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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 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.

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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....

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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.

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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?

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

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

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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

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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.

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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.

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

In my opinion, that one looks good.

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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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Permalink Reply by DB on October 27, 2011 at 4:12pm

Yo Mike, where ya been hiding? It looks like we may have to start getting better at the "es" and the other telltale signs... The sad part is once again we have a TPA embracing a "forgery" and that is what gets us into the problems we experieince.

The following one; Signature was obtained in person back in the early 1990's. We do not sell fakes or prints. These autographs are 100% genuine - silverscreensignatures

and if they got this "in-person" I am a "monkey's uncle" but then again perhaps I should request they define "in-person" and from whom!

complicated by the bogus ones already in play by places like PSA/DNA. The majority of them that I have seen are not authentic as represented by this one;

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Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on October 27, 2011 at 10:21pm

silverscreensignatures sells a lot of bad junk. They sprinkle in a few authentic items very rarely. Most of the stuff gets rubber stamped by GAI. I'd say they're a purveyor of forgeries even more than secretarials.