When you think of Charlton Heston, you’re likely to think of his roles in Ben Hur and El Cid, as Moses in The Ten Commandments, as Ramon Miguel Vargas in Touch of Evil, Major Matt Lewis in 55 Days at Peking, as General Charles Gordon in Khartoum, Major Amos Charles in Major Dundee and George Taylor in Planet of the Apes.
All these characters are incorruptible, out to right the world’s wrongs, save humanity, are moral to the point of sacredness or, if you prefer, annoyingly inflexible, self-righteous and superior to the point of self-abnegation and self-destruction.
In Major Dundee, Sam Peckinpah does try to thrust Heston and the Heston stereotype into situations where his morality and dutifulness are severely put to the test, offering him all the licentious delights that might break down his supercilious high-mindedness and make him more human; but the studios didn’t like what Peckinpah was up to and took the film away from him and cut it to preserve their image of Heston as pious hero.
There are instances in his career that Heston tried to break away from the stereotype. One is the Western Will Penny, another is the 1990 version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, Treasure Island, in which he plays Long John Silver. (See entire film here).
The buccaneer Silver is entirely corrupt, amoral, inspired by greed, a killer, a mutineer, a thoroughly disagreeable, incorrigible outlaw. We’re not even sure his willingness to betray his fellow pirates and protect young Jim Hawkins is genuine paternal instinct and not a cunning stratagem to eliminate rivals for John Flint’s loot or a base plan to save his own skin, realising that the mutiny he’s headed is doomed and that the gallows beckon unless he can convince Captain Smollett, Dr Livesey and Squire Trelawney that he’s redeemable.
Heston’s characterisation of Long John Silver doesn’t succeed. Heston can’t get away from injecting the lowly criminal with a dose of nobility and amputating the ambiguity of his actions. More convincing in the film are Oliver Reed’s portrayal of Captain Billy Bones – who he hilariously plays as a rambunctious Glaswegian – and Christopher Lee’s creepy depiction of Blind Pugh, the angel of death, who palms the Black Spot – the sign of imminent death – to Billy Bones.
