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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

2 members like this

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 CJCollector on March 8, 2011 at 11:00am

Rolf, good point. Although I do not belong in this discussion, collectors always ask me why I don't go into detail when I expose forgeries on my YouTube videos. The reason being I don't want to give the forgers any information that may help them improve on their forgeries. Although the truth being 99.99% of forgers are very bad and sloppy.

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 11:37am

Greg, NO, especially in those modern days of the Internet ANYONE can find enough examples of good and questionable autographs from any livining or dead personality to make his own study's and do his HOMEWORK before he buys anything.

Sure, this is time consuming, but in my opinion, collectors should have to know what they have in their collections and not only amassing autographs from as much as possible differnt personalities, the key in collectiong is to know what you have and that's include in my opinion also a little knownledge in authenticating.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 8, 2011 at 11:52am

Rolf,

That's fine for those who start out as hobbyists. But most people start out as fans, buying from companies that look more mainstream, therefore more trustworthy than the legitimate people.

I feel we have a duty to do all we can the make the marketplace safer, even for those who don't do any prior research. Because the more we expose the forgery industry, the more difficult it is for them to stay in business.

I also feel that we need to encourage every collector burned by fraud to go to law enforcement and file a report. There are hundreds of people who need to go to prison for their crimes.

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 8, 2011 at 11:57am

Steve, I totally agree with the last paragraph. There are literally hundreds of people who should be in prison for selling forgeries. Nothing happens to those sellers because buyers just chalk it up as a loss instead of proceeding with either legal action or inform enforcement about said crimes. It makes me sick thinking that those criminals have profited greatly from their acts of fraud.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 8, 2011 at 11:38am

Greg,

I agree with you. I'd rather have all the information get out to help the collectors before they buy.

The biggest problem isn't future forgeries. It's the forgeries out there today. And as existing forgeries are traced to their suppliers or forgers, people learn who not to buy from and hopefully the bad guys will end up being exposed.

It's up to the experts to be aware of the forgers' increasing knowledge, and to be ever more careful in the future.

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 8, 2011 at 12:09pm

The problem is, and will always be, how to get those buyers to read forums like this. The majority of people who buy any kind of autograph doesn't do one iota of research and they know absolutely nothing about autographs. Until that happens, nothing will ever change.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 8, 2011 at 12:12pm

The solution is making it extremely painful for people to sell forgeries, and for us to police even the outskirts of our own industry.

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 12:28pm

exactly Chris, that's the problem !

I am well aware that most of the buyers are fans, but I know many long time collctors who also do not listed to information which is accessable and still are in believe every 4.99$ item offered on ebay is genuine. I have warned so many buyers over the years and many ignored anything ! They WANT to believe what they get is genuine and they cannot be prooved otherwise.....

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 8, 2011 at 12:32pm

Rolf,

I actually had one buyer (who purchased over $500.00 in forged autographed baseball cards from one seller) who told me that it was all a conspiracy and that Ebay wouldn't allow sellers to sell forgeries. One week after his email to me the seller he bought the forgeries from was booted from Ebay.

Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 12:57pm

a conspirancy LOL more than fun.

But just to add ebay does a lot which the community isn't really aware about, cause ebay want it that way ! But they do a lot more than many thinks !

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 8, 2011 at 12:21pm

Back in the 90s, a woman I was dating worked for Crown Publishing. She knew I was into autographs, so one day she gave me a stack of Jimmy Stewart signed bookplates she found in a drawer. (It was when Jimmy Stewart and his Poems came out.)

I was so excited until I started looking at them and realized some of the signtures matched exactly. I found 3 confirmed patterns and I think I had one or two more I figured must have been Autopens but could not confirm because there was no other matching bookplate.

The good news is she also gave me a signed book they had in the office (not on a bookplate). The book is certainly an authentic signature.

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 11:12am

by just going through our Isitreal reference directory for contemporary autgraphs, there are some listed and on whom I think the not so well informed collector isn't aware of.

Rosanna Arquette

Jean-Paul Belmodo

Milton Berle

The Bridges Family / Lloyd, Jeff and Beau

Charles Bronson

George Burns

Nicolas Cage

Michael Caine

Cyd Charisse

Jennifer Connelly

Sean Connery

Jamie Lee Curtis

Tony Curtis

Timothy Dalton

Rodney Dangerfield

Tony Danza

Sammy Davis Jr.

Doris Day

Robert De Niro

and on and on.......

There are surely many more which hadn't already listed on our site like Tom Selleck, Cameron Diaz, Woody Allen and many more who need future research and study's.