- Remembering Charlton Heston: The Man In The Arena
by Mark McIntire

April 9, 2008 11:42 AM

Charlton Heston kept his promises. He was good to his friends. He believed in a merciful God, and he loved his country. As though that was not enough to separate him from today’s Hollywood elite, he was married, too, and lived with the same woman for over 60 years.

Chuck well may be the last iconic gentleman of his era about whom all of the preceding statements were true.

Many will recall Chuck’s epic stage, movie and TV triumphs, and think he actually was Moses or Ben Hur or Will Penny or Mark Antony. That would amuse as much as bemuse him. “My dad pretends to be other people for a living,” his only son, Fraser Heston, would tell his classmates.

Chuck was an actor’s actor whose only complaint was: “I never got it right. I always thought I could have done that role better.”
Some will recall meeting Chuck at a premiere, posh party, political convention, or just on the street. They’d be struck to find he had the same commanding presence and honest grit, and the same gentlemanly manners, on screen and off.
He was a gentleman’s gentleman. “Daddy lives by his principles, not by the costumes he wears in movies,” his only daughter, Holly, would tell all who asked what he was really like as a person.

Once a liberal Democrat who campaigned with Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, Chuck later became identified with the conservatism of his friend Ronald Reagan. “I didn’t change . . . my party did,” he’d explain to those who asked about his transformation.

Of all the things that will be written and said of Chuck now that he is dead, a most important key to his character will be overlooked. Charlton Heston derived his moral and political values from ethical principles that did not change over the course of his spectacular life. His detractors argued this only proves he was a fool. But when we look at what his detractors have accomplished in their lives by comparison, we are left with the suspicion that Chuck was no fool. He was a centered man, comfortable in his own skin.

At their 50th wedding anniversary dinner, some upstart (that would be me) had the impertinence to ask his beloved wife, Lydia: “How did you manage to stay married to that man for so many years?” In her typical serenity and graciousness, she replied: “Through Chuck, I learned to keep a center of my being to myself . . . else there would be no one there for him to love.”

The Holy Bible and the complete works of William Shakespeare were never far from Chuck’s fingertips in his study. It’s hard to think of my friend Chuck now without remembering these lines from “Romeo and Juliet,” Act 3, Scene 2:
“And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars. And he shall make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”

Mark McIntire, a Santa Barbara resident, knew
Charlton Heston for 27 years.
http://markmcintire.com

When I heard he’d croaked, I had a micropanic attack, thinking “uh-oh, did my gay die, too?” But, whew, it’s still there. Alive and well. Big time.

Being born in the 50’s had it advantages…especially young boys and Westerns.

Clint Walker did it for me…and I wasn’t even cummin yet. I would dream about this beautiful…big…strong man with the dark skin and blue eyes…and a voice that dripped of testosterone. No wonder they used his voice as the voice of God in The Ten Commandments. When I knew he really did it for me was in “The Night of the Grizzly”.
Seeing him for the first time without a shirt gave me a serious attack of the vapors.
I thought Men were born like that and I was mesmerized.

Chuck Connors was another one. I never missed an episode of “The Rifleman”. Chuck’s
serious dick always hung to “the left”. Boy, was I jealous of Mark. As an adult, I found a photo of Chuck fucking some guy in his early Pre-Rifleman days. Blue-Steel boner all over again…this time with some juice.

Between this two Men…I didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell in subscribing to the boring life of “heterosexuality”.
I still get a hard-on thinking about these Men in their prime and my youth…

At any rate… I got in and saw Chuck in his buck-naked glory and I was turning into an orgasmic being at the sight. What a day! Burned into my memory as sharply as the burn on my pinafore dress after I baked an apple brown betty the other… oh, I’m sorry. I’m getting carried away.

Anyway… you are a hot man! I love your picture! I will probably never meet you, but, I loved your story and I can’t wait to read everything else you’ve written, and if I ever stumble into that parallel universe, I hope you’ll be waiting there for me with open arms.

Yours,
Dee

However. I definitely grooved to showering with my dad and eyeing other dads at the gym before Heston mooned me. I usually say that reruns of Ba Ba Blacksheep (or Wild Wild West, for that matter) with the often shirtless Robert Conrad made me gay, but it might as well have been Heston’s ass. Thank you for this though-provoking post.