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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 DB on June 6, 2012 at 5:02pm

Just to show we are an equal opportunity identifier - the following secretarial signed heston cut from Golden State Autographs is offered for $295.00 Yet another ensemble that offers a non authentic heston that Caleb seemingly missed;

PLANET OF THE APES

Item #461

MATTED ENSEMBLE

Signed Cards of:

KIM HUNTER

RODDY MCDOWALL

CHARLTON HESTON

(in-person)

Expertly Double-Matted

$295

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Permalink Reply by Brick Hunter on June 9, 2012 at 6:09am

Another one of the terrible "r" Heston forgeries available on eBay:

Yuck!

You'd think given the fact that only two or three authentic Heston's actually show up on eBay weekly, the genuine articles would be a bit more pricey--they're probably suffering because all the secretarials have saturated the market.

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Permalink Reply by DB on June 9, 2012 at 6:38am

brick, it's more than two or three but they are overwhelmed by the non-authentic ones for sure!

It's a never ending battle - no matter how many get removed there are many new listings. the books & slabs from PSA are getting better (although I'm seeing two distinctive styles which might require a harder look). Since none of the certs are dated it's impossible to tell if the bogus ones are recent or from yesteryear. I'd like to believe they got the message but since they are tight lippped it's hard to know.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Sibley on June 10, 2012 at 2:51pm

DB - This in-person looks okay to me and typical of the 'standing in the street' signature from Mr Heston. If you look way back through this study, some of my in-person examples are very similar to this one. The 'He' in Heston is typical and the flow through to his surname crossing the 'H' at the end of Charlton is also typical, though tighter together due to the lack of space maybe.
Ebay is a huge issue. The genuine Heston signatures amongst the secretarials and forgeries are few and far between these days. Too many sellers seem happy to ignore this study. I can accept that some won't be aware of the study and list items in ignorance - but certainly not all....!

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Permalink Reply by Mike Sibley on June 10, 2012 at 3:23pm

DB - I can see where you were coming from. The examples I posted are back on pages 46, 49 and 53. I just took a look back through the study - they sure took some finding!! With so many posts, it just shows what a great discussion this has been - and continues to be so.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on June 10, 2012 at 11:52pm

The purpose of this discussion was to identify largely accepted Charlton Heston secretarials, primarily based on Steve Zarelli's (Mr. Zipper's) carefully researched study. The integration of Rolf Ramseier's input and earlier study has made it an especially valuable and indisputable work.

It's at risk of being adulterated by Hestons being presented as either genuine, out and out forgeries, or variations of known secretarials without the painstaking, focused research and consensus-building that made this study so valuable in the first place. That's beyond the scope of this discussion and is putting the study's clarity and integrity at risk.

There are some recently uploaded Hestons, for example, being called forgeries by one person and genuine by another. You're welcome to start another Heston discussion on Live to debate these, but this is not the place to discuss them. This is about secretarials.

I'm closing this discussion tomorrow in order to preserve its integrity...and because at 80 pages it's gotten unwieldy.

Mr Zipper, since this is your baby, would you mind identifying anything you think needs to be removed over the next couple of days and sending me a list of page numbers and descriptions? I'll send the content to the member who contributed it, and they can use it elsewhere here if they want.

To everyone who contributed to this discussion: You should all be proud of yourselves. You were each a valuable part of a great project.

Thanks,

Steve Cyrkin

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on October 30, 2012 at 7:30am

I think we touched on that somewhere else in the 68 pages or so of this thread. :-) I agree that it may have been an intentional tell should a situation arise where they needed to show proxy vs real.

I've studied the signature long enough now that I can tell the difference even without seeing the double L. That is only the most obvious tell, but there are many other more subtle differences between the two. In all though, she did a masterful job of emulating his signature.

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Permalink Reply by David W on August 1, 2013 at 7:21pm

Here's as authentic as you can get....unless he was having dinner with his secretary.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHARLTON-HESTON-Vintage-Signed-Credit-Card-...

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on August 1, 2013 at 7:24pm

Cool. Thanks for sharing!

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Permalink Reply by Patrick's Autographs on January 26, 2014 at 10:00am

Here is my Leather-Bound Charlton Heston's Beijing Diary Signed First Edition.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on April 24, 2014 at 4:30pm

Could I please have authenticity opinions on this Heston? A church asked me to make sure it's genuine before they auction it. The photo looks faded and slightly fuzzy because I enlarged it and lightened the background to make the autograph as visible as possible.

Thanks