"I'm Going to Get It"

“April 4, Academy Awards. I made it. Looking across the orchestra, just before Susan [Hayward] read it off, something popped in my head. 'I’m going to get it.' And I did. I kissed Lydia and walked to the stage dripping wet, except for a pepper-dry mouth: classic stage fright. I’ll never forget the moment, or the night, for that matter. Backstage, posing beside Willy with his third Oscar, I said, 'I guess this is old hat for you.' 'Chuck,' he said, 'it never gets old hat!'"

-Charlton Heston, April 4, 1960 (Charlton Heston: The Actor's Life, Journals 1956–1976)

Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur. Photo from Photofest.

In the late 1970's, Charlton Heston was convinced by a friend to publish the work journal he had been keeping for the past two decades. It's called Charlton Heston: The Actor's Life, and is essentially a two-decade compilation of his equivalent to Facebook status updates—daily tidbits of "a hundred words or so" written at the bottom of an appointment book given to him by his wife as a Christmas gift. Unfortunately for us, he started the journal while wrapping up The Ten Commandments. Fortunately for us, there were many other movies he worked on during the next two decades—including Ben-Hur, which earned eleven Academy Awards out of twelve nominations (a feat that wasn't duplicated until 1997 and 2003, with Titanic and the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, respectively).

Reading through his published journal, I’m finding it’s hard to find an entry to spotlight in a blog because there are so many little snippets in his life that would make great blog posts. So I’m going to shoehorn some of these snippets from a one-month period—with both ups and downs.

On March 30, 1960, Heston and his wife, Lydia, attended the premiere of Ben-Hur at Tokyo Theater. MGM had been begging Heston to attend, even though the film was doing fine. As a matter of fact, they were only days away from the 32^nd Academy Awards. However, the emperor of Japan himself—as well as the empress and the crown prince—were planning on attending. The emperor had never so much as set foot on the Ginza, Tokyo’s version of Broadway. According to Heston in his autobiography, In the Arena, he was compelled to attend “for the protocol of the thing.” But he adds, “We were happy to go along with that.”

The trip to Japan, with stops in Seattle and Alaska, brought back memories of serving in the army in World War II, according to Actor’s Life. He says, “To be in Alaska again still shrouded me in the melancholy of a twenty-year-old at war and far from home.” While the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended planned invasions of Japan that Heston could possibly have taken part, 1960 was Heston’s invasion.

And the Japanese more than welcomed him. He says that the restaurants were “fabulous” and the people were “wonderfully friendly.” The theater had been redecorated—inside and out—and new projectors had been installed, which, of course, gave Murphy’s Law an invitation to crash the party. He recalls in Arena that the film broke “three times in the first ten minutes.” He had to stop Jim Castle, head of MGM distribution for the Far East, from rushing up to the projection booth, “clearly bent on murder.” However, once Castle saw the “corpse-pale” projectionist’s face, he observed there was nothing he could do to make the man feel worse than he already did.

Chuck and Lydia Heston with Jimmy and Gloria Stewart at the 32nd Academy Awards. Photo from Charltonhestonworld.homestead.com.

In spite of the hiccups, the premiere itself went well, but things weren't going so well at home in America. Heston states in his journal that the trip was interrupted the first day by a call no one wants to get—Lydia’s mother had had a heart attack. He says his wife took it well, and the day, for the most part, progressed as planned until she boarded a plane at midnight to fly home. When he arrived in Los Angeles on April 2, he says his mother-in-law seemed “past her crisis.”

Two days later, Charlton Heston would be on top of the world at the 32^nd Academy Awards. According to Heston in Arena, the long night began while he strolled into the lobby. It just happened to be at the same time as Jimmy Stewart, the Best Actor nominee for Anatomy of a Murder. After the media went crazy taking photos of the two nominees together, Jimmy took Heston’s arm and said, “I hope you win, Chuck. I really mean that.” Heston states, “He did, too. I don’t know another actor alive who would've said such a thing. He’s an extraordinary man.”

Photo from Charltonhestonworld.homestead.com.

Several hours later, while Susan Hayward reached for the envelope for Best Actor, Heston says he had “an odd experience.” He says he felt, while glancing to his left at a chandelier at the other side of the hall, an “almost audible click” that he had won. He says he sat with perfect equanimity until Susan read his name. During the course of his acceptance speech, he thanked an uncredited contributor, writer Christopher Fry—which annoyed the Writers Guild. (They had refused MGM give credit to Fry on the movie.) While taking pictures afterward with Ben-Hur director William Wyler—“Willy” in the journal entry—he realized receiving an Academy Award never gets “old hat.”

After the show, he and his wife first stopped at the hospital to show Lydia’s mother the Oscar, and then they moved from party to party “all night long.” He says, “Though I drank, I’m afraid, more or less steadily until we got home at dawn and sat on the front steps to savor the L.A. Times’ front page, I was stone cold sober.”

The rest of the month was certainly incidental, but there isn't the room for it in this blog. I will mention, however, that he subsequently received a rebuking letter from the Writers Guild for mentioning Fry in his acceptance speech (an “entertaining controversy,” he adds in his journal). He also participated with the negotiating committee in the Screen Actors Guild strikes, led by none-other-than our future fortieth president, Ronald Reagan. The month of April did not end on a happy note, unfortunately. On April 30, while rehearsing for The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City, he received a call from Lydia that her mother had passed away.

Heston mentions in the introduction to Actor’s Life that because of his journals, "I still don't have many answers, but I've got better questions. The journals have taught me a lot... But the main thing I've learned is this: It's not always the way you remember it was."