MovieChat Forums > The Guns of Navarone (1961) Discussion > Heston rather than Peck

Heston rather than Peck

posted 11 years ago by bastasch8647
22 replies | jump to latest

Always a fan of Peck, but for this particular role, I believe Heston would have surpassed Peck, AND we know Heston could do an excellent "British accent" from his work in Khartoum and A Man for all Seasons. Not only "THE" template for historical, epic figures, Heston could also play the weatherbeaten, long-experienced hero-type. So I think the role should have gone to Heston, had he been interested and available.

Change of subject, Dimitri Tiomkin did good epic scores, with matching stirring themes, but his work in Navarone is almost cartoonish. He underscores quick editing cuts with equally quick changes in music, resulting in a jagged, early-cartoon type of scoring, e.g. action moving between gun emplacement and approaching Brit ships - we don't need a reference to the Brit national anthem each time the ships are shown, we KNOW they are British and we know they're in danger. Tiomkin should have smoothed out that score, it's far too obvious.

[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

Either or. I think Peck was probably the better looking actor among the two, and so they chose him for the lead.

[–] deforest-1 9 years ago

Not exactly logical thinking. If it's so why did Heston get any roles at all? -- There's always some so-called "better looking" actor around than the one you've got (in someone's opinion). Besides, a few months after this Charlton Heston was selected for the lead role in Cape Fear (1962) by the same director and Peck only got it at the last minute when Heston proved unavailable.

[–] Blueghost 9 years ago

*shrug*

who knows

[–] filmklassik 8 years ago

I'm curious as to whether you gave your "The best-looking actor wins the role" theory more than 5 seconds of thought, because it doesn't really hold water when you look at the careers of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Dustin Hoffman, etc.

Do you really believe it's a valid theory??

[–] hobnob53 8 years ago

I recently heard that stuff about Heston having been given the role in Cape Fear and dropping out at the last minute, but nowhere is there any evidence of that. Heston doesn't even mention the film in his autobiography (though he does briefly mention the 1991 remake in another context), nor is there anything in any biography of Peck that states he was anything but the only choice.

And one more thing -- Peck produced the movie.

It was Peck -- not the director, J. Lee Thomson, whom Peck hired to direct after his good experience working with him on Navarone -- who ultimately made the casting and other hiring decisions, and Peck who had bought the rights to the novel as a project for him to star in. (Peck still owned the rights to the book when Martin Scorsese bought them for his remake 30 years later.)

I don't know where this Heston tale comes from, but as far as the evidence shows, it seems to be nothing more than some urban legend.

[–] clore_2 8 years ago

Maybe somewhere along the line, someone confused Heston turning down The Omen which gave Peck one of his last boxoffice hits.

The IMDb page has Charles Bronson named as being considered for the role of Bowden, among others such as James Coburn and John Wayne!. I can see Bronson as Cady, but as the protagonist? No way.

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[–] hobnob53 8 years ago

Yeah, the Wiki entry on CF says the same thing. The Wayne claim is ridiculous, and Coburn and Bronson were hardly stars at that point. No, Peck made that picture for himself, and also always wanted Mitchum in the part of Cady, remembering him in The Night of the Hunter.

I thought about The Omen too, knowing that Heston did turn that one down and Peck got it. You may be right that that fact got conflated somewhere with this business about Cape Fear. As to Navarone, I've heard William Holden was offered the part but wanted too much money, so Peck was then asked. But nowhere was Heston ever considered, let alone asked, from anything authoritative that I've read, including Heston himself.

[–] The_Other_Snowman 11 years ago

One of the things that drew Gregory Peck to the movie was Carl Foreman's script and its anti-war themes. Charlton Heston might have sympathized with Captain Mallory, but would he have been happy to star in a movie written by a man who'd been blacklisted?

Dmiti Tiomkin's score is one of the high-points of the film, along with Peck's performance.

"If stupidity got us in this mess, why can't it get us out?" - Will Rogers

[–] phillipsdan83 10 years ago

Heston at that time was a liberal who participated in the Civil Rights movement, and even when he moved to the right he never hesitated to work with leftists like Oliver Stone and Vanessa Redgrave. An early sixties Heston wouldn't have given a rat's behind if the producer/screenwriter had been blacklisted.

[–] thbryn 10 years ago

I would not have prefered Heston to Peck. Now if you were talking Holden that's another matter but as been stated in another thread Holden was too identifiable with "Bridge" to get this part.

e Brit national anthem

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[–] princesstinymeat 10 years ago

I agree, Charleton Heston would have been great. I love Gregory Peck, but I think he was miscast in this film. Burt Lancaster might have also been a better choice.

[–] hobnob53 10 years ago

I like Heston, I like Lancaster, I like Holden, I like Douglas, but Peck was the right choice for this role. The part of Mallory required an introspective actor, not just a man of action, and Peck excelled at this more than these other actors did. (I also dispute the notion that Heston did a terrific English accent -- my wife is English and doesn't think so! Besides, Peck didn't attempt an English accent, nor was Mallory's nationality ever mentioned in the film.)

I do think his one drawback was that Peck wasn't as athletic as the others -- Heston or Lancaster would have been more convincing as mountaineers. But in this respect Peck is acceptable enough, and in other respects better. In any case Peck was certainly not miscast in this film. You can argue that others might have been better or preferable, but that's not the same as saying he was "miscast" -- meaning he couldn't persuasively do the job. He most certainly could, and did.

