Paramount Home Video has released a new Blu-ray special edition of Cecil B. DeMille’s epic “The Ten Commandments”. The set includes both the director’s original silent film version as well as his 1956 blockbuster remake starring Charlton Heston as Moses. To commemorate the release of the video, Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer caught up with filmmaker Fraser C. Heston to discuss the impact of the movie on his father’s career. (An interesting footnote: Fraser Heston is seen in the film as baby Moses, thus, both father and son played the same character.)

Cinema Retro: Your father first worked for Cecil B. DeMille on The Greatest Show on Earth. Would you say he is the singular most important person responsible for your father’s rise to fame?

Fraser C. Heston: Absolutely. My father was on the Paramount lot and he waved at Mr. DeMille. He had been on the lot for some other audition and he saw Mr. DeMille by the gate and said, “Hello, Mr. DeMille” before driving off the lot. Mr. DeMille asked his secretary, “Who was that guy?” She said, “Oh, that’s Charlton Heston. I think you met him before and you didn’t think much of him.” But DeMille said, “Well, I think he’s an interesting guy. Why don’t you have him over and I’ll meet with him?” He ends up offering him the part of the circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth and it ends up winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. Then he tells him to come back for another meeting- he doesn’t even tell him what the part is- and says, “I’m going to make The Ten Commandments.” He shows him models and paintings all afternoon and gets him all excited but he doesn’t offer him a part. He just says, “I’ll bring you back in a week or two.” He ended up asking him, “How would you like to play Moses?” The rest is history, as they say.

CR: Was your father intimidated by playing such an historic character?

FH: No, I think he embraced the challenge. He obviously didn’t have to play him from a baby, as that was my job! But he did have to play him as a young man right up through when he had that white beard at the end of the movie, however old Moses was at that point. He also had the challenge of going from an Egyptian prince to a slave to the leader of his people- and to do it in a way that perhaps wasn’t as stylized as some of the DeMille epics. That film, I think, stands the test of time. The reason for that, I think, is the fantastic cast. Look at Yul Brynner’s performance, for example. I can’t imagine anyone else playing Ramses.

CR: I’m trying to remember if your father and Brynner ever worked together again…

FH: They did on The Buccaneer, which was produced by DeMille and directed by his son-in-law, Anthony Quinn. Not as good a film, obviously, but still a classic. Some interesting trivia- if I live long enough, since I was the youngest actor on the set of The Ten Commandments, I will be the last actor in Hollywood who worked with Cecil B. DeMille.

(Photo copyright Fraser C. Heston, 2019.) 

CR: I was recently revisiting your father’s wonderful book “The Actor’s Life”, which consists of the daily diary entries he kept when shooting films and discovered that, unfortunately, he began this habit only after The Ten Commandments has wrapped, though he does discuss post-production work on the movie. But he does write, “If you can’t make a career out of two DeMille pictures, you’d better turn in your suit.” He also writes, “Our son Fraser was born while we were shooting The Ten Commandments. He played the infant Moses at the age of three months and immediately retired, displaying an acute judgment of the acting profession.”

FH: (Laughing) Well, I think I felt a little pressure from my dad not to follow in his footsteps.

CR: Well, many offspring of iconic actors have followed in their footsteps with varying degrees of success. Were you ever tempted to do so?

FH: I think I was but I was discouraged by my mom and dad. I mean Michael Douglas pulled it off and a couple of other father-and-son acting teams pulled it off but I think my parents knew how tough it would be to follow in my dad’s footsteps. I started out in a different aspects of films. I started out as a writer and discovered I liked writing screenplays. I got a couple of things made and from there I started producing and then directing. So I came at filmmaking more from the storyteller’s point-of-view. I consider myself, even if I’m directing, to be a storyteller. That’s a director’s job.

CR: When was the first time you remember seeing The Ten Commandments?

FH: I was probably about five and it was pretty terrifying, you know between the Burning Bush and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army when the Red Sea collapses…and oh, my God…

CR: …and let’s not forget the presence of the great Vincent Price…

FH: Yes, the evil Vincent Price and Yvonne De Carlo and Yul Brynner and everybody. It was just fantastic. How could you have seen that as a young person and not been blown away by it all and be terribly impressed? I think everyone had that experience the first time they saw it. People in our generation were young when it came out and that was their first experience with an epic film. I think you have to place the film in a larger pool of epics associated with my father along with Ben-Hur, El Cid and to a certain degree, Planet of the Apes that culminated in films like Gladiator. You can even go so far as The Avengers series, which are giant modern epics. I think DeMille started it all. When you think of spectacle, you think of C.B. DeMille. When you think of C.B. DeMille, you think of The Ten Commandments, right?

CR: I’ve always said that if you didn’t like the way he directed actors, you had to admire the way he directed traffic in films that large…

FH: (Laughs) So true!

CR: I recall you once telling me that in the Heston household, DeMille was a revered name.

FH: He was. My dad always called him Mr. DeMille, never C.B. We still have the telegram he sent my mom and when I was born saying, “Congratulations, he’s got the part.” I’m looking at a picture on my wall right now. It’s a photo of me at age four or five being held in my dad’s arms and reaching out and tweaking Mr. DeMille’s nose.