‘The Ten Commandments’ Star Charlton Heston Played 2 Parts and His Son Was Also in the Movie
The Ten Commandments is one of those iconic movies that just about everyone has seen and many have made watching the epic film on TV a spring tradition every year. There have been other versions made over the years but none are anywhere near as popular as Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 classic.
Charlton Heston starred as Moses in The Ten Commandments but what some people don’t know is that wasn’t his only part in the movie or that his son was also in it.
Who Charlton Heston’s son played in the movie
DeMille chose Heston to play the part of Moses because the director believed he resembled Michelangelo’s statue of Moses in Rome, Italy. He also decided to cast Heston’s young son in the movie.
The actor’s son, Fraser Heston, appears early in the film as baby Moses; the infant who was sent down the Nile River in a basket. He was just three months old at the time.
“Obviously, my memory is a little sketchy,” Fraser jokingly told the New York Post in 2020, before adding, “But I do remember my dad telling me that when they put me in the basket on the backlot of Paramount — the tank set is still there — the basket began to leak. The basket began to sink, and dad went to lift me out — and I was floating in four inches of water, perfectly happy.
“And the social worker who is by mandate on the set for all children grabbed me and said, ‘No, Mr. Heston, I’m the only one who can attend to this child during the filming.’ He looked at her and said, with the voice he used on the pharaoh [Yul Brynner, in the film], ‘Give me that child!’ And not surprisingly, she did. When you get the voice of Moses — I used to call it the dark, gray voice — all he had to do was use that on us kids and we’d do anything he said.”
Fraser has continued to work in the entertainment industry as a director, producer, and screenwriter.
Charlton Heston had an additional part in the film
And speaking of Heston’s voice, he had another part in the movie other than the role of the adult Moses.
The voice of God in the movie was modified and mixed with sound effects making identification difficult. But in 1999, Heston revealed in a interview with Entertainment Weekly that he asked to do that voice in addition to his starring role.
“I was sitting at dinner one night with Mr. DeMille and the chief abbot of the monastery. And DeMille was talking about his delight in being able to shoot on the ground where these things had happened. And they were discussing who might do the voice of God,” Heston recalled. “With a temerity that was a rather daring thing for a young actor to do, I saw an opportunity, and I said, ‘You know, Mr. DeMille, it seems to me that any man hears the voice of God from inside himself. And I would like to be the voice of God.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, Chuck, you’ve got a pretty good part as it is.’ The abbot said, ‘That’s an interesting idea, though.’ And I think that tipped the scales for me. And so [DeMille] said OK.”
Heston continued: “In the movie, you only hear the voice of God twice — first at the burning bush, and again when he receives the ten commandments. And I did not do [the latter]. I don’t know who did.”
No one got an on-screen credit for the voice of God, but it’s been rumored that DeMille’s publicist and biographer, Donald Hayne, did the voice when Moses received the commandments.
