My apologies to Charlton Heston

[Matilda]

for never taking him seriously as an actor.

In fact, I’ve seldom bothered to watch any of his work, except for things like "Ben Hur" and "The Ten Commandments", which I saw when I was a child.

I've just been reading a book about Laurence Olivier, which talks about the respect the two actors had for each other. In 1960, Oliver was asked to direct a play in New York,
"The Tumbler", by Benn W. Levy. It was a play in verse, and was going to be very difficult to pull off, but Olivier chose Charlton Heston for the lead role of Kell. His reasons?

"I chose Chuck Heston because he was one of the few American actors who was constantly going back to the stage in between films. He wasn't interested in being a movie star. He only wanted to be the best actor he could be, and I knew that he was an actor who took his work seriously, and was seriously good."

And Heston? When asked years later by the author why he chose to do such a diffficult and obviously non-commercial play, rather than the film he'd been offered with Marilyn Monroe, he replied, "I was desperate to work with Olivier".

In the event, the play was taken off after only four performances, but it was no discredit to Heston or to Olivier as director. Olivier said of Heston's performance "He didn't care about whether he look good, just so long as he gave you what you wanted. He has exceptional depth for an actor who had made his name in films, and he was a good Shakespearean actor too. Better than Orson Welles, in my opinion".

In my eyes Olivier is next to God, so if he said that, it must be true. I apologise unreservedly to the spirit of Mr Heston, wherever he is now, for judging him without ever really watching his work.

[CBHagman]

1. It's been a few years since I saw...

...the Heston version of A Man for All Seasons. Now I must say up front that I'd always thought Paul Scofield owned the part (and I have a sweet childhood memory of my mother having the Academy Awards show on when Paul Scofield won Best Actor), but Heston apparently made AMFAS out of love for the material and also adhered more faithfully to the play.

I remember too that critics loved Heston's turn as the Chief Player in Branagh's full-length Hamlet.

Politically, Heston was complicated -- progressive on civil rights, but well known for his term as president of the National Rifle Association, an organization whose hard-line leadership I despise (I understand the rank and file are a little more nuanced). That said, Heston granted Michael Moore an interview and even appeared in the documentary Bowling for Columbine, which dealt with gun violence and the gun lobby in the U.S. Heston by then had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and was lucid but physically not the man he had been. I respected him for appearing in the film, when he might have cited privacy or health considerations for declining. I would guess there was something within his heart or mind that told him he needed to speak to an audience while he still could.

[Matilda]

2. It was his presidency of the NRA that really set me against him,

but apart from that, I've never known much about him. I certainly never realised that he devoted so much time to the stage, which for me is the true measure of someone's craft; no retakes; no clever edits.