CHARLTON HESTON

CHARLTON HESTON: "Certainly sounds interesting." And that's as far as you could go. And then he might have you back for two or three meetings, which were essentially the same meeting all over again. Obviously he was weighing his -- your -- reactions. So it was not an easy thing to do. But finally they announced that I was going to play the part. Then of course, there was an enormous preparation. In the part I wore I think 10 or 11 different makeups, starting clean-shaven; then once he's in the brick pits, with a stubbled beard, and then increasingly longer beards and more and more age in the makeup. And at every stage of that, he presided over all the meetings and had very firm ideas about what he wanted and what he didn't want. The shoot began in Egypt. We were there two months. But essentially I was the only principal that was there. Yul Brynner, who was in my opinion the best performance in the film -- just a stunning performance as Pharaoh -- was still doing The King and I on Broadway, and they gave him a week off from the part so he could go to Egypt and do some close angles of Pharaoh pursuing -- none of the big interiors, but Pharaoh pursuing the Israelites. Then I think John Derek came over for a day and Yvonne De Carlo for a day, but the rest of it was just me and all those Israelites. And it was again very demanding. He was-- of course, you have to remember De Mille, and I was struck by the significance of this very early in the work when I did the circus picture for him. I thought this is one of the guys that made up the movies. He and Eisenstein and Jack Ford and Sam Goldwyn.

MODERATOR: He was the pioneer.

CHARLTON HESTON: They were the guys that invented it. And to be making a movie for one of these guys, you know. That must have been when it was marvelous to make movies, when you'd go out every morning with a Model T truck and some timbers on the back to balance the camera on. You go wandering around in the hills up [obscure] you say, "Let's shoot a shot here. This would be good. Now, you fall down there" and so on and so on. But that gave him, I suppose, the title to the town. Actually, the first feature picture you guys probably know made in Hollywood was THE STRAW MAN. I think 1927 or something like that. Maybe earlier. De Mille and Sam Goldwyn and Zucker came out on a train and they were gonna shoot in Flagstaff, Arizona. And the train stopped in Flagstaff, and it was pissing rain. I mean, really a downpour. And De Mille got off the train and he said, "This is ridiculous." He said, "This isn't the weather they promised us. Let's get back on the train." [LAUGHTER] And if it hadn't been raining in Flagstaff, the AFI would be located there right now.

[LAUGHTER]

CHARLTON HESTON: And we would all be living there [obscure]. He was not a tyrant, but he had very firm control over the set, and nothing escaped him. He never raised his voice, but I remember talking to Rich Richardson, his still man, who had worked with him since the silent days, and he could be very tough on second AD's and prop men and things like that if they didn't provide what he had expected in the shot. And I said after he chewed out a prop man on something, I said to Rich-- I said, "Mr. De Mille's pretty tough, isn't he?" He said, "No, he's not tough." He said, "He just expects a good day's work-- a very good day's work."

[LAUGHTER]

CHARLTON HESTON: And by and large, that's what he got. But it was an experience to work for him.

MODERATOR: In terms of your own career as an actor, this role has obviously been very important.

CHARLTON HESTON: Yes, you could say. It was a defining part for me in a sense. I don't know if I would have gotten all the other great biographical roles had I not done that. Probably not. But as I've said many, many times, if you can't make a career out of three De Mille pictures, you better turn in your suit.

[LAUGHTER]

MODERATOR: Do you think that the epic of the '50s could be made today?

CHARLTON HESTON: Not possible. They couldn't afford them. Uh, I have more specific information on that. Someone two, three years ago ran across the original line item budget on BEN HUR, which was made for $14,700,000, at the time the most expensive movie ever made. Now whatever your favorite summer movie was with no actors of any name value and no sets, no period costumes, no elaborate special effects, cost at least twice what BEN HUR cost. And as we saw in the paper this morning, the average cost of a film last year was $60 million. Now, there's something-- actually, I think that's the most important thing that happened in films since I came in the movies. I came in just on the cusp of the independent era. After Marlon, I think I was the first actor not to have a studio contract.

MODERATOR: Oh, that's interesting.

CHARLTON HESTON: Yeah, because it gave you freedom, of course. You could do what you wanted and they couldn't make you do something. It was very important to me, and then that's in essence the -- only in television do they have contracts now for people. They may have commitments, but those are not significant. "First look," that kind of thing. But to be able to do plays, to do television -- when I came into movies, everybody except Marlon was under contract. Everybody. The designers, the cameramen, the producers, the actors, the writers, directors. And that gave them a great deal of control over what they did and what you did. But I didn't have that, and that was very valuable to me. Now Hal Wallis didn't give me that kind of a contract because he thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He did it because he knew in five or six years it would all be gone. And so it was. But it did give me an enormous first start and the chance to choose your projects and have script control, script approval on some parts, casting approval. It was very valuable.