Charlton Heston Movies

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 in 1959's Ben-Hur
Charlton Heston in 1959’s Ben-Hur

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.
Charlton Heston in 1968's Planet of the Apes
Charlton Heston in 1968’s Planet of the Apes

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

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162 thoughts on “Charlton Heston Movies”

  1. “I only know that I race against Messala.” Good to see my favorite movie at the top of your moviescore chart Bruce. I’ve watched Ben-Hur every year since first taping it off the telly in 1980, now I’ve got it in glorious hi-def. Heston is one of my favorite actors let’s see I’ve seen… 36 of the 61 films you’ve listed, hmm I thought it’d be more. I can’t remember seeing Secret of the Incas, I want to see that. Yeah he turned down the lead in The Omen and regretted it when the film turned out so well and was a smash hit, I read his published diaries. Excellent work on this upgrade Bruce and thanks for the links, much appreciated.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve…..I think I am catching up to you. I am now at 25 Heston movies watched. Ben-Hur is ranked high now matter which way you rank his movies. It is actually one of the highest scoring movies in my database…actually it has a Top 10 spot. Secret of the Incas is one I have wanted to see for awhile. As always thanks for checking out my movie page.

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  2. Ben Hur and was more successful than The Ten Commandments. And played in theaters for 4 years in its initial release.

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      1. B Ryan is correct. The boxoffice mojo etc is not accurate. Ben Hur is the bigger box office hit world wide. In 1977 it was ranked #3 after Gone with The Wind and Birth of A Nation in actual tickets sold. ( Author Jeff Rovin, The Films of Charlton Heston)

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          1. Mojo has Ten Commandments at 65 million in 1956 and Ben Hur at 74 million in 1959. Ben Hur was nearly 10 million dollars more and only 3 years after Ten Commandments.

        2. Hey Bruce. I agree when it comes to older movies Box Office Mojo usually gets things wrong. My numbers come from Variety. Back then they reported box office in rentals versus gross. Variety Feb. 26th 1992 is the last issue that I own that still reports box office rentals. In that issue they have The Ten Commandment listed as the biggest hit of the 1950s….with Ben-Hur in 2nd place. Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp have bigger rental numbers but they were rereleased some many times that I do not include them.
          Box office rental numbers….Ten Commandments….43.00 million…..Ben-Hur 36.99 million.
          Converting box office rentals to box office grosses is not an exact science….but I use a multiplier of 2.2 to come up with gross. I came up with the 2.2 multiplier based on a 3,000 movie study I did that compared rentals to known grosses. Once I calculated the gross I used ticket cost for the original release and all of the re-releases….to get my adjusted box office grosses. So normally I think box office mojo is wrong on older movies…I think they got this one right…..but the were both monster monster hits.

          Thanks for checking out my Heston page and commenting it is greatly appreciated. I wish they would have kept better records back then.

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        3. My numbers only look at domestic grosses and not worldwide grosses. Ben-Hur might have been the bigger of the two when looking at worldwide grosses.

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          1. Ben-Hur was outpacing the box office for The Ten Commandments in some countries but total rentals on initial release had Ten Commandments out in front and both films had highly successful re-releases during the 70’s. Ben-Hur is the better film but The Ten Commandments has sold more tickets worldwide.

          2. Hey Steve thanks for the input. It is a shame that Hollywood studios felt they had to keep their box office numbers a secret. When USA Today started publishing the Top 5 every Monday….the studios were pissed. Free publicity and they thought it was a bad thing. Fast forward 30 years and they seem eager to share that info. Getting back to the question of box office numbers for Chuck’s monster hits…I bow to your expertise on the subject.

          3. I guess it depends on where you get the information. Mr.Heston told me himself that Ben Hur was the biggest and most successful film of his career. Lets not forget, that Ben Hur also had the bigger cost in production as well. It was the most expensive film ever made up to that time. Ten Commandments was costly but Ben Hur was much more. And as your very incisive Ultimate Movie Rankings show, Ben Hur had the most awards and accolades of ANY film ever made and that still holds true to this day. Its critical acclaim dwarfs Ten Commandments or any film for that matter. It is by FAR the more esteemed film and as Steve Lensman says, it is the better film.

  4. Charlton Heston made movie classics in five different genres. My favourite Heston movie is one of his B-movies, though. SECRET OF THE INCAS is so good that they copied Indiana Jones from it

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    1. Thanks for stopping by James Byrne….I agree 100% Heston was one of the few greats that could switch genres with ease. I have not seen Secret of the Incas….but I will have to check it out and look for the Indiana Jones connections…thanks for the comments.

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  5. @Cogerson…Back at you for the follow! I agree…one nomination for Heston was ridiculous. At least he got one and won the Oscar. Now when it’s too late, his “Touch of Evil” is always mentioned as his greatest part…He thought so, too!

    He didn’t get raves for “Khartoum”, but it was another “Ben-Hur” similar predicament in a different era and country, and I think many fans appreciated that.

    Reply

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