Hey, we have a bunch of interesting messages about Charlton Heston, starting with this one from Mike Frank…
In 1978 I was a messenger. One day I was given a package of checks to take to Charlton Heston for his signature and I was to return them after that was done.
After being let through by a guard I went up to the house's front door where he greeted me. He shook my hand and led me to a large office and put me in a seat in front of his desk, across from him.
On his desk were many small souvenirs of trips he had taken. He told me I could examine them and proceeded tell me stories about each of them, while he signed the checks. There was one particularly nice small carved piece of African origin. While I was looking at it, it broke. He told me not to worry, that the piece had been broken for some time. This was obviously a lie, but it was a truly gentlemanly thing to say.
Sure sounds that way. Here's a note from Ray Arthur…
I was in a small group who had lunch with Heston about ten years ago. It was a very relaxed affair and I was pleasantly surprised to find Mr. Heston eager to not delve into any political or controversial subjects, just two hours of great stories.
One tale that stuck with me, I understand he often told but it was new to me, related to when he was filming Ben Hur. Heston was having trouble mastering chariot racing and they had suspended filming for several days for additional training. He finally went to the stunt coordinater, famed silent film star and stuntman extraordinaire Yakima Canutt and asked for more time, "Yak," he said, "I just don't feel comfortable at this point that I can win the race."
Canutt smiled and said, "Jesus Chuck, you're Ben Hur! Don't worry. You'll win the race. Just don't fall off the chariot!"
Politics and scenery chewing aside, my two hours with Charlton Heston were warm and funny.
My old pal Mike Valerio sent the following…
I just read your thoughts on Charlton Heston. You called it. The man was classy.
I worked with Mr. Heston back in 1985. When he walked onto our soundstage, I introduced myself as the director. He shook my hand, repeated my name and introduced himself ("I'm Charlton Heston. Please call me Chuck"), saying that it was nice to meet me and that he looked forward to doing some good work together.
Mr. Heston then proceeded to move around the entire set. He walked over to each and every crew person there (ADs, grips, electrical, hair and make-up people, etc) and introduced himself to them, repeating their names and saying that it was nice to meet them.
When Mr. Heston was done getting to know all of his collaborators-for-the-day, he turned to me and said: "Shall we all get to work?"
And so, we did. And when it over, Mr. Heston stood up, walked over to me, shook my hand and said that he enjoyed working with me. He then proceeded to make his rounds of the set, shaking hand with each and every crew member, thanking them for their work and wishing them well.
Once Mr. Heston exited the stage door with one final wave, all of us assembled on the soundstage stared at each other in stunned silence. It was obvious that none of us had ever before seen an actor — let alone an actor of Heston's stature — treat a roomful of strangers like valued friends.
And — in the two plus decades since — I'm still waiting to see it happen again.
Like you said: Charlton Heston. Classy.
Not to take anything away from Mr. Heston but that isn't that unusual. Unusual maybe…but not that unusual. There are major stars who feel they don't have to prove it every minute and be nasty to people just because they can get away with it. The manners you noted are probably not unrelated to the fact that Charlton Heston had a very long career and kept working long after men who were once his peers were becoming Trivial Pursuit answers. I also think it may have to do with the fact that, at least until his last few years, he never seemed to take himself too seriously. I seem to recall Phil Hartman — who worked with him on Saturday Night Live and did a darned good Charlton Heston impression — saying that Heston had very little sense of humor but he knew it and didn't try to pretend otherwise.
Lastly, here's one from James H. Burns. It's long but I thought it was worth sharing…
There really were two Charlton Hestons, weren't there?
The dashing magnetic, film presence one, capable of intstant credibility in a plethora of unlikely roles —
The civil-rights activist (albeit one who enjoyed playing tennis with Spiro Agnew) —
The terrific talk-show guest who was a marvelous raconteur —
The stage actor decent enough to have Laurence Olivier want to direct him —
And, then, that strangely toupeed, badly dressed fellow, who seemed to replace him, some time in the late '70s. As the years went on, he seemed to say stranger and more disturbing things.
Never have I seen an actor more torpedo his own career by dressing badly than Heston. It seems odd to say, but starting at some time in the '70s, Heston would go on The Tonight Show and Merv, with an ill-fitting rug, and clothes that looked like they had been purchased in the irregular bin at Robert Hall's…
If you're a leading man in Hollywood, you have to play the part, even when — or especially when — doing the talks shows of the time.
I could remember as a kid, thinking, Didn't Heston have anyone around him aware enough to tip him off that he was looking silly?
He seemed to have absolutely no capacity to make the gracious shift to older leading man. And what's especially shocking, from today's perspective, is that at the time, Heston would only have been in his very early fifties.
(It was made even odder, in that Heston had been adventurous with his celebrity. Most Hollywood actors, at the time, would not necessarily have made as many stage appearances as he did, or devote so much time to the Screen Actors Guild, and the early years of the American Film Institute. He also deserves credit for risking time and money on his all-star production of Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. The latter is a dud, but the first is a highly accesible, non-condescending, Shakespeares on film. Heston was mocked for it, by some, but his Marc Antony is, if a little old, certainly suitable. Damaging was Jason Robards as Brutus, who appears to either be hungover, or asleep, through most of the movie.)
