Greeted this morning with the sad news that Charleton Heston has died. His work brought the girls and I hours of pleasure. Even though he had been out of the limelight for the last few years due to ill health it is sad to think that he is no longer with us.
I can't really pinpoint the time when I saw my first CH movie. I am sure that it was in my teen years when I watched a lot of old movies (not that I don't watch a lot now, thank goodness for Turner Classic Movies). One of the stations in the Chicago area showed movies/musicals late at night. I took in a lot good Hollywood stuff while eating my popcorn and drinking an Orange Crush.
I love watching The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, The Greatest Show on Earth, Soylent Green, The Planet of the Apes. Who couldn't thrill to the confrontation between Judah Ben Hur and Massalah, or the chariot race in Ben Hur, or Charleton Heston in a skimpy loin cloth thing in the The Commandments (the first half anyways), or the classic line from Planet of the Apes "What have you done to him you damn dirty apes! You taken out his brain!" (I just wanted to write damn).
Funny as it sounds, one of my favorite of his movies is a long forgotten made for TV movie called "A Thousand Heros" about the crash of United flight 232 at Sioux City, IA in 1989. I can't tell you why but I just love that movie. When the movie was first shown, in the early 1990's I had recorded it on a VHS tape. The girls watched it almost constantly at the time. In fact, we had to take a weekend trip to Rochester, NY and I took the tape with us because I needed something for the girls to do while Dan was in meetings. Imagine my horror when I realized, after we arrived home, that I had left the tape at the hotel (the tape also had Mary Poppins on it but who cared about THAT). Frantic calls produced no tape and sad faces. Then, several years later, when I had finally figured out how to be "online" and how to do an internet search, I typed in "Charleton Heston movies" on a whim and found......that I could buy the VHS of the movie. Rejoicing, rejoicing.
I think that when Ashley gets home we will need to indulge in a Hestonathon. I will bring the popcorn and the orange crush, you Mr. Heston bring all the good memories.
Amen. I would love to have a Hestonathon with you, Mom :) Like I said on the phone today, he always seemed immortal, like everyone else would fade away, but we would always have Chuck. It seems all the more sad now that he's gone. I had almost completely forgotten about "Rescue of Flight 232" until you mentioned it, but I have so many fond memories of it.
ReplyDeleteRest in peace, Chuck. We will never forget you.