Charlton Heston

When a star of the magnitude of Charlton Heston passes away, it provides a touchstone to moments in our own lives. Heston was a star for over fifty years, and so depending on one's age, there are different memories. He was the lead in two of the most enduring epics from the Cinemascope days of the 1950s, was the star of a series of paranoid sci-fi films of the Age of Aquarius, and ended up as the mouthpiece for a very loud lobbying organization.

Through most accounts, Heston seems to have been a very decent man who had a good sense of humor about himself. But for the masses who didn't know him, we can only reflect on what we do know, from his roles and his public persona. His acting style was well-suited for what he's known for. He was the opposite of the Stanislavski influenced actors of the post-war era. His style was a clench-jawed indignation, and I liked the phrase used by Gary Susman on EW.com, who affectionately referred to his acting as "hammy and quaint." But can you imagine if Moses had been played by Marlon Brando, who had been considered for the role?

I've never seen The Ten Commandments, by the way. I watched the first ten minutes and found it so over the top I couldn't take it anymore. Ben-Hur, though, takes me back to the days of the 4:30 movie, which used to play it regularly (it took five days to show it). But I will remember Heston the most for his roles in those films Manohla Dargis rightly calls a "dystopian trilogy:" Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green. Heston was a man at odds with the civilization around him, whether they were "damn dirty apes," marauding zombies, or a cannibalistic government. To top this period off, Heston was the star of Earthquake, one of the cheesiest of the seventies disaster films, and was paired with Ava Gardner, who sadly didn't have any roles of substance after that one.

Heston went on, though, and appeared in some oddball cameo roles, whether it was in simian makeup for the remake of Planet of the Apes, or Wayne's World 2, or as the Player King in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. Much earlier, he was also in Touch of Evil, perhaps the best movie he was ever in, and helped get it made when Orson Welles couldn't get arrested (that he cast Heston as a Mexican, though, was probably not his best decision).

For the past ten years or so, Heston was most known for his role as one-time president of the National Rifle Association. He also marched with Martin Luther King and was president of the Screen Actor's Guild, but waving a gun aloft while sinisterly intoning "From my cold, dead hands" is not something people will forget. His last notable appearance on film was when he was interviewed by Michael Moore for Bowling for Columbine. I agree with Moore's politics, but even I cringed at this scene, which came across as an ambush of a feeble old man under the cloud of Alzheimer's. Guns are an issue, much like race, that Americans are in an eternal struggle over. Heston was passionate about the issue, and made some dubious decisions (such as appearing at a gun rally in Colorado eleven days after the shootings at Columbine High School), and since he put himself out there it has to be part of his legacy.

Heston is the last of a certain kind of film star, the kind that would eventually give way to the Brandos, Newmans and McQueens. He made some very good pictures and was a presence to be reckoned with in all of them. No, he wasn't a brilliant thespian, but he knew how to command attention.