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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 Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 8, 2011 at 12:11pm

Rolf,

Do you have studies on any of them?

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 12:42pm

we have examples on our Isitreal website from all the listed names, in a few cases studys, but in many cases we listed only examples of what we are in known is a secretarial signature.

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 12:50pm

ask him if you can have a copy, Roger has helped Markus and me sometimes and I am sure he is willingly to share his findings anytime with serious people within this crappy business, but as I said before publishing a study like this on the net can be poison !

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Permalink Reply by thomas connolly on March 8, 2011 at 11:11am

heres one that puzzled me for years, were the jackie gleasons thru the mail any good? why i ask. i seen him years ago going into toots shore restauant, and he wouldnt do it for me.

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 8, 2011 at 11:19am

This I can discuss a little. When I was preparing a Coach's Corners video I noticed they were selling two Honeymooners signed photos. As a huge Honeymooners fan for over 45 years, I printed the photographs and mailed them to Joyce Randolph in New York. She was gracious enough to actually call me and explain the signatures. Here's the cool part (for me any way). She left that message on my answer machine (a message that I will never erase) and she asked me to call her back. I, of course did. We had a nice ten minute conversation and Ms. Randolph explained that she didn't think that Jackie signed anything. We talked about the Honeymooners, the signatures, etc. She was wonderful. Sorry to make this so long but I wanted to share my story with everyone here.

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Permalink Reply by thomas connolly on March 8, 2011 at 11:31am

this is a very interesting story, thank you for sharing it., i was also told by a collector that audrey meadows said the same thing about jackie, he never signed. as much as i admired him, and always will, when i saw him, he was on the marlon brando type.

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 11:25am

Jackie Gleason had a secretary, also one who is missed on our site sadly, but I for myself am aware of them and know the difference between secretarials and genuine ones and if you have a few examples it's very easy to detect :-)

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Permalink Reply by thomas connolly on March 8, 2011 at 12:02pm

i have seen a few vintage jackie gleasons,and his secretary was pretty good at trying to copy them. i could never imagime him signing all of those honeymooner pictures that was sent to him during the latter 1970s until he died in 1987.

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Permalink Reply by Luciano Tedde on March 8, 2011 at 11:54am

Dear Steve,

Thank you so so much !!! Finally someone spoke about the secretarial signatures of Charlton Heston. I tried to do the same some years ago on website Star Tiger and everybody insulted me. I tried to explain that was impossible that Charlton Heston could sign so quickly for everybody and I had examples of typical mail signatures and IN-PERSON autographs. Everybody treated me as a liar !!!! In the same time I tried to explain that also several Farrah Fawcett autographs were signed by her secretary but nobody listened. It was strange, everybody accepted the fact that Paul Newman, Robert De Niro or Al Pacino used secretaries but no Farrah and no Charlton !!!

Just for information, two great european stars, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve send since several years secretarial autographs through the mail.

Regards from Switzerland

Luciano Tedde

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 8, 2011 at 12:20pm

L uciano my old friend :-) really nice to read you here as well, I already mentioned you in one of my earlier post about your help in the Heston case. We really should meet up soon to talk about the good old days ;-)

Rolf

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Permalink Reply by Luciano Tedde on March 8, 2011 at 12:58pm

Dear Rolf !!! Of course - I live just 15 min. from Zurich now, Fällanden near Dübendorf, so it's really easy for you to come here !!! By the way I also invited our friend Thierry from France to come here one day and see my collection. I would be so happy to see you again !!! I will check for the next week-ends and you have ABSOLUTELY to come here and see the full collection !!!!