Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur 1959.
Charlton Heston films on TCM: ‘Summer Under the Stars’ series continues with Ben-Hur, The Big Country
It’s Charlton Heston Day on Thursday, Aug. 28, on Turner Classic Movies.
Charlton Heston was a graduate cum laude of the Paul Muni School of Acting Juz Like Them Historical Figures. Muni (Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola, Benito Juarez, etc.), for his part, learned his schtick – memorize dialogue, apply make-up, ham it up – from George Arliss (Benjamin Disraeli, Voltaire, Alexander Hamilton, Cardinal Richelieu, etc.). I don’t know who the hell taught Arliss, but whoever it was should have had his teaching credentials incinerated.
Well, too late now…
Heston overplays Gen. Andrew Jackson in Anthony Quinn’s disastrous The Buccaneer (the beautiful and talented Claire Bloom deserved much better), Gen. Charles Gordon in Basil Dearden’s atrocious Khartoum (Laurence Olivier fares even worse as The Mahdi), and John the Baptist in George Stevens’ tedious The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Ben-Hur, The Big Country
It gets worse: Heston also overplays Judah Ben-Hur in the mammoth – as in big, heavy, dead – pseudo-historical Ben-Hur, quite possibly William Wyler’s worst film.
As usual, Academy members disagreed with me: Ben-Hur won a total of 11 Oscars, including best picture, best direction, best actor (ouch!), and best supporting actor (Hugh Griffith, chewing on the scenery, the camels, the desert sand, you name it). Ben-Hur also happens to be one of the most commercially successful films of all time. (I much prefer the 1925 version starring Ramon Novarro. It’s shorter, it’s prettier, it’s silent – you don’t have to listen to the neuron-murdering dialogue.)
The science-fiction drama Soylent Green has its fans – the film marked Edward G. Robinson’s last screen appearance – while Major Dundee also has its admirers, though it was originally butchered by Columbia.
The Big Country is another Wyler-Heston pairing; one that is infinitely superior to the more successful Ben-Hur. Perhaps that’s because Heston has what amounts to a supporting role; the real lead belongs to Gregory Peck (my idea of a male film star) and Jean Simmons (my idea of a female film star). Burl Ives won the best supporting actor Oscar for his tough rancher.
As for Irving Rapper’s Bad for Each Other, any movie featuring Lizabeth Scott is worth a look.
Charlton Heston films: TCM schedule (EDT) – Aug. 28
6:00 AM Bad for Each Other (1954)
Cast: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dianne Foster, Arthur Franz, Ray Collins, Ann Robinson.
Director: Irving Rapper.
B&W. 82 min.7:30 AM The Buccaneer(1958)
Cast: Yul Brynner, Charlton Heston, Claire Bloom.
Director: Anthony Quinn.
Color. 120 min. Letterbox.10:00 AM Khartoum (1966)
Cast: Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson.
Director: Basil Dearden.
Color. 136 min. Letterbox.12:30 PM The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
Cast: Max von Sydow, Dorothy McGuire, Charlton Heston, Michael Anderson Jr., Carroll Baker, José Ferrer, Van Heflin, Angela Lansbury, Pat Boone, Janet Margolin, David McCallum, Roddy McDowall, Sal Mineo, Claude Rains, Sidney Poitier, Joseph Schildkraut, John Wayne, Shelley Winters.
Director: George Stevens.
Color. 199 min. Letterbox.4:00 PM Ben-Hur (1959)
Cast: Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott, Cathy O’Donnell, Sam Jaffee, Finlay Currie, Marina Berti.
Director: William Wyler.
Color. 222 min. Letterbox.8:00 PM The Big Country (1958)
Cast: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker, Charles Bickford, Burl Ives.
Director: William Wyler.
Color. 167 min. Letterbox.11:00 PM Major Dundee (1965)
Cast: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, Senta Berger, James Coburn, Michael Anderson Jr., Mario Adorf, Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Jody McCrea.
Director: Sam Peckinpah.
Color. 136 min. Letterbox.1:30 AM Soylent Green (1973)
Cast: Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young.
Director: Richard Fleischer.
Color. 97 min. Letterbox.3:30 AM The Hawaiians(1970)
Cast: Charlton Heston, Geraldine Chaplin, Tina Chen.
Director: Tom Gries.
Color. 134 min. Letterbox.
notes/references
TCM website.