Charlton Heston, 1924 - 2008
Apr 6th, 2008 | By Rick | Category: News & Comment
Charlton Heston, actor and activist, died yesterday in California. Perhaps best-known for his role as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), Heston had a long and varied career as an actor, primarily in action roles. Imdb lists over 125 roles, beginning as the title character in 1941’s Pyr Gynt. Other roles include Braden in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Vargas in Touch of Evil (1958), Judah Ben-Hur in Ben Hur (1959), Taylor in Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Will Penny (1968), Neville in The Omega Man (1971), and Robert Thom in Soylent Green (1973).
My favorite Heston role was as the nefarious Cardinal Richelieu in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974). Playing against heroic type, he turned in a memorably dark, humorous and subtle performance.
In recent years, he became known as an activist as President of the National Rifle Association, working to revitalize that organization and its role in combating gun control. In 2002, with his wife by his side, he announced that he had Alzheimer’s disease. Credit Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine (2002) for cynically exploiting him in this capacity, ambushing him at his own house and browbeating the befuddled actor about his role in the NRA. A low point in Moore’s career, but one that showed how classy Heston could be.
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