Charlton Heston RIP

[poliphilo]

Dear Chuck,

You were the first film star I ever loved. Ben Hur is very long and boring but at the time I was just grateful to be in your presence. The chariot race is magic.

I think you took yourself a little too seriously- certainly it's hard to imagine you playing comedy- and perhaps that's what held you back from being the great actor I believe you wanted to be- and so nearly were.

You were in some very good films. El Cid is a favourite of mine. The Warlord is forgotten but cool. Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes are cult classics.

Touch of Evil is a masterpiece. I believe you used your star power to ensure Welles got to direct it. That could be the single most important thing you ever did.

I saw you on stage once. You did OK.

I'm a European so I really don't get that thing about guns but I guess it all made sense to you. I don't think it was kind of Michael Moore to doorstep you the way he did.

You were an innocent-  a gallant gentleman- married to the same woman for 64 years, which is sweet. Gore Vidal and his mates laughed at you for not getting the gay subtext they'd inserted into Ben Hur- and that sniggering accompanied you all through life. You probably deserved a lttle gentle mockery (who doesn't?) but I don't believe you were ever hated. You were too nice, too courteous, too trusting. You got to play all manner of antique fools, but you never got to play Don Quixote, which is a pity, because you'd have been a natch.

Off you go then on your white stallion across the limitless sands,

Vaya con Dios,

Poliphilo

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm keeping out of the gun debate. As an Englishman I simply don't understand what the fuss is all about. Gun controls are very tight in this country and no-one questions them. After the school shooting in Dunblane about ten years ago they were tightened still further to widespread public applause.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

Perhaps mention should be made in passing to the death of another Hollywood great, the man we loved to hate, Richard Widmark, who presented a wide range of sleaze-bags, psychopaths (his giggling monster was unforgettable in "Kiss of Death), anti-heroes, troubled heroes and occasionally an upstanding hero, (as in "Jugement at Nuremburg") ...not as high wattage as Heston, but a star nonetheless.

Another person who thought highly of Heston was the author and screenplay writer George Macdonald Frazer, (also recently deceased), who worked with him often and praised him fulsomely in his "The Hollywood History of the World".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been feeling bad about not memorialising Widmark. The difference is that Heston rocked my childhood, whereas Widmark mainly appeared in grown-up movies.

Actually, there's an exception. How could I forget the Alamo? One bayonet to the left, one bayonet to the right and then one straight down the middle!

[currawong.livejournal.com]

My peculiar childhood didn't distinguish between grown up and "suitable movies" ...we lived in one room until I was seven, housework finished by nine ... my mum was movie-struck and it only cost 9d ... the program changed 5 times a week ... so every afternoon i was allowed in by management to meet her for the second feature ... murder, rape, incest, nymphomania ... all was paraded before my sometimes uncomprehending but always fascinated eyes. The only movies i can remember being refused admission to were: "The Blackboard Jungle" and "Lolita".

Is it possible i saw every movie made between 1939 and about 1962? ... it sometimes seems like it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What a splendid education!

My childhood movie-going was pretty much limited to Disney movies and wide-screen epics.

I think the first movie I saw which alerted me to the fact that movies were also being made with grown-ups in mind was Jules Dassin's Never on a Sunday.

He's just died too.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a generational change, ( and something of an impoverishment) going on.
I love the final scenes of "Riffifi" in the car ... poetic, bleak and wittily Gallic.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Riffifi was probably the second "grown-up" movie I saw. Or maybe it was the other way round. Either way Dassin was an important figure in my early life.

(And Melina Mercouri was probably the first female star I ever had a crush on)

[currawong.livejournal.com]

I always saw Melina Mercouri as a bit of a slag, but a magnificent one.

My first adolescent crushes for females were for Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe, (a bit obvious, not to say camp, I know) followed by Claudia Cardinale.

My pre-adolescent crushes were Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds, (early signs of camp inclinations), and somewhat, later Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Vivien Leigh and Hedy Lamarr.

...at the same time, I seemed to gain a strange and inexplicably intense enjoyment from the films of Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and Marlon Brando, (flagrantly if then unconsciously camp).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My earlist cinematic crushes were Chuck and Steve Reeves.

My later enthusiams were idiosyncratic. I remember having a bit of a thing for Rita Tushingham- and for the girl in If who gets to shoot the headmaster between the eyes.

Godard had great taste in women. I loved Anna Karina and Whassername, Karina's replacement.

In fact, Frenchwomen usually did it for me. I loved Arletty and Maria Casares.

And then there's always the peerless Jeanne Moreau.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

It was the Italians for me ... Sophia, (I once dreamt I was wooing her in a tent), Claudia Cardinale, (impossibly beautiful in "The Leopard" and "The Pink Panther") and the hugely under-rated Gina Lollabigida, (if you haven't seen her extremely witty performance in the wildly off beat comedy-thriller "Beat the Devil", do yourself a favour).

The French Grace Kelly, Catherine Deneuve was my favourite French actress, (though she could always act Grace off the screen) ... had a soft spot for Romy Schneider, Jean Moreau and Simone Cigarette as well.