162 thoughts on “Charlton Heston Movies”

1. Hi Bruce

   I see that you might well include chuck in your Top 25 actors 1950 to 2010 if you ever revise that list.

   Perhaps there’s hope yet therefore for my own protege Willis Moore whom I have long been trying to convince you deserves to be regarded as one of thr greatest stars of the modern era anwho along with Annie is my fave action star though both are getting a bit long in the tooth for action heroes. Take it from one who knows when you’re past 60 you CANT fell 6 massive men with one kick!

   I suppose there was a lesson in all this for me in that if I couldn’t win the Mr Moore argument with you I wasn’t going to succeed in the superman returns one though I still think I deserved to win the Split one.

   However if push came to shove I would settle for Chuck as he is in my top 15 all time faves and indeed may well have been my very first idol from my boyhood days when as said before we nicknamed him Tweedie as he looked like a friends gramps.

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2. My favorite Charlton Heston movies are, “The Ten Commandments,” Ben Hur,” The Buccaneer,” (Charlton floored me with his portrayal of “Andrew Jackson!”) “The Agony And The Ecstasy,” “Planet Of The Apes,” and his best movie, “El Cid!” A fine, actor, a kind and gracious man, and will always be a legend! Nine years since his death, and I still miss him!

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   1. Hey Mary….thanks for the great breakdown on Heston and his movies….looks like you are a serious fan of his work….some of the regular readers here feel the same way about Mr. Heston and his acting skills. Nine years since he passed? Shocking how fast time goes….thanks for stopping by.

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3. CHARLTON HESTON AN APPRECIATION PHIL To avoid too much convolution of any one post I have taken a second one to respond to your comments about Heston. Within the context of how you see matters I cannot quarrel with your opinions and I agree that Chuck didn’t completely come into his own as a top box office star until after Ben Hur in 1959. However there are of course different ways of looking at most things and the following is my own way as albeit a biased Heston fan.

   (1) IMPACT OF PARTICULAR MOVIES RATHER THAN THE TOTAL NUMBER OF HITS
   “He’s a super, super star and you don’t get many of those” explained Alexander Salkind when asked why he was paying Marlon Brando a small fortune for a virtual cameo in Superman 1978. Yet the 70s were nearly over, Superman had not yet been released, Apocalypse Now hadn’t happened either, Brando had been a gonner in the 1960s and he had made only 3 movies in the 70s prior to Superman and the two that had been hits were way back in 1972 and 1973, Godpop and Tango. Yet such was the impact of those two especially the first that Brando was able to write his own ticket for the rest of the decade and although his name may not tick many formal boxes in any Cogerson survey of that decade Marlon WAS a massive part of 70s cinema culture.

   It is my opinion that The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur were great landmark movies which helped define the 1950s and of course Chuck dominated those two films and his overall box office record in that decade is far better than Marlon’s and as well as that unlike Brando’s 72/73 hits Chuck’s 6 Cogerson one hundred million dollar barrier crashers were spread across almost the entire decade from Greatest Show on Earth in 1952 until Ben Hur in 1959

   (2) PROFITABILITY The average adjusted domestic box office gross for Chuck’s 14 other 1950s films was around $75 million dollars. That figure whilst not a blockbuster one would have often represented a modest hit in the 1950s when budgets were equally modest and many of the films concerned in Chuck’s 50s output, although some would have flopped were for the most part B movies and/or low prestige ones. Ruby Gentry which Bruce credits with an adjusted domestic gross alone of almost that $75 million average was made for just $0.525 million in 1952 which is about $5 million in 2017 money. According to Piper Laurie her 4 films with Tony Curtis for which Bruce quotes and average adjusted gross of just approx. $60 million made “piles of money for Universal”. As one film economist put it “They wouldn’t have kept churning out those low budget, low grossing [early Heston] movies if they weren’t making a profit on them.”

