From the S&S archives:
Charlton Heston: A man of many roles

IT MAY COME AS a shock to some that the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt, saved Spain from the Moorish hordes and did the interior decorating of the Sistine Chapel is called Chuck by his friends and grew up in Evanston, Ill.

But it's true. Actor Charlton Heston — the movie Moses, El Cid and Michelangelo — is indeed a modern, 20th-century mortal.

For the past 20 years, however, Heston has cornered the Hollywood market for playing ancient, medieval and Renaissance heroes. In fact, if it was John Wayne who won the Old West and World War II, it has been Charlton Heston who has kept the whole of Western civilization rolling for the past 2,000 years.

Heston has an affinity for his epic heroes and dislikes it when you dehumanize them by calling them larger than life.

"I've certainly played a lot of extraordinary men — but, as it happens, most of them were real people," said the broad-shouldered actor during a Stuttgart interview.

"Moses, the Cid, the Baptist, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson — all these in fact were real men. True, they were more gifted, more capable, more intelligent than the rest of us, but you can't really say they were larger than life — just because they stood taller than you or I.

The 49-year-old Heston's latest role is in the Richard Lester-directed version of "The Three Musketeers" now being shot in Spain. He plays Cardinal Richelieu, powerful adviser to France's Louis XIII during the 17th century — and, to prepare for the part, Heston read three biographies.

"When I accepted the role, I knew little about Cardinal Richelieu. I don't consider myself an authority on him now. But you have to find out enough to give you the raw material for the part.

"An actor who properly researches his role should know more about it than even the writer. The writer has to research everything — you're concerned with just your part.

"I guess it's my work that made me come to realize late in life — not in school, where I should have figured it out — that history is not only the most important subject, it's the only subject. I wish I'd known that when I was 15."

Besides real men, Heston has successfully portrayed a gallery of make-believe heroes. His 1959 portrayal of "Ben Hur," a remake of Ramon Novarro's silent film classic, won him an Oscar.

Heston agrees that his appearance has helped his success as a period actor. His profile is more Roman (or Castillian or Biblical) than Illinoisian. At Patch Barracks, where he was relaxing in a red sports shirt and gray slacks, he seemed more athletically suited to winning chariot races than the tennis matches he had been playing.

"People think it's plausible to see me in a toga or tights or 17th-century armor," he said. "A lot of good actors haven't had that kind of exposure. An actor is shadowed by the parts he's played — it's subconscious with the audience. Actors like Steve McQueen or Paul Newman aren't very plausible in armor. So I suppose I get a great many more offers. If it's a modern American in some sort of problem, they think of Steve or Paul."

Heston's first epic role was as Moses in "The 10 Commandments," made by the epic-master, Cecil B. DeMille, a man whom he greatly respects.

"DeMille had a marvelous talent for catching a big event on the screen — which was probably more important than the talent he had for catching an individual actor.

"In 'The 10 Commandments,' the most effective piece is the exodus, the movement itself. It's a marvelous piece of film — and more eloquent, I think, than any of the other scenes or any of the characters, including mine. I have only one line in the scene: `Bear us out of Egypt, Oh Lord, even as the eagle bears its young upon its wings.'

"I also made a large epic film for William Wyler — 'Ben Hur' — but it was a very different kind of film from `The 10 Commandments.'

"Wyler's talent is just the converse of DeMille's — a talent for catching the individual. The chariot race, for instance, is supposed to be one of the most effective action sequences ever filmed. We had 8,000 people watching . . . but in fact, through the eight-and-a-half minutes of the race, the scene is mostly told in terms of the individuals. The scene becomes a race between Messala and Ben Hur — not the spectacle itself."

The star has also taken a crack at directing himself with a film version of his first Broadway play, "Antony and Cleopatra." The movie received good reviews, but the actor said directing is not for him.

"I also acted in the film, which presented a very challenging problem — especially with Shakespeare, which is such a work to begin with. It was agony to do it — acting and directing at the same time takes all the pleasure out of either. But it was worth doing and immensely satisfying."

In recent years, Heston has made the jump from ancient history to the future with such films as "Omega Man," in which he and a black girl are the only normal humans left after a worldwide holocaust changes the survivors into horrible mutants.

He also starred in the box office smash "The Planet of the Apes" — but declined to do anything but a cameo in any of the five money-making "Ape" sequels.

"Since the first one made so much money, 20th Century-Fox wanted to do a sequel. I told them I didn't blame them for wanting to make one, but there is no sequel. I said, 'You can make a film about the further adventures of monkeys, but the point of the first picture you can only make once.'

"The irony of this bitter, misanthropic iconoclast, who hates his fellowman so much he has literally gotten himself off the earth, to find himself thrust into a society where men are considered animals and he has to defend mankind — that was the point of the picture and what made the part so interesting.

"When he falls on his knees in front of the wrecked Statue of Liberty and realizes he's been on Earth all the time — that's the end of the story. You've done it."

Another of Heston's recent future films "Soylent Green," casts him with Edward G. Robinson in the veteran actor's last role, which some critics have said is Robinson's best.

"Eddie knew at the time he was dying. No one else in the company knew it but Eddie knew very well it was his last part. By chance, the death scene he does in the film was, in fact, the last scene he ever did. It was his farewell to his profession and to the audiences he's pleased for more than 40 years."

Less pleasurable, said Heston, was working with Hollywood's bad-boy director Sam Peckinpah to make "Major Dundee."

"Sam Peckinpah is a very talented director. He is also insane. People tend to say that about Sam as a sort of throwaway, but I think he really is. And it complicates the working experience.

"We were working on `Dundee' in a brutal location in Mexico — and you spend a lot of time staying up all night in Mexican cantinas drinking lousy Mexican brandy. But that's the way you have to go with Sam. You're either with him or against him. And you can't have any sort of creative relationship with a director if he thinks you're against him."

Heston's plans are to return to the stage this summer for a limited run of "Macbeth" at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center.

"I try to do a play every couple years — right after `Soylent Green,' I did Arthur Miller's `The Crucible' in Los Angeles;. That's something that's possible now that wasn't a few years ago — the short-run play.

"It means an actor can do a play for three weeks, five weeks or two months and not have to spend a year at it. It's a much 1 healthier situation, and it gives us all who are interested in doing both films and plays a chance to switch back and forth."