In the Arena: An Autobiography - Hardcover

Heston, Charlton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684803941 ISBN 13: 9780684803944

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1995

Synopsis

Describing a career that spans half a century, one of America's favorite actors tells of his childhood shyness, personal insecurities, early steps to Broadway and television, and behind-the-scenes accounts of his great epic films. 100,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

Reviews

You'd hardly expect Chuck Heston--as decent a guy as any American actor's ever been--to produce a racy tell-all, and he doesn't. Rather, he recounts his career, although only after glowingly recalling his rural Michigan childhood and poor adolescence in contrastingly tony Wilmette, Illinois--then as now among Chicago's wealthiest suburbs. A drama scholarship to Northwestern University set him on the road to success and a string of distinguished films rivaled by few other actors of his generation. The stories of making those movies are the meat here, with seasoning coming from Heston's parallel stage accomplishments, his activism with the Screen Actors' Guild (he succeeded Ronald Reagan as SAG president), words of wisdom on the crafts of acting and filmmaking, tart asides on current cultural foibles (like Reagan, he's a former Democrat turned staunch Republican), and loving references to wife and children. But there's no gossip, which movie lovers who especially admire the grand-style filmmaking of Heston's 1950s^-1960s heyday won't miss a bit, so enthralled they'll be with the production anecdotes about The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and El Cid, among others. Ray Olson

Heston's memoir traces an amazingly prolific and durable career from his starring roles in historical epics of the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur) through disaster films of the 1970s (Earthquake) and into recent years spent largely as a stage actor and in TV character roles. As a published author (Bejing Diary, LJ 10/1/90, and the best-selling The Actor's Life, LJ 12/1/78), Heston no doubt actually wrote this volume and can be presumed to be a reliable chronicler. Throughout he is unusually generous to colleagues, totally devoted to his family, and surprisingly restrained in offering his well-publicized conservative political views. This memoir of a popular actor and his long career is recommended for most collections.?Thomas Wiener, Editor, "Satelite DIRECT"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684803941
• ISBN 13: 9780684803944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592