“Is Mr. Heston there?”
A moment’s hush fell between us. “Yes.”
“Put him on,” I said. There was some murmured conversation in the background, then the agent came back: “He’s busy.”
“Then please tell Mr. Heston to go to hell. I never would have asked if I’d known he had a conflicting job at $10,000. I’d have said ‘God bless you’ and certainly not have asked him to give it up.”
The Hearst papers went to town with front-page headlines as Ed continued shooting. TV columnists all over the country started playing up the feud between Sullivan and Hopper. He needed a gimmick to help him. “Heston played Moses in The Ten Commandments,” he said. “This week he was the Moses who led all these people out of the wilderness.” “All these people” were the alleged walkouts from my program. The complete list over which he raised hosannas consisted of:
Bette Davis, who was ill;
Steve McQueen, who was in Alaska;
Robert Horton, who left for an engagement at the London Palladium before we ever got started;
Joan Crawford, who was not notified in time by Talent Associates that they could not tape her segment in New York;
Tuesday Weld, with whom negotiations had not reached any conclusion;