Charlton Heston Raced To Oscar Glory With Wild 'Ben

Dec 26, 2023

Heston's Academy Award triumph for 1959's 'Ben-Hur' came three years after his 'Ten Commandments' performance. (ITV/REX/Newscom)

Charlton Heston had already starred in 1952's Oscar-winning “The Greatest Show on Earth” and was Moses in 1956's “The Ten Commandments.”

But he wasn’t the first choice for the lead in 1959’s “Ben-Hur,” playing a Roman slave who earns his freedom and becomes a champion charioteer. Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson and Leslie Nielsen all turned down director William Wyler.

Once Heston got the part, he spent four weeks learning to drive a chariot for the race that remains one of the most spectacular scenes in movie history. It took five weeks to shoot on an 18-acre set, the largest ever built, with 15,000 extras.

“Ben-Hur” was another Heston box office smash, made for $15 million and raking in $90 million worldwide (equal to $731 million now), saving MGM from bankruptcy.

It won 11 Academy Awards, including Oscars for best picture and, for Heston, best actor -- a record that only “Titanic” in 1997 and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” in 2003 would equal.

Heston (1923-2008) was born John Charles Carter in a suburb of Chicago. The family soon moved to rural St. Helen, Mich., so his father could work at a sawmill.

The boy was shocked when his parents divorced when he was 9, and he lost touch with his father. A loner, he spent much of his time hunting and fishing.

His mother married Chester Heston, who would provide his stepson’s surname for the stage and screen. (Charlton was his mother’s maiden name). They moved to Winnetka, Ill., where the youngster saw his first professionally produced play, Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”

“He was hooked,” wrote Michael Munn in “Charlton Heston: A Biography.” “He joined the high school drama class. From that moment on, he never wanted to do anything else in life but be an actor. He certainly had a gift for it, which he developed through sheer enthusiasm and determination.”

In 1941, his senior year, Heston was recruited for a Northwestern University play, Henrik Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” to replace the lead when he dropped out. It was to be staged and filmed. The resulting amateur silent movie with subtitles was his first time on the screen, and he used the name Charlton Heston. He entered NU in the fall.

“The film was an incomparable learning experience for me,” he wrote in “In the Arena: An Autobiography.” “Somehow I left behind the nerd I’d been in high school. Now I was at NU, on a drama scholarship I’d earned, with an actual movie under my belt. … I managed to find the confidence that has never left me since.”

In one of the acting courses, he met actress Lydia Clarke. But World War II interrupted his education, and in 1943 he began serving two years in the Army Air Corps. After training at bases around the country in radio and aerial gunnery on a B-25, he married Lydia in March 1944 (they would have a son and daughter). He flew to the Aleutian Islands off Alaska, but the Japanese had been driven out a few months earlier, never to return.

Later, once he became famous, he was given top secret clearance to narrate classified instruction films for the military.

Charlton and Lydia moved in 1948 to New York City, where he appeared in a Broadway revival of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” and had roles in dramas on CBS (CBS) TV’s “Studio One.”

A Hollywood producer offered him a film contract, and he went West to make 1950’s crime drama “Dark City.”

Then he turned down the lead in another picture, opposite Marilyn Monroe, because he wanted to be in a new play, "The Tumbler," directed by Lawrence Olivier in February 1951. Critics hated it, but Heston said he “learned from him in six weeks things I never would have learned otherwise.”

The Heston couple decided to keep their apartment in New York and rent one in Los Angeles in 1952, so that they could do theater and movies. She made a few films, and he was in front of the cameras eight times that year.

His most important movie was Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.” While playing the circus manager, Heston had to work with a crew of actors and real-life circus pros. The film received the best picture Oscar and earned $36 million in the U.S. (adjusted for the price of movie ticket inflation, it would be equivalent to $321 million today).

“When I went to DeMille’s office the next morning after he picked up his Oscar to congratulate him, he said, ‘You’ve gotten some fine personal notices for this picture, but I want to read you one that may be the best review you’ll ever get in your life,’ ” Heston wrote. “He then read me a letter from a man who was enchanted with the picture … and concluded, ‘I was amazed at how well the circus manager did in there with the real actors.’ ”

Heston's career stalled as he made forgettable films over the next three years.

Then DeMille cast him as the star of “The Ten Commandments” because he thought Heston had an uncanny resemblance to the statue of Moses by Michelangelo in Rome.

“Heston had meticulously prepared himself for the role, reading 22 volumes on the life of Moses, and he could recite whole passages of the Old Testament,” wrote Munn.

The filming in Egypt was as lavish as the final film, with 10,000 extras on the set. DeMille recalled of Heston, “Before the big scene, he’d go off by himself for half an hour in costume and walk up and down in solitary thought. … When he came to the set and walked through the crowd of extras, their eyes following him, and they murmured reverently, ‘Moussa! Moussa!’ To them, Moslems all, he was the Prophet Moses.”

The $90 million (worth $731 million now) that “Commandments” earned in the global market was exactly as much as “Ben-Hur” would.

For this next spectacular, Heston was cast as the Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur in the Roman-ruled Jerusalem of 26 A.D.

When Stephen Boyd's Messala, a childhood friend who is now a Roman leader, orders Ben-Hur to name critics of the government, he refuses and is made a galley slave. During a battle, he saves the life of the admiral (Jack Hawkins), who has all the charges against him dropped. Ben-Hur wins the chariot race against Messala, who dies soon after crashing in the race.

"Ben-Hur" is ranked No. 2 among the American Film Institute’s Top 10 epic movies, just below “Lawrence of Arabia” (“Commandments” is No. 10).

Over the next decade, Heston continued to portray strong leaders in epics:

“El Cid” in 1961, as the 11th century Spanish hero in the wars against the Moors.

“55 Days at Peking” in 1963, as a U.S. soldier battling Chinese rebels in the early 1900s.

“The Greatest Story Ever Told” in 1965, as John the Baptist.

“The Agony and the Ecstasy” in 1965, as Michelangelo battling the pope over the Sistine Chapel.

“Khartoum” in 1966, as a British general in North Africa.

"Planet of the Apes” in 1968, as an astronaut who time-travels to a future Earth ruled by apes.

Heston served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1965 to 1971, but his politics increasingly clashed with more liberal members'. He had marched for civil rights and campaigned for gun control, but in the 1970s he often voted Republican. By 1998, he was president of the National Rifle Association and served until 2003.

“Even those in Hollywood who did not care for Heston’s political stances could not help admiring his professionalism on the set,” Beverly Gray, a film historian and author of “Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers,” told IBD. “He took pride in always showing up on time, knowing his role and never demanding what might be called the perks of stardom. Temper tantrums and other forms of self-indulgence were for him out of the question.”

Heston’s remaining career was mixed. His successes included the science-fiction classic “Soylent Green” (1973), a theater production of Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny” (1985) and a starring role in the TV soap opera “The Colbys” (1985-87).

When director James Cameron was asked why he cast Heston as the CIA director in 1994’s “True Lies,” he explained, “I need someone who can plausibly intimidate Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

After announcing that he was diagnosed with the first stage of Alzheimer’s disease in 2002, Heston died six years later at 84.

Star of epic films such as “The Ten Commandments” and “Ben-Hur.”

Overcame: Partisan prejudices of Hollywood.

Lesson: Have the courage to say truths that are unpopular.

“Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”