Want to know the best Charlton Heston movies? How about the worst Charlton Heston movies? Curious about Charlton Heston’s box office grosses or which Charlton Heston movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Charlton Heston movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Charlton Heston (October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) is known for his heroic roles in films such as 1961’s El Cid, 1956’s The Ten Commandments, 1968’s Planet of the Apes and 1959’s Ben-Hur, for which he won the Oscar® for Best Actor. At one point, Heston had starred in three of the top eight movies of all-time. Those movies were Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur and The Greatest Show on Earth. Heston remained a leading man from 1950 until the early 1980s. After that he started appearing in supporting roles in such movies as True Lies, Any Given Sunday and Tombstone.
His IMDb page shows 131 acting credits from 1941-2010. This page will rank Charlton Heston movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.
Charlton Heston Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Charlton Heston Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Charlton Heston movies by his co-stars
- Sort Charlton Heston movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort Charlton Heston movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Charlton Heston movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Charlton Heston movie received.
- Sort Charlton Heston movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Charlton Heston
1. Charlton Heston was born John Charles Carter….Charlton’s name comes from his mom’s maiden name, Charlton, and his stepfather’s last name, Heston.
2. Charlton Heston turned down the role of “Police Chief Brody” in Jaws. Other movies he turned down over the years….John Wayne’s The Alamo, A Man For All Seasons, The Wild Bunch, The Omen, Deliverance and Stalag 17
3. Charlton Heston only received one Oscar® nomination in his acting career but he made it count as won the Oscar® for Ben-Hur…..luckily Burt Lancaster turned down the role.
4. Charlton Heston had two parts in The Ten Commandments……Moses and he provided the voice of God……years later he was hired by the F.B.I during the April 1993 Waco stand-off with cult leader David Koresh, to play the voice of God while communicating with him. However the plan was never used.
5. Charlton Heston played President Andrew Jackson twice in two separate unrelated films: The President’s Lady in 1953 and The Buccaneer in 1958.
6. Charlton Heston was also known for his political activism. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. He was also president of the NRA from 1998 to 2003.
7. Charlton Heston was married to Lydia Clarke from 1944 until his death in 2008…they had two children.
8. In his 1985 autobiography “In The Arena” Charlton Heston wrote that 1972’s The Call of the Wild was easily his worst film, and hoped the public would never have to watch the film.
9. His line “Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” from Planet of the Apes, is ranked by the American Film Institute as the 66th best movie quote of all-time.
10. Two links from SteveLensman are highly recommended. One is all about Ben-Hur and the other about all Charlton Heston movies. Charlton Heston Movies
Steve’s Charlton Heston You Tube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Town and Country video does not work.
Thanks for the alert to this trailer not working. It worked for me…but I went ahead and added a new trailer to the page.
Hey Bob and Steve…mmm…..so I looked at Joel’s thoughts and ratings of Chuck a little closer….yes…he has Mr. Heston rated on the lower side…not as low as Brando and Wayne….but in the same group as Errol Flynn, Yul Brenner and Sylvester Stallone.
His 4 Star Heston Performancs
1952’s The Greatest Show on Earth
1952’s Ruby Gentry
1956’s The Ten Commandments
1958’s The Big Country
1958’s Touch Of Evil
1959’s Ben-Hur
1968’s Will Penny
His lowest Heston movies got a 2 out of 4 star review….but that was with 18 movies…..which is why the score was on the lower end….because the book only rated 52 movies.
18 – 2 star performances
27 – 3 star performances
7 – 4 star performances
So he has 65% of Heston’s movies rated 3 or 4 stars….that is not too bad. For comparison I looked at Wayne and Brando.
Wayne
144 movies rated
96- 2 star performances
32 – 3 star performances
16 – 4 star performances
So he has 33% of Wayne’s movies rated 3 or 4 stars
Brando
31 movies rated
3 – 1 star performances
14- 2 star performances
7 – 3 star performances
7 – 4 star performances
So he has 45% of Brando’s movies rated 3 or 4 star
Just in case you were wondering.
Flora, more sad news but Lydia did live a long life. RIP.
Bob, The Omega Man was a huge favorite of mine when I was a kid. That film and Planet of the Apes made Heston look superheroic to my young eyes. Ben-Hur eventually became my favorite movie.
STEVE
Great Heston fan though I have always been and although it was one of his huge successes I never liked Planet of the Apes as much as even his early 1950s smaller-scale movies such as The Naked Jungle, Pony Express, Arrowhead and The Savage.
My out and out fave Heston films would probably be Ben Hur, Arrowhead,The Naked Jungle and of course Big Country as that had my Greg in it as well and I always liked your English Rose Jean Simmons.
I should add that Greatest Show on Earth was never a fave of mine despite two of my idols, Jimmy and Chuck being in it along with Cornel Wilde whom I used to like in the 50s and for whom I’ve often wondered if we would get a video from you and/or a page from Bruce.
Bob, I’ll add Cornel Wilde to my video list, completely forgot about that actor, and he was quite popular at one time.
The Big Country is another huge favorite of mine.
