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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 March 14, 2011 at 11:52am

Mike - whe n you see one with the AMBLOG on it as a "cut" signature, run lol.

AW was one of the first 3 to not only step up to the plate but take down (i posted the list around here somewhere) the "dbl L" brand Hestons. They inadvertantly left 'em up on ebay but they are going back to drop them as well as the UACC auction. If it ended they will void the sale.

Bard and Jones try very hard and what they may have questioned initially they are now finding it more than plausable. The problem perhaps was the "accepted" universal exemplar that was deemed to be real.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 14, 2011 at 12:01pm

I've always thought 95% TTM were probably fake.

Now I'm starting to worry about the other 5% too!

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 14, 2011 at 12:01pm

Ditto, Mr. Zipper.

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 14, 2011 at 12:07pm

Brigitte Bardot still sign authentic by mail, so no worries :-) haha

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 14, 2011 at 12:58pm

Your odds are a lot better with celebs that aren't in the limelight.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Shinn on March 14, 2011 at 1:41pm

PSA/DNA did not use this exemplar yesterday at the Chicago Autograph Show

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 14, 2011 at 2:07pm

I have a question I'd like everyone reading this to answer:

Forum discussions are set up so replies to comments can be nested under the comment you're replying to. (We can't nest discussions in blogs.) Do you like it like that, or would you prefer that comments simply be listed in chronological order, even if someone is replying to a comment made days or weeks before?

Having replies nested makes the discussion much easier to follow for those reading it in the future, because a reply to a comment stays with what it's replying to. But it can make things a little harder to keep up with for those of us actively participating.

Thoughts please?

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 14, 2011 at 2:09pm

Steve, keep it as it is.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Shinn on March 14, 2011 at 2:10pm

Steve...

I like it the way it is...

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 14, 2011 at 2:19pm

While the discussion at times can be tough to follow with all the emails notifications sent out it is still better than the "blog" listing where you wonder what the thought was all about or what question are we on.

The problem of the discussion sometimes is the nesting as you can't always "attach" the response to the original statement especially when it goes multiple pages.

If the only choice is blog -vs- discussion then I'd go with leaving it as it is.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 14, 2011 at 3:44pm

I'm used to the other Bulletin Board format where comments are listed in chronological order. If you are replying to an older comment, you simply quote it for clarity.

I'll admit following this thread has been difficult with all the jumping around, and to be sure you haven't missed anything, you are forced to go back and reread everything. As a passive reader in the past, I always found it a bit hard to follow threads here.