in all the other signatures. I was lucky enough to get a similar amount of in person signatures from Mr. Heston in 1999 and all have significant variations. Many of these you can see from my earlier posts on this subject.

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Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on August 24, 2011 at 10:30am

So you think the #BTG2826 is a genuine "Chall"? A smaller "Chall" than some we've seen but a "Chall" all the same. I agree on #BTG1770 looking closer that even though it has a smaller R, the rest of it, besides the capital E we see in a lot of secretarials, has the characteristics of a secretarial. So what do we have here, a "Chall" that's genuine and a "Char" that's secretarial?

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Permalink Reply by DB on August 24, 2011 at 3:25pm

what caught my attention on your post is that the Capital E u site having the characteristics... which leads me to believe you are perhaps a student of secretarials at least on heston. Can you expand on this insight and experience?

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Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on August 24, 2011 at 4:25pm

There are a number of indicators. The difference in "Chall" and "Char" that Zipper outlined here. Then in most of the secretarials there is the formation in Heston that looks a cursive capital E with a loop at the top which has been posted at isitreal.com for some time. Another thing I look at is in Heston in real ones, Heston wrote what usually looks close to a capital cursive S at the end and then a normal cursive n (which often dips below the rest of the signature). In the secretarials, that cursive S looking formation looks a lot more like an O than an S, and the normal cursive n usually doesn't dip. Also, in the secretarials, after the Chall, there's what looks a lot like another O which is often attached to the H at the end. The O shape in Charlton is smaller in size than the O in the Heston.

You can look at page 3 of this study to see a secretarial with the two O's that I'm talking about. Here's another example from eBay from as well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Charlton-Heston-Autographed-Photo-PSA-DNA-/...

Now here's this "Char".

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHARLTON-HESTON-autographed-3-5x6-photo-RD3...

It's kind of in the grey area because that lower case r could pass for an r or an l. There's no cursive capital E as you can see. But there are the two O's.

Authentic examples, sometimes, but not always, have what look like two capital cursive S's. The one in Charlton being smaller than the one in Heston. You can see it in some of the examples posted on the first page of this study.

I'd say in conclusion that the "Chall" is present most often in secretarials. Then the capital cursive "E" and then the two O's. It's one indicator for me. Another thing to look at can be what looks most like two lower case h's, they come after the O's I've mentioned in a lot of secretarials.