Heston's "look" improved with the makeover he got for TV's short-lived Dynasty spinoff, The Colbys. But it didn't seem too long thereafter that the strange political rhetoric began.
(Another quick side-note: Heston got The Colbys after Burt Lancaster turned it down, which wasn't the first time this happened. Lancaster rejected Ben Hur as "Christian propaganda," and had also been slated to star in The Agony and the Ecstasy.)
Can there be a certain kind of political senility, or even madness, that appears with middle age?
Heston had marched with Martin Luther King, and I'm certain had employed many homosexuals through his years as a producer, and as a star with enough power to have absolute approval over his films' hiring choices. The Heston of so many years ago didn't seem to gibe with too many of those strange statements of the last bunch of years…
Why was so much of Heston's later political rhetoric disturbing? Because unlike many of his brethren on both sides of the ideological fence, who would try to discuss their views on an issue, Heston would tend to demagogue.
And then there was the fact that the NRA gig was a paid one. It was sad to me that Heston either needed the money or so much strove to have some kind of piece of someone's limelight.
Especially in light of the fact that decades earlier, Heston had turned down offers from both the Democrats and the Republicans in Caifornia, to run for the Senate. He said, in his first book of diaries/memoirs, that he didn't think it was his place…
(Intriguingly, some years later, James Garner made the same decision.)
Charlton Heston was my first favorite actor. Planet of the Apes was one of the very first "adult movies" — as opposed to kiddy matinees — that I ever saw, and I was exactly the right age for it. Combine that with the steady stream of Heston movies that ran on the abundance on New York television, in the late '60s and early '70s, and it's easy to see how a kid could become impressed with what had been an awesomely wide canvas of work.
(Often overlooked is how good Heston was, in the '50s, in his more generic adventures films. There are even those who believe — not me, mind you — that much of the Indiana Jones personna was derived from Heston's appearance in Secret of the Incas.)
As a kid, I'd look forward to each new Heston movie, or television rebroadcast of a movie I hadn't seen… But then it all sort of dissipated, didn't it?
In the last two decades of Heston's life, there'd be some wonderful voice-over work, and the occasional glimmer of a good performance. But he too often seemed to be struggling with trying to portray Charlton Heston, rather than the character at hand.
On the bookshelf, in my office, I still have the autographed photo Heston, or his secretary, sent me when I was a boy. It was one of the very few autographs that, even as a kid, I ever asked for.
Heston's mistakes should not be forgotten. But the passage of time also allows us to assess someone's work in its totality. In recent years, I've put the Heston of unpleasant politics in one box, and the actor who thrilled me in so much of my youth — and some of whose performances I find can still be throughly engaging — well, some place more pleasant.
Maybe a rocketship in my imagination.
Or a chariot.
I find it interesting that even in 1969, the small glossy photo Heston used to answer fan mail was a studio "glamour" pose, from the '50s. I'm sure it was just because at some point hundreds of thousands of them had been printed up, and Heston's office was just using the overage. But it does suggest, if even in an artificially subliminal way, that Heston already knew that his best work was behind him.
It didn't have to be that way.
I agree and disagree with you, Jim. Mr. Heston's politics were not mine but I see no reason to believe they were anything but earnest on his part. People do change as they get older. I think the reason he so irked some was not that he "demagogued" but that he was the kind of speaker who sounds like he's demagoguing if he's ordering a tuna melt. Even if you didn't have in mind the image of him as Moses, he had a way of sounding like everything he uttered was chiselled onto stone tablets. It's what made him compelling as an actor, at least in certain roles…and made him seem uncommonly arrogant if he voiced a worldview you found questionable.
It is not uncommon for a person as he or she ages to become more and more the self-caricature…and when it's someone as flamboyant and mannered as Charlton Heston (or most notable actors), the caricature can be quite extreme. Over the years, I've heard people in Hollywood talk wistfully of how there should be a service to which celebs can subscribe — a kind of "monitoring" department that dispassionately observes the star's public behavior. If certain lines are crossed and it becomes necessary, the service taps them lovingly on the shoulder and tells them it's time to get out of the spotlight, lest they despoil the image they wish to leave behind. I don't think Heston needed that as desperately as Groucho or some others we could all name…but maybe he needed, as you say, someone to tell him the hairpiece wasn't on straight.
On the other hand, he was Charlton Heston. People loved him and wanted to honor him and meet him and just treasure him. So what if he said things that made some of them uncomfy? He had every right to speak his mind and promote his politics and his interpretation of the Second Amendment without it being dismissed as senility. Certainly, there are a lot of men in their twenties who say the same things. For all we know, maybe there was one Charlton Heston. Maybe the one you liked was the real one and as he grew older, he dropped the pretense…I don't know. Sometimes, we have to cut those we admire some slack and not expect them to always be what we want them to be. If we don't, they're bound to disappoint us as your "first favorite actor" seems to have disappointed you.
You seem to have been a greater admirer of him than I was. I did respect a lot of what I heard him say over the years about acting and he seemed to be serious about it in a way I like — actor, first; movie star, second. Perhaps the political stuff didn't bother me as much because he was never my favorite actor or anything close to it.
