Remembering Charlton Heston: A Star Forever

Remembering Charlton Heston: A Star Forever

By Dr. Ted Baehr, Publisher

Editor’s Note: To honor Charlton Heston’s birthday, here is MOVIEGUIDE® obit of the man, followed by the text of one of his best public speeches.

“Those. . . who lead many to do what is right and good will shine like the stars forever and ever.”

— Daniel 12:3 (New Life Version)

Charlton Heston, who was a wonderful friend of MOVIEGUIDE® and the Christian Film & Television Commission® and won the best actor Oscar for his starring role in the Christian epic BEN-HUR, died on Saturday, April 5^th, 2008, at the age of 84 with his wife of sixty-four years at his side. Chuck starred in many great movies and liked to note the historical figures he had portrayed, including Moses (“The Ten Commandments”), John the Baptist (“The Greatest Story Ever Told”), and Michelangelo (“The Agony and the Ecstasy”).

Born John Charles Carter on Oct. 4, 1923, in Evanston, Illinois, Chuck moved with his family at an impressionable age to St. Helen, Mich., in the Michigan woods, where he had almost no playmates except the imaginary friends from the many adventure books he read. When his parents divorced and his mother re-married Chester Heston and moved to Chicago suburb, Chuck felt shy, so he took refuge in the drama department. In a 1986 interview, he noted, “What acting offered me was the chance to be many other people. In those days I wasn’t satisfied with being me.”

Chuck called himself Charlton Heston from his mother’s maiden name and his stepfather’s last name and went Northwestern University in 1941 on an acting scholarship. In 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and was a radio-gunner in World War II. In 1944, he married Lydia Clarke.

Chuck Heston was a pleasant, reserved, self-controlled, gentle man. Although it would be presumptuous to equate talking to Charlton Heston with talking to Moses, it was easy to lapse into that association since he portrayed Moses with such charisma in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. So when I interviewed him years ago, his deep, authoritative voice sounded very much like one would expect Moses to sound. Reflecting back on his career, Heston commented on how fortunate he was to have worked with such great directors and actors so early in his career.

Under the direction of Cecil B. De Mille, Heston starred in THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH and also played the memorable role of Moses in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

“If you can’t make a career out of two De Mille pictures, you better turn in your suit,” Heston said.

He commented further on De Mille’s strong Christian faith and his understanding of how good the biblical stories were, enabling him to make some of the most honored films in history. Chuck told me that while De Mille was on a four-foot ladder preparing a shot for THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, he fell and no one expected the movie to continue. The very next day, De Mille came back on the set, gave everyone a New Testament and told them the saving Good News about Jesus Christ and how Jesus Christ had healed him. As the son of a preacher, De Mille knew how to present the Gospel. Chuck said that this event changed his life and brought him close to Jesus Christ.

Years later in his four-part video series CHARLTON HESTON PRESENTS THE BIBLE, Chuck declared loud and clear, “If you seek the Lord, you will find Him.”

Heston also starred in the unforgettable movie BEN-HUR, directed by William Wyler, which won Best Picture of 1959 and 11 Academy Awards. Among these significant achievements, Heston has also worked with Lawrence Olivier, Orson Wells, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart.

Chuck became involved in our Christian Film & Television Commission® Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala & Report to the Entertainment Industry in the early 1990s and came for several years to present awards until his health prevented his participation. In 1993, Charlton Heston confirmed to the Entertainment Industry that upholding high moral standards has played an important part in his career and the success of his movies. On accepting a special award for his CHARLTON HESTON PRESENTS THE BIBLE series, Chuck relayed many fond remembrances from the popular biblical epics in which he has starred. Dartmouth College documentarian John Murray had his video camera out in full force to capture it all, including exclusive interviews with Mr. Heston to be used in a special VIOLENCE IN HOLLYWOOD project he is producing.

When he could no longer participate, he would faithfully write short notes such as:

“Please accept. . . my best wishes for a successful evening [at the Annual Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry] and continued good luck in your ministry on the Christian Film & Television Commission.

Cordially,

Charlton Heston

Chuck was the master of the bon mot for skewering the drift toward political correctness. A few we quoted in www.movieguide.org were:

“I think that there are more closet conservatives in Hollywood than there are closet homosexuals.”

— Charlton Heston, Firing Line, May 8, 1996

“The Bill of Rights extends a broad, but far from absolute, protection of the citizen’s right to express himself in public. There is no suggestion that this expression is entitled to funding by the taxpayers.”

— Charlton Heston, March 3, 1994 at the Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala & Report to the Entertainment Industry.

In August 1, 2002, Chuck wrote:

Dear Ted:

I’d be proud to have [my Harvard speech] in Movieguide®. Thanks for asking.

God’s good grace to you, my friend.

Cordially,

CH.

