>>. >> in 1979, c-span was created as a public service america's cable television companies and is brought to you todayby your cable or satellite provider . >> joining us on book tv is biographer elliott. >> >> in world war ii off the coast of alaska. he was on several missions because he was trained as a radio man.

he enlisted after pearl harbor. he was in school, and took about a year to get him, to call them up. just before he left, he married his wife, married for the next 65 years. so when he was in the illusion, they were about the soldiers, they were about to invade japan, the final big push. the estimate was that the army would lose up to 1 million men. so when the bombs were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki, charlton heston was overjoyed. even though that was a very controversial move, marshall as the years went by, that kind of cemented his political point of view. for the world war ii is over, the greatest generation men and

women, there was a very clear delineation between right and wrong. and between good and bad. they all felt that they were the good guys, the whole generation, and all felt quite clearly that the japanese, the germans, all the axis powers, where the bad guys. all of that kind of black and white definition of war, good, evil, all of that fell into his acting career. it was very easy for him to play heroes because he identified with euros. he believed he was part of a heel mission. when the war ended, he was a huge supporter of fdr and then

of course when fdr died and truman became president, huge supporter, mostly because of the dropping of the bombs. he was in adlai stevenson supporter. people think of heston, my cold dead hands, but there's a lot more to the story. he actively campaigned for adlai stevenson in 1952. stevenson was running against eisenhower, so that's part of heston's individual thought were even though eisenhower was a war hero and celebrated, he believed that stevenson was more on the same level as roosevelt, that

stevenson was a roosevelt liberal, and eisenhower might've been a touch too militaristic for heston's taste. in 1956, he supported adlai stevenson. again, a losing proposition. but between 1956 and 1960s, charlton heston became a major hollywood star. in fact, the biggest star of the 50s in hollywood. he supported john kennedy over stevenson, and, in the democratic convention, he supported jfk. jfk of course won the nomination, and he went out and actively campaigned for kennedy. there was no ambivalence in

heston about who he supported,, who he wanted in office. in 1964, something changed and he felt, first of all, everybody who supported jfk was in shell shock after the assassination. and johnson's sunrise was not what the cherokee people had in mind as presidential future -- what the jfk people -- a lot of people either dropped out of politics for a while and waited for the tide to turn. heston decided that barry goldwater was somebody that he liked and he could support. and the reason for it was cold waters campaign, which essentially was in your heart,

you know he's right, somehow that resonated with heston. in fact, he first saw that on a billboard while he was driving through arizona. he looked up and he saw that, and you thought, yeah, that's right. and, of course, at the time vietnam was just beginning, you know, johnson's great leap backwards into vietnam. so he voted for goldwater, lost again. his only real victory was kennedy. and then something happened to cement that shift. in 1968, heston decided that he wanted to go to vietnam and meet

the troops. this was not a popular war. younger people today, you know, i want to thank you for your service and throughout the first baseball and all of that, that's not the way it was in 1968. there was a huge countercultural movement that climaxed that year with the student protests, the anti-johnson stuff, the assassinations, bobby kennedy, king. so the were a lot of unrest, and much of that anger was directed not just toward nixon and the vietnamese war and johnson, but to the soldiers who were fighting. that drove heston crazy. while other named performers like bob hope were going over

there, and not really putting themselves in any danger, entertaining troops, bringing some women, showing some legs, this is why you fight, all of that, and then selling the thing to a major network and making money off it. there's nothing wrong with that. they did a good service. i'm not knocking bob hope. he sacrificed a lot of his christmases and all of that. he's a good guy, but heston went right to the front. he worked his way to the front and he met with only soldiers. no performing, no pr people. he personally talked to about 400 men, took all their names and their phone numbers, and promised that when he got home he would call their wives and loved ones, and you did. he came home and he called are wrote to each and every one of

them. at the same time when he came back, the fury that was going on in this country over vietnam, he felt, was focused on these soldiers. at that point the last shred of his liberal leanings evaporated or were torn up. they were thrown out. he felt that if you didn't support the men who were fighting for your country, fighting for your freedom, that there's something wrong with you, and, of course, the countercultural movement was all leftists, liberals, kids who were anti-vietnam, and that quickly spread to anti-americanism. i remember all this because i lived through it. i was at columbia during the height of all of this, columbia university. so when he came back, he was

