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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 Zarelli on April 24, 2014 at 7:09pm

Agree with Bob. A certain forgery.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on November 10, 2014 at 4:35pm

Hard to believe it's been three and a half years since this Charlton Heston secretarial study was published.

As a footnote, the UACC published a version of the study in the Winter 2014 edition of the Pen & Quill.

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Permalink Reply by J.Seah on June 23, 2015 at 2:06pm

Is this Charleston Heston Authentic or Secretarial??? Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on June 23, 2015 at 2:10pm

It's not secretarial. I'm not sure it's real.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Strecker on July 5, 2015 at 1:28pm

Here are a few letters I received during mid 2000s from Carol Lanning responding to general letters I sent addressed to Charlton Heston, one was signed (I'm certain) by her as Heston and the other pic is an authentic signed book purchased from Nixon Library during time period I figured the ttms I was getting were fake. Though her signature is small and the "Heston" large, you can see some similarities in style and flow.

Attachments: No photo uploads here

001.jpg, 1.7 MB
004.jpg, 1.6 MB
005.jpg, 1.7 MB

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on July 6, 2015 at 4:21pm

Good comparisons, Jason.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on July 6, 2015 at 4:16pm

Every once in a while I must slow down and observe the car wreck that is Charlton Heston autographs on eBay. Four years after the Charlton Heston secretarial study, they still abound unabated. Of the first 25 listings, at least 13 are not authentic. That is a 52% fake rate.

Behold...

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Permalink Reply by Scott Paul on July 7, 2015 at 7:17am

It is the same with the Jackie Gleason and Andy Griffith secretarial autographs they just never seem to go away. I saw Griffith, Gleason and Heston secretarial autographs when I was at a convention in June. The one seller has been there many years was very grateful for me pointing them out. He immediately removed them from his notebooks. Another guy who was selling autographs only as a sideline was not so thrilled. I told them about your study and the ones on here of Griffith and Gleason also. So there are a lot of older dealers that still honestly believe the secretarial autographs are real. I think that probably a lot of the ones on eBay are like those two honest but ignorant of the new information. So it is good from time to time to make people away of your very fine study.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on July 7, 2015 at 7:46am

I agree that most sellers of Heston secretaries probably do believe them to be authentic. But the end result is the same -- someone pays for something not authentic.

I suspect there are tens of thousands of these Heston secretariats in circulation. They will outlive us all.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Strecker on July 7, 2015 at 7:57am

Even if all the single signed Heston, or even the POTA Harrison or Hunter dual signed photos were removed, we'd still have those multi signed celebrity photos where Heston isn't in the ebay title. Generally those are a picture of an award signed by multiple celebrities probably all received ttm due to some secretarial sigs found on the photo.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Strecker on July 6, 2015 at 9:30pm

I was doing some googling of Heston autographs the other day and found a guy selling his 1970s autobiography with real Heston signature along with a secretarial signed Heston letter originally stating for the fan to send the book for signing.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Strecker on July 7, 2015 at 7:43am

Scott, it's amazing to think of all the secretarials we never knew about. When I first started collecting, in 2000, the autograph collecting books really only cited a few like Hope, Newman or Pacino as known living celebrity secs while a lot of deceased celebrities were the known secs. Now, when stars have passed in the 2000s, it seems the news comes out. The wonders of the internet, thankfully, have brought fakes to our attention.

One I think doesn't get attention as a possible sec is Peter Falk. In my early days I got a few ttms with signatures that don't match any IP I've ever seen.

But back to Heston, back in the mid 2000s, I saw a site photo of a local politicians (IIRC) who met Charlton Heston with her husband. The lady got a photo with Heston and sent it through the mail and received the secretarial signature. Amazing to think, only the books were ever real. Not letters (aside from a rare few), or even photos taken with the man, were ever real.