To honor his beloved memory, here is his wonderful speech:

** Winning the Culture War **

By Charlton Heston

Editor’s Note:  This is the text of Charlton Heston’s speech on ‘Winning the Cultural War’ Tuesday, February 16, 2002 at Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall at Harvard Law School. This was sponsored by the Harvard Law School Forum, a student organization at Harvard Law School. This article is reprinted by permission.

I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. “My Daddy,” he said, “pretends to be people.”

There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French cardinal, and two geniuses, including Michelangelo. If you want the ceiling re-painted, I’ll do my best.

It’s just that there always seems to be a lot of different fellows up here. I’m never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I’m the guy.

As I pondered our visit tonight, it struck me: If my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty. . . your own freedom of thought. . . your own compass for what is right.

Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, “We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” Those words are true again. . . . I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that’s about to hijack your birthright to think and say what lives in your heart.

I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you. . . the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.

Let me back up a little. About a year ago, I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve. . . I serve as a moving target for the media who’ve called me everything from “ridiculous” and “duped” to a “brain-injured, senile, crazy old man.” I know, I’m pretty old. . ., but I sure ain’t senile.

As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I’ve realized that firearms are not the only issue.

No, it’s much, much bigger than that.

I’ve come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 – long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But, when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else’s pride, they called me a racist.

I’ve worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But, when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.

I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But, during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But, when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they’re essentially saying, “Chuck, how dare you speak your mind like that? You are using language not authorized for public consumption!”

But, I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we’d still be King George’s boys – subjects bound to the British crown.

In his book, “The End of Sanity,” Martin Gross writes that “blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name is undermining the country, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And, they don’t like it.”

Let me read a few examples.

At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process from kissing to petting to final copulation. . . all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive.

In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who had been infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDs, the state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not. . . need not. . . tell their patients that they are infected.

At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team “The Tribe” because it was supposedly insulting to local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs truly like the name.

In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery.

In New York City, kids who don’t speak a word of Spanish have been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R’s in Spanish solely because their last names sound Hispanic.

At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students.

Yeah, I know. That’s out of bounds now. Dr. King said “Negroes.” Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said “black.” But, it’s a no-no now.

For me, hyphenated identities are awkward…, particularly “Native-American. “I’m a Native American, for God’s sake. I also happen to be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife’s side, my grandson is a thirteenth generation native American. . . with the capital letter on “American.”

Finally, just last month. . . . David Howard, head of the Washington D.C. Office of Public Advocate, used the word “niggardly” while talking to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course, “niggardly” means stingy or scanty. But, within days, Howard was forced to publicly apologize and resign.

As columnist Tony Snow wrote: “David Howard got fired because some people in public employ were morons who (a) didn’t know the meaning of ‘niggardly,’ (b) didn’t know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and (c) actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance.”

What does all this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind.

Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America’s campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it?

Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?

Let’s be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe?

That scares me to death. It should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.

You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. Bu,t I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. As long as you validate that . . . and abide it. . . you are – by your grandfathers’ standards – cowards.

Here’s another example. Right now, at more than one major university, Second Amendment scholars and researchers are being told to shut up about their findings or they’ll lose their jobs. Why? Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayor’s pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers.

I don’t care what you think about guns. But, if you are not shocked at that, I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Democracy is dialogue!

Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, “Don’t shoot me.”

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist.

If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you sexist.

If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion.

If you accept but don’t celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.

Don’t let America’s universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.

But, what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? The answer’s been here all along.

I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.

You simply. . . disobey.

Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely.

But, when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don’t. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.

I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King. . . who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.

Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Viet Nam.

In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous laws that weaken personal freedom.

But, be careful. . . it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies.

You must be willing to be humiliated. . . to endure the modem-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma.

You must be willing to experience discomfort. I’m not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have left their mark on me.

Let me tell you a story. A few years back, I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called “Cop Killer” celebrating ambushing and murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Police across the country were outraged. Rightfully so – at least one had been murdered. But, Time/Warner was stonewalling because the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black.

I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares at the time, so I decided to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my family and colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of “Cop Killer” – every vicious, vulgar, instructional word.

“I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF I’M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF I’M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF. . .” It got worse, a lot worse. I won’t read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that.

Then, I delivered another volley of sick lyrics brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore.

“SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY. . .”

Well, I won’t do to you here what I did to them. Let’s just say I left the room in echoing silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of them said, “We can’t print that.” “I know,” I replied, “but Time/Warner’s selling it.”

Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T’s contract. I’ll never be offered another film by Warners, or get a good review from Time magazine. But, disobedience means you must be willing to act, not just talk. When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself, jam the switchboard of the district attorney’s office.

When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80% of the students graduate with honors. . . choke the halls of the board of regents.

When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl’s cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment. . . march on that school and block its doorways. When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you. . . petition them, oust them, banish them. When Time magazine’s cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month. . . boycott their magazine and the products it advertises.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God’s grace, built this country.

If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree.

Thank you.

CHARLTON HESTON

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