Word: heston
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About the only decorous thing that Charlton Heston can do now is to retire until Hollywood is ready to film The Lyndon Johnson Story. In two decades in movies and theater, the 41-year-old actor has played just about every other notable, including Moses, John the Baptist, Ben-Hur, El Cid, Macbeth, Michelangelo, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, as well as the off-camera voices of Franklin D. Roosevelt and God. Of course, the studios would never let him retire. He is, in the trade term, one of the most "bankable" box-office stars going...
...Heston's latest movie, Khartoum, in which he plays a sort of Grauman's "Chinese" Gordon (TIME, Aug. 5), is smashing records in Manhattan. Reruns of his The Ten Commandments are drawing so well that the film could become the second biggest grosser in Hollywood history, edging out his own Ben-Hur and nearing the $41 million record of Gone With the Wind. And that just counts the North American take. Overseas, Heston is an even bigger favorite. He is also taken seriously as an actor. Despite the critics' First Commandment-thou shalt not worship a graven...
Outspoken Spokesman. The secret of Heston's success is his capacity for appearing virile without being lecherous in Olympian roles. He is tall in the saddle (6 ft. 2 in.) and so adamantine that Jennifer Jones broke her hand slapping his face in a scene from Ruby Gentry. Furthermore, it is a virtuous, earnest face that most women would not want to slap. In his films, he is usually too busy dabbing away at a Sistine ceiling or chasing chariots to chase girls...
Britain's General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon blended military pragmatism with missionary zeal, a love of the Bible with a liking for brandy and soda. In 1884, after 100,000 Moslem fanatics had trapped an Egyptian army at Khartoum, Britain's Prime Minister William Gladstone sent Gordon (Charlton Heston) and one aide to rescue it. Gordon organized Khartoum for a 317-day defense against the dervishes of Mohammed Ahmed (Sir Laurence Olivier), who called himself the Mahdi, meaning "the Expected One." Khartoum finally fell on Jan. 26, 1885. Gordon, who had rejected the Mahdi's offer of safe...
...Heston, whose movie career has consisted mostly of impersonating Great Heroes of History (Moses, Michelangelo, Ben-Hur), plays Gordon with a swaggering virility complicated by moments of fierce introspection. At times, though, his crisp British officer's manner lapses into a fair imitation of Jack Benny, as when he stands on the battlements with dervishes tumbling in on all sides and stiffly observes: "Well! Here we are!" By contrast, Olivier's Mahdi is a small masterpiece of single-minded religious insanity-the lambent black eyes never blinking, the measured voice conjuring up holy terrors from his private heart...