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CHARLTON
HESTON, the Oscar-winning actor who achieved stardom
playing larger-than-life figures including Moses,
Michelangelo and Andrew Jackson and went on to become an
unapologetic gun advocate and darling of conservative
causes, has died. He was 84. Heston died Saturday at his
Beverly Hills home, said family spokesman Bill Powers.
In 2002 he had been diagnosed with symptoms similar to
those of Alzheimer’s disease.
With a
booming baritone voice, the tall, ruggedly handsome
actor delivered his signature role as the prophet Moses
in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 biblical extravaganza The
Ten Commandments, raising a rod over his head as God
miraculously parts the Red Sea.
Heston
won the Academy Award for Best Actor in another
religious blockbuster in 1959’s Ben-Hur, racing
four white horses at top speed in one of the cinema’s
legendary action sequences: the 15-minute chariot race
in which his character, a proud and noble Jew, competes
against his childhood Roman friend.
ICONIC IMAGE.
Heston as Moses
in the Bible epic The Ten Commandments by Cecil B.
DeMille.
Heston
stunned the entertainment world in August 2002 when he
made a poignant and moving videotaped address announcing
his illness.
Late in
life, Heston’s stature as a political firebrand
overshadowed his acting. He became demonized by
gun-control advocates and liberal Hollywood when he
became president of the National Rifle Association in
1998.
Heston
answered his critics in a now-famous pose that mimicked
Moses’ parting of the Red Sea. But instead of a rod,
Heston raised a flintlock over his head and challenged
his detractors to pry the rifle “from my cold, dead
hands.”
Like the
chariot race and the bearded prophet Moses, Heston will
be best remembered for several indelible cinematic
moments: playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with
Orson Welles in the oil fields in Touch of Evil,
his rant at the end of Planet of the Apes when he
sees the destruction of the Statue of Liberty, his
discovery that “Soylent Green is people!” in the sci-fi
hit Soylent Green and the dead Spanish hero on
his steed in El Cid.
The New
Yorker’s film critic Pauline Kael, in her review of
1968’s Planet of the Apes, wrote: “All this
wouldn’t be so forceful or so funny if it weren’t for
the use of Charlton Heston in the [leading] role. With
his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body, Heston is a
god-like hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of
what makes Americans win. He represents American
power—and he has the profile of an eagle.”
For
decades, the 6-foot-2 Heston was a towering figure in
the world of movies, television and the stage.
“He was
the screen hero of the 1950s and 1960s, a proven stayer
in epics, and a pleasing combination of piercing blue
eyes and tanned beefcake,” David Thomson wrote in his
book The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.
Heston
also was blessed by working with legendary directors
such as DeMille in The Greatest Show on Earth and
again in The Ten Commandments, Welles in Touch
of Evil, Sam Peckinpah in Major Dundee,
William Wyler in The Big Country and Ben-Hur,
George Stevens in The Greatest Story Ever Told,
Franklin Schaffner in The War Lord and Planet
of the Apes, and Anthony Mann in El Cid.
“Four or
five of those men would be on anybody’s all-time great
list,” Heston said in a 1983 interview. “And if I picked
up one scrap, one piece of business, from each of them,
then today I would be a hell of a director.”
John Charles Carter was born on October 4, 1923, in
Evanston, Illinois. His father, Russell Whitford Carter,
moved the family to
St. Helen,
Michigan,
where Heston lived an almost idyllic boyhood, hunting
and fishing.
He
entered Northwestern University’s School of Speech in
1941 on a scholarship from the drama club. While there,
he fell in love with a young speech student named Lydia
Clarke. They were married on March 14, 1944, after he
had enlisted in the Army Air Forces. Their union was one
of the most durable in Hollywood, lasting 64 years in a
town known for its highly publicized divorces, romances
and remarriages.
Though
his film work occupied most of his career, he never
abandoned his theatrical roots. He was a mainstay for
years onstage, especially at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los
Angeles, tackling everything from Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey into Night, Robert Bolt’s A
Man for All Seasons, and Macbeth with costar
Vanessa Redgrave.
Despite
his granite-jawed, Moses-like image, Heston was not
above poking fun at himself. In the twilight of his
career, he was a jovial two-time host of Saturday
Night Live, and had a cameo as “the good actor” in
Wayne’s World 2, and even appeared as himself in
a 1998 episode of the hit NBC sitcom Friends.
Throughout his life, Heston was active in various areas
of the entertainment industry. Besides serving as
president of the Screen Actors Guild, he also was
chairman of the American Film Institute, head of
President Reagan’s Task Force on the Arts and
Humanities, and involved in several charities. President
Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Council on the
Arts, the executive body controlling grants made by the
National Endowment for the Arts.
In
addition to his Oscar, Heston received numerous US and
international awards and honors, among them the
Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Cecil B. DeMille
Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award,
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Jean
Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Kennedy Center
Honors Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003 he was
awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President
George W. Bush.
In
addition to his wife and son, Heston is survived by a
daughter, Holly Heston Rochell; and three grandchildren.
Services
will be private. His family has requested that, in lieu
of flowers, donations be made to the Motion Picture and
Television Fund, 22212 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 300,
Woodland Hills, California 91364. |
