...I beg to differ with some of the anti-Charlton Heston posters represented here.
You ever see "The President's Lady?" "El Cid?" "Will Penny?" "Soylent Green?" Heston's brief but memorable role in "Tombstone?" Not to mention his more-than-adequately-portrayed role in TBC. Even as Moses in "The Ten Commandments," the acting style of the entire cast was done in melodramitic style, but no one in that film,(Yul Brynner; Anne Baxter; Vincent Price; Edward G. Robinson; etc.; even Heston himself) delivered less than a first-rate performance within the constraints that director Cecil B. DeMille would impose on them for the purposes of the sweeping, majestic Biblical epic he was making--and it remains a holiday favorite to this day!
And Heston did just fine in "Planet of the Apes." The end scene with him raving at the Statue of Liberty wasn't ridiculed for Heston's hamminess until recent years. There is much humor peppered throughout the script, some of it admittedly dated nowadays, but quite amusing even today; regardless, the flaws in this film are no fault of Heston's and POA, too, remains a classic.
Nothing was wrong with his performance in "Ben Hur." Besides Heston, only Burt Lancaster (originally intended for the title role) or Kirk Douglas could have credibly performed with the right combination of athletic prowess and acting skills; but Heston was younger than the other two and was probably more capable of the physical demands of his role than the now-middle-aged Lancaster or Douglas would have been. And Charlton Heston definitely earned his Oscar.
I have noted that people with a liberal bent (not necessarily anyone I'm sharing this thread with) like to slam everything about Heston because of his unabashed right-wing leanings and CEO-ship of the NRA (while ignoring Heston's claim, of which I have no knowledge of its ever having been contested, that he was among whites who marched with civil rights advocates in Martin Luther King's day). I don't understand that at all. I consider myself conservative, but I can still concede the acting talents of Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Penn, Jack Lemmon, Robin Williams--heck, practically everyone in Hollywood!--while mostly disagreeing with their personal political idealogies and the off-screen, left-wing publicity they've generated...
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17 years ago
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vinidici
17 years ago
...Who knows, Marmjh-2? But Brando was busy making "The Young Lions," around the same time as Ben Hur's production & release...
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17 years ago
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vinidici
17 years ago
"...ONLY [emphasis mine] took part in two civil rights events." Thanks! I thought the guy put his feet in those troubled waters only ONCE! But it seems not even once or TWICE is enough for a man who went on to champion what he felt was the right of ANY law-abiding American citizen of ANY ethnicity and pigmentation of flesh, the right to bear arms.
Who could argue against the fact that Brando could out-act just about any of his colleagues and contemporaries? But could even the great Brando be included in every great motion picture, all of the time? DID he accept any vehicle thrown his way? Was he even INTERESTED in taking on the role of Judah Ben-Hur? Probably not. Brando was a tremendously gifted actor, but he fell victim to propably every other actor's tendency to reject good scripts in favor of appearing in, say, the tragic swansong to Charlie Chaplin's film career, "A Countess From Hong Kong"...
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17 years ago
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vinidici
17 years ago
...I ain't even gonna GO there with that last statement, Marm. You were coming across as half-way agreeble until you ended your post with THAT little "ray of sunshine"...
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Fingaroo
17 years ago
To answer the original question, Heston would have pounded Peck into the ground like a railroad spike. I think he probably would have kicked Brando's ass too.
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vinidici
17 years ago
...Well, the poster (who I just put on "ignore" after that last little "aside" of his) was making the point that Brando could easily outact Heston--which I wouldn't debate, btw--but that doesn't necessarily mean he could improve every single one of the Heston's films by being inserted in all of Heston's roles.
Now, a fistfight between Brando and Heston would have been interesting! Brando had a muscular physique when he was young, which helped make him all the more threatening, for instance, in "A Streetcar Named Desire." *I* wouldn't want to meet Stanley Kowalski in a dark alley!
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liscarkat (18605)
7 years ago
"I consider myself conservative, but I can still concede the acting talents of Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Penn, Jack Lemmon, Robin Williams--heck, practically everyone in Hollywood!--while mostly disagreeing with their personal political idealogies and the off-screen, left-wing publicity they've generated..."
I'm certain that's true, but you forget that you're dealing with leftists, whose salient characteristics are intolerance and humorlessness. According to them, the three worst actors of all time are Heston, John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan, who just coincidentally happen to be conservatives.
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