firmly to the right in defense of what he felt was democracy. again, remember that his war was very clearly delineated between good and bad, right and wrong, evil, hero. this war, the people he thought were the heroes were being vilified as evil. and then he came under the influence of ronald reagan, which kind of cemented all of this. because reagan also was a roosevelt liberal in the '40s. the president of the screen actors guild, which was seen in the 40s, less so today, as a kind of liberal organization, leftist, maybe softly communist organization, and he was the

head of it. reagan actually saved hollywood from splintering, but that's another story. he meant toward -- mentored heston into the screen actors guild. he put them on the board and, of course, he was an actor so he had access, and then when reagan retired, reagan retired because he became a producer on nbc for the ge theater, and you can't be a producer and be a union leader. just know mixing there. so he left and there was another president in between, and then heston became the president of the screen actors guild. and what he did was he worked diligently to reverse the liberal drift, or the liberal direction, of the screen actors guild. he believed the guild should be much more to the right, and in

the six years that he led the screen actors guild, which was the longest continual, continuous presidency of the guild, he in fact, did move it to the right. as an example, the screen extras guild, sag, wanted to merge with the screen actors guild. we are all actors, we should all be, in union there is strength, all of that. heston was against it. heston said well, if we bring you in you will dilute our ability to get work for our actors. we will just be diluting the agency. that was very controversial,, because a union president locking out union members from the possibility of getting work. secondly, he worked out a deal

with the networks to avoid a strike having to do with residuals. it was an extension of the reagan deal that he had pulled off. very few people in the guild thought this was the right thing to do, give up residuals essentially and get a better deal upfront. heston was at the helm of that deal, and that ultimately cost him his presidency because it was felt that he was too far to the right by the constituency to truly represent them. so after that, as his career went on and he had a 50 plus year career. anybody anybody who has that, that lasting power. that's not a flash in the pan. so as he got older, and he had been, the interesting thing about heston, he was never a

romantic figure onscreen. he was in gregory peck where there was always a woman in love with him. he wasn't rock hudson. he was this uniquely action oriented figure. as he got older and work became less frequent, in the '80s, he was approached by the nra. now, the nra in the early to mid 80s was almost bankrupt. they had really no following. they were followed in those long gone days as a wacko group, as opposed today. i don't know what people think of it today, but then they were thought of kind of john birchers with weapons. they were looking for a face, someone who could represent the

nra and make them all plausible, more acceptable, and easier to a line with. they approached heston who was essentially out of work, and they said, look, we'd like you to come to this, where having a big affair, and outdoor kind of ranch festival, and you can be the star. so he did it. cowboy hat, the whole thing. and the audience went crazy scene, you know, moses leading them out of the wilderness. it all worked. so a fellow by the name of tony macros was the head of the pr organization at the nra had hired to find somebody. he then made a deal with heston. he said, look, will give you a private plane, will give you the

best hotel rooms in the world, we will promote you everywhere. we will bring you back to hollywood prominence if you be our spokesman. like that, heston grabbed it and eventually became the head of the nra. so just as he was the president of the screen actors guild, now he was the president of the nra. so his political journey really continued all the way back from the aleutians to the nra. and one meeting that they had planned, and they would say, come meet charleston heston -- charlton heston, and that would bring 5000 people who were not fully nra members but they wanted to meet a celebrity. the big meeting they had to place a week after columbine, and everyone told heston, don't go to that meeting.

and it was only about 30 miles from where columbine took place. drop out of this one, let it cool down. my beliefs don't depend upon what happens outside. i still believe in what i think is american rights, first amendment rights, or second amendment rights. getting my amendments confused. and he went and did that meeting, and that cost him 11 years of blacklisting in hollywood. so what's interesting and ironic about that is that the children of the blacklist generation, when hollywood was in the grip of the right, all grew up to the left and blacklisted all the people on the right. so the irony of that is, to me,

profound, is the generational shift and what they did. so their parents, they saw as having done something awful, and they wound up doing the same thing. but when the left does it, there's a certain implied nobility. when the right does it, there's a certain implication of evilness. and i find that fascinating. so a lot of what i've written in my biography is a journey of heston as a man, as a filmmaker, as a star, and as a political figure. and i don't take any side but i lay it all out there. and let me just say one thing to you. after a a year of working on ts book, i approached the family.

i thought, they are going to be paranoid about anybody who wants to write about their dad because they're all going to be michael moore with a pencil. but i approached fraser heston, the son he was a producer in hollywood. i sat down with him and he said to me, what's your plan? what's your agenda? and i said i have no agenda. i'm interested in film. i'm interested in the link between the actor and the movie, the movie and the actor. and the story behind people who become so much larger-than-life. and he said, you know, i've read a few of your books, i did it, and i'm going to open everything we have to you. and that's what made this book, without editorial control, which is amazing.

that's what made this book so spectacular for me as a writer. >> host: and you've been listening to marc eliot who is the biographer of charlton heston. here's the book, "charlton heston: hollywood's last icon." there's those stories you told and a lot more in this biography. you are watching booktv on c-span2. >> here's a a look at some of e current best-selling books according to amazon.

