Originally Posted by
Standing Wolf
In 1998, I found out that Charlton Heston was coming to Scottsdale for a book signing, and my wife and I decided to go and meet the man. In addition to getting his new book signed, I had a couple of others that he'd authored that I brought along, including one of the best and most honest "show business" biographies I've ever read, 'The Actor's Life'.
The bookstore was located in a large mall - younger members may not remember when every large mall had at least two - and in addition to the signing line that had formed and was winding out of the store and down for some distance, a large crowd of probably a couple of hundred people had formed around the store's mall entrance to see him. As the scheduled time for the signing approached, I assumed that they'd be bringing Heston in through a back door...but instead, he suddenly appeared, with an escort of course, on the far side of the crowd, and then something remarkable happened. Suddenly and silently, that big crowd parted, and it was like a reenactment of the Red Sea parting in The Ten Commandments, in which Heston starred as Moses. I'm not kidding at all - it was a little eerie.
Although he would live another nine-and-a-half years, Heston was already rumored to be in ill health at that time, but he looked quite good. As he passed by, I encouraged my wife to shake his hand, which she did. I wanted to shake his hand, myself, of course, but I could see that, at the pace he was taking, only one of us would have time to do so and I deferred to my better half.
When we finally got to the signing table, I saw that CH was using some kind of calligraphy pen to sign the books, and putting a beautiful, unique signature on them. As he was signing my wife's and my copies, along with some others we'd bought for relatives and his earlier books that I'd brought, I had time to ask him a question. I'd thought ahead of time about what I wanted to say or ask, of course. I'd always been a fan of Soylent Green, so I asked him about that. I mentioned the two big fight scenes that he had with Chuck Connors in that film, and asked whether either of them had actually gotten hurt during the filming of them.
Heston told me that no, they'd had some very talented and experienced stunt men to help them choreograph and shoot those scenes, and also that both he and Connors had done a lot of that kind of thing before. Then he looked up from the table, directly into my eyes, and said, "Thank you for remembering."