CHARLTON HESTON

MODERATOR: As part of our little press announcement, I think I made it very clear at that podium what Charlton Heston has meant to the American Film Institute. And he and I have sat in this position a number of times over the last 16 years, so I know that you're in for a treat. Before we begin, though, I wanted to introduce to you someone who I mentioned at the podium, a trustee of the AFI and a woman who has meant so much to the AFI for more than a decade. Suzanne Lloyd Hayes is the granddaughter of Harold Lloyd. This seminar series is called the Harold Lloyd Master Seminar Series, and Sue has been a wonderful trustee, a wonderful friend of the AFI, and has made so much of her grandfather's heritage available to the world and to the AFI. She is here now, and I would just like her to stand and for you to acknowledge her. Suzanne Lloyd Hayes.

[APPLAUSE]

MODERATOR: Sue was at the very first seminar at the American Film Institute at the Center for Advanced Film Studies, as it was called, in 1969. Would you tell that story?

SUZANNE LLOYD HAYES: I had the privilege of being raised by my grandfather and grandmother at their house in Beverly Hills, and I was, at the time, a junior in high school attending Westlake. My grandfather really enjoyed going and showing these films to different film students at USC, Harvard, Yale. Well, when the
American Film Institute came about and was at Greystone, they invited him to come and show a film on the opening day. And there was a catch to it because King Vidor was going to speak the first day. But unfortunately there was something wrong and King couldn't do it, and he said, "Oh, I'll come," and he came up and he played THE FRESHMAN. He was going to play the film about four o'clock. I came up the driveway home from school at 3:30. I went into the house, and he said, "Hey, what are you doing?" He said, "Well, how much homework do you have?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. Not that much," and I [obscure] my books on the [obscure]. And I said, "Well, where are you going?" And he said, "Well, I'm going up to the American Film Institute at Greystone and I'm going to show a film, but if you don't have any homework, you're more than welcome to come. Do you want to go?" And I said, "Yeah." And so I ended up coming to the first [obscure] meeting and the first seminar at the AFI. And after that, I really fell in love with the AFI. And he'd be so proud to know of all the wonderful changes it has gone through and all the wonderful work. He's really in spirit here with all of you. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

MODERATOR: Sue, I think he'd be very proud of you and the legacy that you have continued and made available to the world. Mr. Heston, on Monday night --

CHARLTON HESTON: Ms. Firstenberg.

[LAUGHTER]

MODERATOR: On Monday night in this very room, we screened THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. It was a magnificent print.

CHARLTON HESTON: Good.

MODERATOR: It was truly thrilling. It is the definition of an epic. I mean, there's absolutely no doubt about it. Tell us about, about the making of that movie and what it was like. Clearly it was a very historic moment in the making of epic films.

CHARLTON HESTON: Well, indeed it was. I was very fortunate to be cast in it. I believe in serendipity. Serendipity is the unpredictable positive response to a choice, that seems entirely trivial at the time, which had in my case to do with the fact that I had made my second film for De Mille, the circus picture [THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, 1952] which won the Academy Award and all that. I guess that was stuck in his mind because he was then deep in preparation on TEN COMMANDMENTS. He took very detailed preparations -- two, three years on most of his pictures. And as he had done with TEN COMMANDMENTS. He was also a marvelous -- he had a marvelous sense of public relations. And so through the last year before they were actually to start shooting it, which was the Egyptian location in 1954. Through all that time, he would release one casting after another. John Carradine. Cedric Hardwicke. Vinnie Price. Different actors... Eddie Robinson, so on. But he was very closed-mouthed about who would play Moses, and of course this was the big thing they were interested in. And now he says in his autobiography that he was never in any doubt about who was going to play it. He just was playing the publicity game. I don't know whether that's true or not. He must surely have at least considered a number of other actors because it was the plum part of the year, no question. I know beyond doubt that one of the reasons I got the part was that very early in his, as I said, very scrupulous, very meticulous research on every aspect of the film, certainly including who would play the parts, someone pointed out to him, someone on his staff pointed out to him the extraordinary resemblance between Michelangelo's great statue of Moses in the Chapel of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, and me. And it [LAUGHTER] really is an extraordinary likeness [LAUGHTER]-- there's no question of it. [LAUGHTER] The broken nose. The mask of the cheekbones and jaw. All these things are very much like me, the heavy eyebrows and so on. In any event, he eventually announced that I was going to do the part. He was... very difficult. I did, in the end, three films for him, and he had a very curious casting method. Usually, preparing any picture, no matter how important, if they don't circulate copies of the script in advance, they make available to the people they may be considering or that they want to make a firm offer to. De Mille did not do that. You never got to read the scripts. He would have a meeting with you in which he would describe the movie and what his plans for it were. And he would tell the story of the movie, in essence. But he never said, "Now, the part I am thinking of you for is thus and so." He never would say that, which made it very difficult to play the other half of the interview because all you could say really-- you couldn't say, "You know, I see myself in that part. I really understand what [obscure]." Because he hadn't said he was interested in you for the part. And all you could say was, "Boy, that really sounds like it's gonna be a wonderful picture."

[LAUGHTER]