>> some of these authors have or

will be appearing on booktv. you can watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> what about trump supporters? with questions by the way were submitted by many of you and uncle to try to work in as many as i can without dropping all these papers. obviously people turned on you. you need support. you were spent at. you would see families, look like lovely femmes, but look closer, , the dad is wearing a t-shirt that says hillary sucks more than monica does -- but not like monica. wait a second, they have small children with them. >> there was that, then the father with his two kids and his wife proudly wearing the shirt that called hillary clinton a [bleep]. there was a man you were short the set i wish hillary married o.j. i don't care what your political beliefs are, i don't care if you think democrats have all the wrong ideas for this country, if

republicans all the wrong ideas in this country, that was a short have helped essentially hillary clinton was brutally stabbed to death in the 1990s. that is so far beyond what should be acceptable for common decency, or behavior, let alone politics. >> but do you think, you got to know trump supporters and people, you know, this is boston but i'm sure there are many in this realm, and faith wrote to ask, you spoke a running into a trump supported in the bathroom before a rally who helped you with your hair. an act of kindness. >> you can take an entire group of supporters with a broad brush. it was a mistake to call, i thought it was a huge to call donald trump supporters deplorable. you don't look after voters in this country at a don't think it's a good idea to say that this swap about all a bunch of racist, xenophobic, exogenous,

whatever name you want to ascribe to them. they are a very group of people from a number of different socioeconomic backgrounds. some of them voted for president obama in the past, so a lot of them were women. there are a variety of supporters. at the same time they were the kind of people who oftentimes would probably leave their lives in a very polite and rule abiding way, not a a nonoffense way but there's something about walking into a trump rally that allowed people to shed all of those rules, to shed those burdens. i write in the book trump had a halo of crudeness. in that halo of crudeness he and let everybody else to be crude around him. he said whatever he wanted. he never backed down. a lot of people found that refreshing. people who maybe couldn't tell a joke any longer because it was a politically incorrect joke. people who were worried they had

to watch what they said and watched with the did. people who thought that their patriotism was being mistaken for racism. they walked in and said i can say and do whatever i'm thinking. >> we talked earlier about covering the primaries, , and vy early on i was in iowa, and you could see the lines at the trump rallies there. and was calling back and saying i meeting a lot of young people in particular, young men in particular who were trying to decide between bernie sanders and donald trump. >> a certain bro culture have come out to the trump rows, maybe would wear tank tops and big make america great again hats, that college, perturbed a culture that which up and would like the enthusiasm of events. the same sort of people who would say i want to vote for him this is a broad brush, i do

apologize but this is a demographic am talking about, would really like bernie sanders or donald trump. because they wanted an outsider. they want someone different, refreshing, somebody was a part of the establishment. somebody's whose name they had not been hearing a lot like hillary clinton. somebody who wasn't afraid to take on -- bernie sanders had that quality and so did donald trump are these were young people who are either just in the search, just in the middle of a search for a job or soon-to-be graduate from college and he wanted a better opportunity. >> they wanted a a destructor,. >> definitely. >> i thought i observed this, that i constantly saw people who saw things that people on the left might see as appalling, like this t-shirt you mentioned, and they thought they were perfectly acceptable parallel reality of what they might have

seen, for instance, when george bush, george w. bush, the invasion of iraq and there were so many people who are against that. if you are gone to the antiwar rally in washington you would've seen people wearing very disparaging t-shirts about george bush and they really felt it was the same. >> yeah. and there's an argument to be made for that. that's just a sign of how corrosive our politics and our public discourse has become. the question is where does it go from here? delete correct it? doesn't get better for 2020, 2024? or are we going to see even more crude language, crude behavior? is a going to be a line that is too far, a bridge too far? where do we go? >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

>> i'm the program director of the miami book fair. miami book fair takes place in downtown miami on the campus of miami-dade college. we had a little over 525 authors representing every genre, everything that you can think of we are representing at miami book fair. >> joint booktv for the miami book fair live from miami-dade college saturday and sunday november 18 and 19th on c-span2. >> good afternoon, everybody. welcome to the council on foreign relations. the book we're talking about today is