Charlton Heston Said This Western Was His Favorite Movie He Made

The Big Picture

• Charlton Heston’s most cherished role was in Will Penny, a movie that explores love, dependency, sacrifice, and heartbreak.
• Will Penny‘s story of an aging cowboy forced to be dependent on others reflects Heston’s own struggles with aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
• The love that Will Penny feels for Catherine resonates with Heston’s own deep love for his wife, Lydia, and their shared vulnerability in the face of aging.

Charlton Heston‘s life as a movie star actor barely scratches the surface of his accomplishments, let alone the hearts he touched deeply. Heston always cherished what was most important-his wife, Lydia Clarke Heston, and their children. At the age of 84, Heston passed away in 2008 after battling Alzheimer’s disease. Out of all the films he played large roles in, Will Penny is his most cherished. Will Penny doesn’t have the same pace as the classic Western movie. Rather, it is a revisionist Western portraying the realistic aspects of a cowboy’s destiny. When Penny meets a younger woman, played by Joan Hackett, who is heading to California with a young boy (Jon Gries), he falls in love with her. Will Penny is a movie that portrays a different angle on love, and Heston values how Penny is forced to explore love, dependency, sacrifice, and heartbreak. Although Heston contrasts the lead role he played as Will Penny — a character who is afraid to let anyone close to him — the conflicts that Penny has as an aging cowboy reflect similarities to Heston’s turmoil after receiving his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

Charlton Heston Relates to Will Penny’s Internal Battle With Aging

Charlton Heston talks alongside his wife, Lydia, in an ABC interview hosted by Peter Jennings about the hardships that have come along with aging. The interview was filmed in 2002, when Heston was 79 years old and recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. While Heston puts up a strong front, Lydia tells Jennings that Heston’s kindness is her favorite quality of his, even though he doesn’t portray himself that way publicly. Jennings confirms that family was the center of Heston’s life, starkly contrasting the independent character, Will Penny.

In Will Penny’s story, a gunfire riot involving a family of rough-looking cowboys puts Penny’s life in danger. However, the independent middle-aged cowboy is now forced to be dependent on Catherine (Hackett) after he is shot and beaten nearly to death. She saves his life when she finds him and helps him back to his cabin to clean up his wounds. Catherine’s ability to nurture and soothe him makes Penny bittersweet, as he falls in love with her even though he knows he can’t be with her for many reasons, including the fact that she is married to another man. As they spend the cold winter together, Penny undeniably lets his guard down and feels like a family man, embracing Catherine’s son as his own — especially during the holidays where they sing Christmas carols and decorate the tree. Despite the love Penny has for Catherine and Horace (Gries), he knows deep down that they are not right for each other because of his age and the constraints that come with that. Will Penny depicts the portrayal of a man falling in love with a family, which hit Heston close to home as an aging husband and father who would soon lose the ability to even remember his own.

Heston’s Life Paralleled the Western Character

While Charlton Heston says in the 2002 ABC interview that he was not scared of the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, he felt worried about his wife and the rest of his family when he eventually deteriorated. This explains why Heston’s favorite role was in Will Penny. Meeting Catherine was Penny’s ultimate weakness in his old age because he felt he couldn’t take care of a younger family for years to come. When Catherine and her son are offered a train ride to California, she begs Penny to come with them, so they can start a life together. He explains to her that he will not be able to maintain a sustainable ranch to take care of her and the boy, and that love is not enough to get them through cold winters and make sure there is food on the table. Catherine asks him, “Wouldn’t that be enough, though?” But for Penny, love was not sufficient.

In contrast, for Lydia and Heston, love was more than enough for the couple. After spending their entire lives together, partners can overcome the hardships of aging. Both Penny and Heston faced a vulnerable feeling from the lack of control over their future, and were assisted through their weaknesses unconditionally. Penny falling in love with Catherine, a woman much younger than him who has a young child, makes Penny vulnerable and incapable. Even though he does not stay with them, he leaves her with his savings in the hopes that he can take care of her. This contrasts with Heston’s entirely different love story, though it does not take away from how meaningful Penny’s love for Catherine is and how this impacted Heston more than other roles he has played. Will Penny reflects the ways in which a man’s weaknesses become emphasized when in love. Likewise, the interview with Jennings captures the ways in which Heston’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis is even more devastating for the family than it is for him as an individual.

It comes as no surprise that Will Penny is Heston’s most cherished role when you see the surrounding parallels between the character and the actor. The themes of restraint and responsibility in Will Penny represent solemn ways in which one must be realistic and aware of their constraints. The love that Penny has for Catherine is relatable to that of Heston’s love for Lydia, just portrayed in different ways. As Heston grew older and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, his primary concern was his wife Lydia and her well-being for the future of his diagnosis. When watching Will Penny in this light, it becomes that much more special to the life of Charlton Heston and the legacy he holds as a Western actor.

Will Penny is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.

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