Charlton Heston’s son honors his father’s sacrifices during World War II.
THE OSCAR-WINNING ACTOR BELIEVED IN SERVING HIS COUNTRY AND HIS FAMILY
Charlton Heston didn’t just play heroes on-screen — for many, he was also an admirable figure in life. During World War II, the actor served in the 11th Air Force bomber command as a radio gunner in the Aleutian Islands near Russia. “That meant he operated a radio and then a waist gun in a B-25 bomber in subzero temperatures,” his son, screenwriter Fraser Heston, explains to Closer. “You can imagine how horrible it was. They’d bomb the Northern Japanese islands and turn back and hope they could find their island again. There was no place to crashland. That was his war. He didn’t like to talk about it and didn’t consider himself a hero.”
Nevertheless, Charlton’s service to his country, his community and family speak loudly of the patriot and socially conscious man he was. Fraser, 62, who’s working on a documentary called Charlton Heston: The Man in the Arena, says his father should be remembered for more than his most famous roles or his at-times controversial politics. Whether people agreed with him or not, Charlton Heston stood up for his beliefs and led by example. “He definitely put his career and his life on the line for freedom and for his country,” Fraser says. And he left behind a legacy to be proud of. “He had no regrets.”
Charlton was barely in his 20s when he enlisted in the Air Force in 1944, and his support of the armed forces continued throughout his life. But even when he was abroad, his family was never far from mind. Charlton, who died at 84 in 2008, and his wife, Lydia, 94, to whom he remained married for 65 years, had “a funny code they worked out using the acts of Shakespeare’s plays” to stay in touch during World War II, Fraser explains. “If he said, ‘I’ve been reading in Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, Scene 1,’ it meant he was in Europe, because he couldn’t say where he was. That’s how they communicated.”
STRONG BELIEFS
Charlton’s military patriotism continued during the Vietnam War when he volunteered to go over with the USO. And he did more than entertain the troops. “He went by himself into areas that were under fire,” Fraser marvels. “He wrote down the names and phone numbers of the families of men and women he met there. When he got home he phoned them all — we’re talking thousands of names.” Naturally, not many people initially believed it was the Oscarwinning Ben-Hur actor calling them with news from their loved ones. “But that’s the kind of guy he was,” Fraser notes.
In fact, Charlton never shied away from danger when he believed in a cause. “He was shunned by some of the Hollywood glitterati on the left when he came out in favor of the NRA, but that didn’t bother him,” Fraser says. After all, he’d supported civil rights “back when it wasn’t popular to do so.” He even picketed segregated restaurants and marched with Martin Luther King Jr.
Charlton also proudly served the Hollywood community. “He felt very strongly about his fellow performers,” Fraser says. “He really was a union man.” As such, Charlton held three terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild and was on the same union board, with Ronald Reagan, that established residual payments for actors (Charlton received none for Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments).
“He cared about everybody,” Fraser tells Closer. “And he always believed that civil discourse was a [part] of a civil society.” Whether he was marching on Washington or teaching his son to follow his own beliefs, “He served his art and his country and his family,” Fraser says, “and just had a wonderful life.” — Lisa
Chambers, with reporting by Christina Rath
There is something of Moses in each
of us — the more there is, the better we are.”
— Charlton