The Naked Jungle was a favorite as a kid. Regularly turned up on TV back then. Marabunta! Only 4 channels in the 70s but we were glued to the TV, there was always something worth watching. Now with hundreds of channels I can’t find anything to watch. 😉
HI STEVE
Great to have a Wilde video. He never made the very top as a star but he had quite a prolific career in the 1950s with programmers and actioners such as The Big Combo, The Devil’s Hairpin and Treasure of the Golden Condor, a remake of Ty Power’s Son of Fury. Cornel’s version actually pleased me personally more than Ty’ outing which I never really liked though I was a bigger Power fan than I was a Wilde fan in those days
Naked Jungle was made in 1953 and in it Chuck although in the main role was billed 2nd to Elanor Parker, who although an important star then was not in the really big league of the likes Liz Taylor and Deb Kerr. Heck Elanor was never even as big a star as little Asta’s mistress. Shows you how far Chuck travelled over the next 10 years getting billed above even legends like Ava Gardner [in 55 Days at Peking.
Still the chemistry between Chuck and Parker worked well and in the beginning of their relationship the sparks flew as she is his mail order bride whom he has never met and he treats her as “property”
I saw it in 1963 [for the 100th time] in the television room at Royal Air Force Innsworth in Gloucester. There I go boasting about my English connections again just to get on the right side of you.
The film was based on a short story Leiningen [Chuck] Versus The Ants by Carl Stephenson. When I first saw the movie back in 1953 it was on a double bill with Bob Hope’s 1939 Some Like it Hot
Thanks for the trivia Bob. Chuck was a mite cold and unlikable during the first half of The Naked Jungle but beautiful sexy Eleanor starts to warm his cockles, er so to speak, and he becomes the hero we need him to be. 🙂
Talking of a ‘Naked Jungle’ wasn’t there a Wilde Cornel film where he was running Naked thru the Jungle for most of the running time?
Your cinema recollections of 60 years ago always amaze me. I have the memory of a goldfish but I too remember a lot of past cinema excursions. For instance I remember waiting nearly an hour in a queue to see The Wild Geese in 1978 only to be told the cinema was full. Sh*t! I made sure I bought an advance ticket for the next showing.
I agree more sad news. Rest in Peace Lydia.
QUEUES Ah the cinema queues! Guys like the Work Horse with today’s advance booking facilities probably know little about them. Back in the early fifties though before TV started to eat into cinema audiences large queues for long periods were the norm.
One would be standing there [often being damned as part of a captive audience for a hellfire preacher] and at intervals a smartly dressed attendant would appear at the head of the queue and say “next 3 please” or something similar.
Those of us further down the queue would quake every time he appeared because often he would ultimately suddenly pop up and brandish a large sign which said “House Full for Tonight,” and we would all turn and trudge back home at times half-frozen and/or wet.
CHUCK In Naked Jungle Eleanor is a mail order bride whom Heston’s brother back in the States has organised for Chuck and HE has of course never met her before. Chuck’s Leiningen is a haughty person to begin with but he becomes even colder when he learns that Eleanor has had romantic experiences previously.
One night in his cups he insults her by explaining that he has always prided himself in being the first to possess anything. He points to his grand piano and boasts that he paid a fortune to have it shipped from the States because it was new and nobody had ever played it.
She retorts that often practice makes something better and after playing a few chords she bangs down the lid and says “That is not a particularly good piano at the moment. Goodnight!” and walks out of the room with great dignity. Magic!
JESSE STONE I don’t know if you get the 5 USA channel but tomorrow morning Selleck’s Jesse Stone Benefit of the Doubt is showing, part one at 11.15 am and part 2 at 12.15 pm. I can’t wait to see it for the 5th time!
HI FLORA
As a lifelong Chuck Heston fan I thank you for passing on the site the sad news of Lydia Clarke’s death. It was very kind of you
Chuck met Lydia when they were students in a drama class at Northwestern University. He claimed in an interview that I saw once that he always sat behind her in class and in fact fell in love with the back of her neck initially and the relationship blossomed from there onward ! !.
Lydia was a supporting actress and made only 4 movies, three of them with her husband, Bad for Each Other, Greatest Show on Earth and Will Penny. The 4th was Atomic City [1952] starring Gene Barry in the male lead.
She also did still photography on two of Chuck’s films –Mother Lode [1982] and The Omega Man [1971], which I think is a big fave of Steve. Mother Lode was produced and written by Chuck’s son Fraser who you may know played the baby Moses in his father’s 1956 Ten Commandments. Chuck himself directed Mother Lode so the whole thing seems to have been one big family affair – a bit like the Cogersons’ executive committee for this site!
Hey Bob….excellent comment and thoughts on Chuck and Lydia. Most I did not know….so thank you for that.
HI BRUCE
As you know I always like writing about my idols [and their wives, girlfriends ,etc] such as Chuck, Ole Mumbles, Crawford, Doris and The Duke but as you said in relation to Burt Reynolds it can be bittersweet at times and my big regret is that the Cogerson site and I were not corresponding when many of my heroes and heroines were still alive.
Of course I try to be balanced in my coverage on this site of performers and as you are aware I frequently mention the “bad guys” [and gals] in the entertainment business too !! I am sure you could list one or two to whom I give lot of mileage!!
For Steve and Bob-
Charlton Heston’s wife, actress Lydia Clarke Heston has died. She was 95.
Hey Flora….thanks for sharing the news on Lydia Heston. RIP.