   (3) DEMOGRAPHICS No performer of any generation will be everybody’s cup of tea – not even Myrna Loy – but probably only someone of my generation living in the Belfast of the 1950s could ever know the impact that Chuck had on us young boys at that time. To us small chaps he was a Giant of a movie star who was more important than the likes of Bette Davis and Katie Hepburn and almost any male star with the possible exception of John Wayne and Chuck’s run of early action B-ish films like Naked Jungle, Arrowhead, The Savage, Pony Express, The Far Horizons, Secret of the Incas, 3 Violent People and even The Private War of Major Benson were talking points for us even weeks after we saw them.

   I can fondly and nostalgically remember one summer night in 1953 standing at the end of a long queue waiting to get into Chuck’s Arrowhead [“Ed Bannon – The story of a forgotten man” was the poster’s tagline] when a cyclist sped past taunting us with laughter, “You’ll never get in – you’re too far back!” Many moviegoers today may have forgotten or do not know how important the B movie cowboys like Hopalong Cassidy , Rogers and Autry were to the very early cinema culture of their day and even in his downmarket westerns Chuck was certainly more than a B movie cowboy. To us little chaps back then he was the bees knees – Lensman only THINKS he’s a big Heston fan – and even though I largely lost interest in Chuck’s movies after Earthquake in 1974 his lasting impact on me has been such that he is still today one of my top 20 all-time favourite movie stars. “We shall rarely see his like again.”

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   1. Hi Bob,
      That’s a very eloquent and interesting ode to Charlton Heston. It’s particularly interesting to see how different actors and actresses are appreciated differently in various parts of the world, so thanks for sharing your memories of Heston’s earlier films in Belfast. I’m not very familiar with his work prior to Ten Commandments and had no idea that these films could have been so popular in certain quarters. I suppose there may be some sociological or cultural reasons for that, but whatever the case, it does show that Heston’s unique personality in some way transcended these films. Don’t get me wrong, while he is not top top in my personal list, I think he’s great. He’s one of the first movie actors I got to know as the Ten Commandments, and to a lesser extent Ben-Hur, seemed to be mandatory annual viewing when growing up, like in many families I guess. Bruce has also made the point about how these 2 films alone make Heston one of the great stars of the 50s, even though his peak popularity was reached more in the early 60s (not quite in these words, but that was my understanding). I think there’s something to that and I think my perception has evolved a little bit after the discussions with John and Bruce.

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      1. HI PHIL

         1 Thanks for the additional comments. Even where I do not agree with your observations I always find them informative and well argued.

         2 I have said that I lost interest in Chuck’s films after Earthquake because I found most of his films after 1974 uninteresting and there is no doubt he came into his own in those earlier big biblical/historical epics and I remember Anthony Man who directed Chuck in El Cid saying [as Variety had observed about Brando] that Chuck had too powerful a screen presence to be put in most “normal” films and it was hard to find female co-stars who could ideally match the Heston charisma. Mann argued that Sophia Loren because she was a exceptionally tall woman was one of the few.

         3 Nevertheless it would seem that I’m not the only one who was taken with all those smaller Heston movies of the early 1950s because I see from a link that Bruce has just given me that Chuck actually first entered Quigley’s Top 25 in 1953 and whilst his position was just a lowly 23rd it placed him above Bogie and Charlton was clearly starting to be noticed even before 10C/Ben Hur and it could be argued that he was “on his way” before super stardom in those epics. Also I’ve told you about having to queue for his early fifties and even if those queues were all comprised of ancestors of Steve Lensman such audiences still count. “Talent will out.”

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         1. Hi Bob, thanks for the feedback. Interesting points as always (and I also appreciated your additional post on Cooper in the 1950s page which contained a lot of good ideas and information).

            Yes, I had noticed Heston made 23rd place in the Quigley poll in 1953, but ascribed this more to the success of The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952 than to his other films. Still, I would really like to see some of these earlier films, such as Ruby Gentry, The President’s Lady, The Naked Jungle and The Private War of Major Benson. I had caught part to the Secret of the Incas on TV years ago.

