Charlton Heston Put A Vest On

(FYI,the title of this post is a line from a song by an '80's band named Stump. The song was called "Charlton Heston.")
If you noticed the picture to the right of this post, you could conclude that I'm a fan of the Planet of The Apes movies, especially the first one. What set that film latex-simian head and shoulders above the others was the great performance of Charlton Heston as time traveling astronaut Taylor. Even though I own a copy on DVD, I'll still stop and watch it whenever it pops up on late night cable.
Of course he did a couple other decent movies. Soylent Green, The Omega Man, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and over a hundred others during a seven decade career. I even liked his cameo in that wretched Marky-Mark remake of the aforementioned Planet of The Apes.
So one morning in the early '90s I came into work here at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and was informed by my boss that a special event had been hastily scheduled for that evening and I'd need to work it. All I was told was that a big-wig friend of the theatre's benefactor, Mr. Wynton Blount, was going to speak to a group in the smaller of our two theatres. I parked myself in our green room at 6:30 and waited for Mr. Blount and his guest to arrive. At 7:00 on the nose two black SUVs pulled up on the lawn outside the stage door and a bunch of people in suits entered the building. The mob pushed their way into the room where I was trying to look officious, and then it happened. The mass of people (sorry) parted like the Red Sea and Mr. Blount and his friend walked up to me, and Mr. Blount said "Chuck, I'd like you to meet Clay Koontz. He keeps everything running around here." I shook both their hands and tried not to sound like a gushing idiot. We made some small talk while the audience took their seats, and I reminded Mr. Heston the name of the theatre's artistic director two or three times, because he said that years before he had to choose between remembering people's names or his lines.
He spoke to the audience for about 40 minutes, asking them to be supportive of our theatre and the arts in general. He performed Prospero's last speech from The Tempest (quite well) and some pieces from a play about Sherlock Holmes he was working on at the time, and then the black SUVs swept him away to a Republican fund-raiser at Mr. Blount's estate (hey, nobody's perfect.)
Everybody can close their eyes and hear his voice saying those iconic lines: "let my people go." or "Soylent Green is people." or "damn dirty apes." I feel fortunate that I can also remember his voice intoning those last words of Prospero, asking an audience for the blessing of their applause.