Charlton Heston RIP
Charlton Heston passed away over the weekend and there has been a lot of discussion of his later life as President and advocate of the National Rifle Association, with perhaps a mention of him as Moses or Ben Hur, so either gun nut or religious figure. But when I think of heston I am reminded by Peter O’Toole’s famous line in My Favorite Year “I’m Not an Actor, I’m a Movie Star!”.
Charlton Heston with Edward G Robinson in Soylent Green.
Heston was clearly a movie star, a Cinemascope star he was a big presence in bigger movies, who looked over the top when in the mid 1970’s method actors and everyman faces like Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall populated movie screens with nuanced performances, and younger men like Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone took over action film roles. Either by choice or due to his political views Heston never really settled into character roles that often win older actors new acclaim a la Sean Connery in The Untouchables. It is an unfitting coda to his career that Heston’s final screen appearance was being pestered by Michael Moore in the un-cinematic “Bowling for Columbine”.
In recent years Charlton Heston was too often a punchline, but yet apart from his NRA views no one ever seemed to have anything bad to say about him. He was by all accounts a good father, faithful husband, and principled man who believed in the life he lived. Critics often, and conveniently, overlook his civil rights activism which included being part of a picket of an all white theater that at the time was showing one of his movies!
Charlton Heston was a dynamic movie star with an unmistakable barritone, chisled jaw, and undeniable presence that was a perfect fit for the widescreen excesses of the 50’s and 60’s. There will undoubtedly be some showings of his films on various movie channels over the next few weeks, do yourself a favor and check them out. You may not like the man but you’ll not be able to ignore the movie star!