            In addition to the two iconic roles previously mentioned, I found Heston was very good or excellent in El Cid (where he apparently gave Sophia Loren a bit of a hard time), The War Lord, Khartoum, Will Penny and Planet of the Apes. It seemed perfect timing for him that science fiction was becoming more popular as biblical/historical epics were declining as he was able to maintain his popularity by fast forwarding a few thousand years. As I think he once said “I don’t seem to have a 20th century face” 🙂 And yes, it did take an Earthquake to finally start bringing him down, but he still had a longer ride as star than most of his contemporaries.

            However, to return to what started this conversation on the 50s page, when all is said and done, I still think Heston was more a big star of the 60s than of the 50s. But this does not take away the facts that his 50s films had the biggest overall box office totals, or that he was a very prolific and exciting star from the beginning of the decade.

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4. HI STEVE
   1 Ben Hur is about to start and a friend suggested to me that as well as watching it I should record it for my grandson, Jamie aged 11. I wondered if it was too long and the friend replied “I know Heston is an old ham but Jamie would probably enjoy the chariot race scenes.”

   2 Don’t reach for your gun! It was a common mistake many people made in the 1950s to put down Chuck as just another rugged ‘he man’ but fine performances like those in Touch of Evil and Khartoum should have shown them they were mistaken. Indeed I clearly recall that one observant film critic wrote in the 1960s that he had never actually seen Tweedie give a bad performance.

   3 In her declining years Mary Pickford was bedridden and actor Charles Buddy Rogers her 3rd husband for 40 years until her death said that often at night she could be heard crying out in her sleep “ Doug! Doug!” Be in touch with you again over the weekend.

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   1. Bob, when I was writing an article on Ben-Hur for Hubpages a few years ago I came across this Gore Vidal quote – “When I arrived for the filming of Ben Hur, all the sets had been built, including Charlton Heston.”
      🙂

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      1. That is a good Vidal quote on Heston.

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      2. STEVE
         I very much liked and admired Gore Vidal but my impression was that (1) He was one of those intellectuals for whom everything must be of the kind of high level art that was for example Charles Dickens (2) He liked to shock with controversial statements (3) he was among those who liked to be different and not go with the flow so he probably despised or pretended to despise the Hollywood star system and he therefore dismissed what was Chuck’s key role in it all – to provide the powerful presence of a STAR. When he was on the screen it was hard to take your eyes off Chuck even when he was in scenes with beauties like Jennifer Jones, Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner. Within that context I would use in relation to Chuck’s contribution that old cliche “Job done!”

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   2. 🙂 good stuff Bob.

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5. HI AGAIN JOHN/STEVE 1.I think that we are perhaps at cross purposes in this matter. My main interest is in (1) Comparing the popularity of one film with another(2)Comparing each star’s statistical box office performance with that of his/her contemporaries and subsequent generations of stars (3)Seeing how valuable the movies and their stars are to the film industry AS A WHOLE and not just to its producers and money lenders important as they are.

   2 Accordingly whilst clearly things like cost/earnings ratios are important to the studios/financial backers they are of no relevance in the equations that I have just mentioned whilst Bruce’s stats are of complete relevance to those equations though I think that those stats must always be put in context and unlike Bruce I am not impressed with stars who chalk up huge grosses on the coat tails of movies that are really for example ‘Clark Gable’ flicks

   3 I should add that it is a matter of financial judgement how much risk is taken over film production investment but once the film is made the die is cast and in my view only a fool would prefer a cut of a 6 million dollar profit to that of a 25 million dollar profit.

   4 Regarding my personal enjoyment of movies I loved Fonda’s low budget 12 Angry Men [actual budget a paltry $350,000] and I also loved Chuck in the expensive 10 Commandments, El Cid and Ben Hur According to the Consumer Price Index of the Bureau of Labour Statistics collectively those 3 movies cost at today’s prices $300 million to make and attracted a staggering $1.7 billion worldwide rentals in 2017 dollars. Bravo Chuck!

   5 I think George Clooney got the balance right in relation to his own ambitions when he said he liked to be in blockbusters to get the money to make the smaller movies that he produced like Good Night and Good Luck and which might otherwise not have gotten made. You could do worse than be guided by George but in any event do not lightly dismiss the big spenders like Cecil B D who long provided marvellous entertainment AND made piles of money for the studios

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