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

Views: 26123

Attachments: No photo uploads here

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on October 1, 2011 at 3:44pm

You're going to make me work a little harder. I just grabbed the first forgery I saw. Here's a Charlton "small r" Heston forgery courtesy of silverscreensignatures and Global Authentics.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Charlton-Heston-8x10-SIGNED-PHOTO-Autograph...

 

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Price isn't always a giveaway. I've seen some great SP's sell in that $20-$30 range for Heston. Great steals if you ask me. Those "Chall's" make the genuine pieces worth less. I wish eBay would take an active role in the autographs they sell and take this junk off their site. Any five users on here could comb through and remove hundreds if not thousands of just blatant forgeries for sale.

 

Permalink Reply by DB on October 1, 2011 at 4:13pm

The problem is that with hundreds of thousands of listings and thousands upon thousands listed daily it doesn't surprise me about EBay slow to react.  In some cases they "ain't" to slow but I am sure they have their hands full in the "investigative" dept.

 

This one, having seen similar before, has given me fits.  At first glance it just looks like a sloppy "r" but as we have seen (may have to go back thru the pages and refresh the databanks) Heston made a very distinctive R "most of the time".  It appears if it is not a distinctive dbl L then it might get a tpa blessing unfortunately. 

 

Even when blown up I am at a loss to explain what character this eiffel tower type item is suppose to represent because it is purposely shaped not to look like the definitive L to it's right..

Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on October 2, 2011 at 8:03pm

There's another bad forgery listed on eBay which I may post later. I'd feel better if these people would just go back to selling secretarials. There's something less decent about finding out the difference between the Chall and "small r" Heston's and then exploiting that to make a forgery which is in line with the authentic signature.

 

One thing I've been more interested in is the dip below baseline at the end of Heston in authentic examples. I've figured out mostly that it's a characteristic used in his rush signature. Most often crowd signing where he'd scribble out his name quickly.

 

A great majority of the private signing material and the books he signed TTM don't have the dip. He took the time to make those nice. The piece I have which I can have absolute confidence in has the dip. The poster was signed in person before my eyes at a conference with Heston where he signed a ton of stuff.

 

Another thing I'm looking at is the "h" in Charlton.

Permalink Reply by DB on October 18, 2011 at 5:03am

Looking at the following -  It appears to meet the Char test but since time has availed itself to the forgery market does it meet the more intricate "es" and so on.  I believe it does but and still trying to grasp Rolf's focus on the es....

 

Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on October 22, 2011 at 4:43am

This looks probably okay to me. The picture isn't the best and the autograph kind of fades into the darkness of his shirt. It seems to have a number of desirable qualities though.

Permalink Reply by DB on October 27, 2011 at 10:48am

Ok, having a one sided debate with myself on this one and noone is coming out ahead thus I inquire.  Following the Brick posts with this not quite an R but not a distinctive L yet either....  but has the dropoff   thus what are your perspectives?

 

 

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on October 27, 2011 at 10:51am

In my opinion, this has a strong likelihood of being a forgery.

Permalink Reply by DB on October 27, 2011 at 12:51pm

Certificate of Authenticity from Global Authentics (GV 586856).

Appears the TPA, in this case, is still having a difficult time.

Brick is right though there seems to be a new group of these "odd R, but not quite an L" starting to appear.  This one was allegedly obtained at the Beverly Hills Playhouse

 

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on October 27, 2011 at 1:20pm

There is a recent forgery style that emulates the "Char" rather than the "Chall." Several of these have been sent to me privately. The first name is not bad, but the Heston is completely inconsistant with the real thing.

Permalink Reply by DB on October 27, 2011 at 1:38pm

Didn't take long did it!  And if that's the case all we need is TPAs embracing them!

Would that be your take on the Beverly Hills one as well although the owner claims it was obtained inperson at the playhouse.

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on October 27, 2011 at 1:42pm

In my opinion, that one looks good.

Permalink Reply by Mike Sibley on October 27, 2011 at 3:49pm
This is going to get more and more difficult to call. The bit around the new group of "odd R, but not quite an L" will make it harder due to the fact that there are examples of Mr Heston's in person signature which also feature this style. You can see this back on page 45 of this discussion showing up in some of my in person signatures that I posted.

For me the first of the last two examples posted recently leans more towards being a forgery, but some of my in person examples look worse than this one, so I'm not certain. The latter of the two I feel more comfortable about. It looks genuine to me.

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