Audio Interview with Charlton Heston
Interview conducted by Tony Macklin. Audio interview originally published on March 29, 2009 @ tonymacklin.net.
Listen to the audio interview with Charlton Heston (MP3 format, approximately 89 minutes).
Charlton Heston was my first major interview. It also was the first movie set I visited. The interview was in Heston's trailer on the set of Earthquake.
When my wife met Heston outside his trailer, she blurted, "You're so handsome. You're so handsome."
The interview went well; I concentrated on how Heston was a leading man who seldom got the woman. And we spoke about Heston's meaningful relationship with Orson Welles.
During my time visiting the set of Earthquake I had two memorable personal experiences. On the set I found myself standing next to a woman who took my breath away -- it was the divine Ava Gardner.
I also went out with a man who on screen played a friend of the fabled Bowery Boys -- Gabriel Dell, who had a role in Earthquake. Because of Gabe, I got to talk on the phone with a childhood actor for whom I had great affinity -- Huntz Hall who played the irrepressible Sach.
Hall wasn't able to join us, but I was able to tell him what he had meant to me as I grew up in the movie theater.
Heston wrote down his home phone number for me. I later gave it as a keepsake to the mother of a colleague who was a friend of mine at the University.
Chuck, Ava, and Sach -- what a wonderland of personality.
The following is the introduction to the interview as it appeared in Voices from the Set: The Film Heritage Interviews (2000).
Born in Evanston, Illinois. Charlton Heston has acted in nearly 100 films, including The Greatest Show on Earth, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, El Cid, Khartoum, Planet of the Apes, Will Penny, and Earthquake. He received the best actor Oscar for Ben-Hur in 1959, the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1977, and the Screen Actor's Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972.
The Heston interview was on the set of Earthquake. Published in the Fall 1974 issue of Film Heritage.