A decade earlier Carl Foreman had written High Noon with Peck in mind but, as the actor himself always put it in later years, "I'm the dope of all time who turned down High Noon." He believed it was similar to The Gunfighter, which he had done two years before. So when the opportunity came to work with Foreman (now blacklisted and in exile in England) in what promised to be a major blockbuster -- something Peck needed at that point in his career -- he grabbed it, and it worked out spectacularly.

Incidentally, Cary Grant was once tipped for the lead, though this seems more a publicity release than a solid offer.

As to Tiomkin, his score was almost universally praised. He received one of his 24 Oscar nominations for the music, and was paid a then-record price of $50,000 for his work -- double the prevailing wage for a film composer in 1961. In 1975, Steven Spielberg, writing a blurb for the release of John Williams's soundtrack for Jaws, stated, "I haven't been so pleased with a movie score since The Guns of Navarone." The score is excellent, memorable, everything it should be. Of course, in the end such things are matters of personal taste, but I think it's safe to say Tiomkin's music was well-received and a critical asset to the film.

[–] filmklassik 8 years ago

Can't beleive the quality of Tiomkin's score is even controversial. It's a masterpiece. Incredibly melodic and incredibly stirring. (How the hell could anyone think otherwise??)

And you're right about Mallory's introspective quality. The character had to have it, and Peck brings that quality in spades, much more than Lancaster or Holden would have. He's terrific in the part.

[–] Gov_William_J_LePetomane 9 years ago

N!gger, please!

Everyone knows Charlton Heston could barely act his way out of a wet paper bag.

And compared to Gregory Peck, one of the all time greats? Is this a joke?

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[–] doctorltm 9 years ago

"Everyone knows Charlton Heston could barely act his way out of a wet paper bag."

This has to be one of the dumbest posts I ever read. Charlton Heston was one of the all-time greats. To say otherwise demonstrates a strong scent of ignorance and stupidity. I love Gregory Peck, but is not better than Heston.

[–] phillipsdan83 8 years ago

Heston was a classically trained actor...a style that can come off as hammy if the director or actor aren't careful. And Heston was such a natural at larger than life characters it was hard to cast him as anything else after a while.

[–] spencerc2217 8 years ago

Being obvious was Tiomkin's stock in trade. Poor musicianship and orchestration, but he could write a good tune on occasion.

[–] gpmjobs 7 years ago

Just don't see it myself - Peck is absolutely perfect for the role, plays it spot on and at no point does his accent become an issue unless you want to make it so. Not least since his background and nationality is never explored and in the book I recall him being a New Zealander, so unless you were planning on having Dick Van Dyke try to do his "cockney" accent I've not seen any evidence of any American actor from the time being good at an antipodean accent.

[–] telegonus (727) 2 years ago

I think that Tiomkin's score is a beautiful piece of work, especially if one listens to its "symphonic version", all of a piece. The quieter, more wistful moments are beautiful, actually enhance the louder, more strident parts of the score IMHO. As to what you called the cartoonish stuff, well, it's not like Dimitri was co-director of the movie.

Maybe the producer asked for "lighter" or more humorous moments, and that's what he got. Those moments lighten the movie's load, as it were. They may sound more than a bit "dated" by today's standards, but WTF. The Guns Of Navarone is a great movie (of its kind), and the audience needed a few "breaks" now and then, from its overall seriousness, I mean, and they got a few.

As to casting Charlton Heston over Peck as Mallory, I don't think it would have worked. He wasn't yet a superstar when the film was made. His screen presence was strong, almost too monolithic for a picture of "many moods". Gregory Peck was rather a wooden actor, too, but he was a more known commodity when the film was in its planning stages. There were occasions when he was even a bit "funny", as when he chews out David Niven, which as I see it, actually enhances the scene. Peck wasn't always a wholly serious actor, while Heston generally was.

[–] Otter (24464) a year ago

Oh God, Heston would have been ALL WRONG!!!

Peck always gave the impression that there was a massive world of thought going on behind his eyes, while he said and did the right thing, which is exactly right for this film. Captain Miller was a man who did his duty even though he didn't like it, and Peck was perfect casting - you could see all the second thoughts and doubts and guilt and horror of violence playing out in his head, while he did the job the military had sent him to do.

Heston was the opposite as an actor, there was never anything going on behind his eyes, which made him very good at characters who were sincere and determined, or who were acting on Faith, and who didn't doubt their mission or themselves. Which is actually a rare gift for an actor, and which worked marvelously well in some of those fifties Epic films.. but which would have been completely and utterly wrong for "Guns of Navarrone".

[–] TheArgentinian (6413) a year ago

Well said. He would have been so tonally off with the rest of the cast and the picture

[–] roger1 (2270) a month ago

A side-bar thought:

Heston had appeared in 1958 in the epic Western "The Big Country" CO-STARRING with Gregory Peck(and I think billed AFTER Peck but over the title.)

Word is that Heston was working diligently on a star career and when director Wiliam Wyler offered Heston the (indeed secondary part) in The Big Country...he didn't want to take the part and second billing to Peck.

But Wyler convinced Heston to do it and offered him a TRUE lead the very next year: "Ben-Hur!" (After Rock Hudson passed.) Ben-Hur won Best Picture, Heston won Best Actor and maybe -- just maybe -- Heston agreeing to work "second banana" for William Wyler in The Big Country opened the door for Ben-Hur.

Indeed, in The Big Country, Peck is playing a tenderfoot sea captain from the East Coast, and thus is a bit more "dandified" than the raw and rugged(and, to my eyes, somewhat less pretty Heston). But the two characters have a big ol' fistfight(witnessed by no one as I recall) to make amends and to tolerate each other.