An Old Warrior, Back in the Arena

Interviewing Charlton Heston is like talking to Mt. Rushmore. Maybe he’s absorbed some of the gravitas of the historical titans he’s played--Moses, Michelangelo, John the Baptist, Andrew Jackson. But whatever the reason, he comes across as very authoritative.

Winner of the 1959 best actor Academy Award for his performance in “Ben-Hur,” Heston was interviewed in the Beverly Hills home he shares with Lydia Clarke Heston, his wife of 51 years , to discuss “In the Arena,” his recently published autobiography. Peppered with anecdotes about Hollywood legends he’s known in his more than 50 years in the business, Heston’s book also functions as a social history of 20th-Century America. As readers of various letters-to-the-editor columns can attest, Heston has been politically active throughout his life and has never shied from expressing unpopular views.

Last seen in “True Lies,” he recently completed filming in Canada on “Alaska,” a Castle Rock film directed by his son, Fraser Heston. The elder Heston, in fact, returned from the set the night before this interview, and was preparing to hit the road for a 29-city book tour. At 71, he has the energy of a man half his age.

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Question: In your book you say that the divorce of your parents when you were 10 was the most traumatic event of your life. Why was that so difficult for you?

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Answer: Things are different now, but at the time I didn’t know anybody whose parents were divorced. That fact, combined with the isolation of my boyhood in Michigan, may have played a role in creating the drive that’s propelled me through life. When I was 14 and we moved to the suburbs of Chicago, I was totally unequipped to go to a high-profile school in an affluent area because I was terribly shy and couldn’t fit in--and theater gave me a way to do that.

Q: As a writer you tend to be extremely kind to the people you’ve worked with. Did you leave out the negative anecdotes one assumes you’ve collected over the years?

A: No, I didn’t--many of them are in the book. For instance, I was pretty hard on Ava Gardner, who I worked with in 1963 on “55 Days at Peking,” but you don’t need to resort to attack language to suggest that someone was less than professional.

Q: You do make it clear that Sam Peckinpah was an irascible character. What exactly was his problem?

A: Sam was his own worst enemy and was like Orson Welles in that he seemed to have a suicidal death wish. I’ll never understand it with Orson because he was a brilliant man, yet he seemed compulsively driven to alienate the money people--even a 10-year-old understands that you’ve got to be nice to the people who give you money. Orson was marvelous preparing a script and was the most exciting director I’ve ever worked with on the set, but once he turned in his first cut he got bored--maybe because he was so smart he just got tired of waiting for everyone to catch up with him.

Q: What’s the worst film you’ve been in?

A: A picture I made in 1972, “Call of the Wild.” It was based on a highly cinematic Jack London novel and it’s shameful that a good film didn’t come out of it. The problem began with the deal; it was a joint British/Norwegian/ German/French/Italian/Spanish co-production, which meant there had to be a technician and actor from each of those nations on the film. Most of the foreign actors couldn’t speak English so they delivered their lines phonetically. Paramount refused to give the film a theatrical release, which made me happy.

Q: Do movies create false expectations of life?

A: Probably. Movies also shape the culture, so they have a big responsibility. Because we try to uphold the First Amendment it’s a tough call how far movies should be allowed to go, and ultimately, I think that call must be made by filmmakers themselves. Speaking for myself, however, brain matter splattered on the roof of a car is more than I need to see.

Q: You’ve said that when you play historical figures you do extensive research and attempt to make your characterization as true to life as possible. Why did you choose to play Michelangelo as heterosexual?

A: There’s no record of his being gay, but if there had been I wouldn’t have played him as straight because to do so would be wrong. Films like Oliver Stone’s “JFK” distress me for this reason. Stone is a good filmmaker and “JFK” is a seductive film, but the information in it is skewed, and that troubles me.

Q: You’ve made the observation that “we’re living in a time when great men have become an endangered species.” What’s brought about this state of affairs?

A: The egalitarian world view now considered politically correct makes us uneasy with the idea that one individual is better than the rest of us. But having played several great men, I can tell you that they are better than we are and are more valuable to the race because they can do things most people can’t do. One of the profound differences between man and the other mammals is the wide capacity within the species.

Q: The evolution of your politics as outlined in your book confused me. You went from marching on Washington with Martin Luther King to an admiration for Barry Goldwater. What happened?

A: My politics haven’t changed--it was the Democratic Party that changed. It moved so sharply to the left after Kennedy that it was essentially attempting to build a welfare state. If you subsidize someone, he will accept that subsidy, and guaranteed income and security unfortunately mean that most people won’t do anything.

Q: Your book suggests that you’ve done intelligence work for the U.S. government; have you?

A: I have no comment on that. However, I will say that intelligence agencies are essential to the security of the nation, and that the Clinton Administration revoked my Q clearance. [Originally issued to Heston by the Reagan Administration in 1983, a Q clearance is the nation’s highest-level nuclear weapons security clearance.]

Q: You recently spoke out against affirmative action and made the comment, “Civil rights is supposed to be a level playing field, not reverse discrimination.” Maybe I missed something, but when has the playing field been level for blacks and other minorities?

A: I feel I’ve earned my bones on civil rights. I marched with Dr. King and was in the gallery when Hubert Humphrey stood on the floor of the Senate in 1965, held the Civil Rights Bill over his head and said, “If you find one reference to preferential hiring in this bill, I’ll eat it.” If you give anyone preference over another, you’re depriving the other guy. When the Irish and the Italians first arrived in America, they encountered signs that said “You need not apply.” The same is true of the Jews--they’ve endured centuries of discrimination much harsher than anything meted out to blacks. But they came in, learned the language and worked hard to educate their children. I’ve never understood why it’s different now.

Q: Your book includes several scornful references to “the thought police” and “political correctness.” Why do those things irritate you?

A: That we’ve reached a point where no one can bear anything even faintly derogatory only serves to narrow the range of what humans are allowed to be.

Q: What aspect of your personality has created the most problems for you in life?

A: My profession has made me more withdrawn than I might otherwise have been. I’m fairly content with who I am, and I try to be decent and have proper concern for other people, but I do tend to be a little bit off by myself.

Q: What’s the most widely held misconception about the life of a successful movie star?

A: That it’s wild fun. Being comfortable with a public identity is a learned skill and the learning of it has destroyed more than a few.

* Heston will appear at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda on Sept. 26 to discuss and autograph his book. Information: (714) 993-5075.