Charlton Heston, 1924 - 2008.

Charlton Heston, who appeared in some 100 films in his 60-year acting career but who is remembered chiefly for his monumental, jut-jawed portrayals of Moses, Ben-Hur and Michelangelo, died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 83....

Every actor dreams of a breakthrough role, the part that stamps him in the public memory, and Mr Heston's life changed forever when he caught the eye of the director Cecil B De Mille. De Mille, who was planning his next biblical spectacular, The Ten Commandments, looked at the young, physically imposing Mr Heston and saw his Moses.

Robert Berkvist, New York Times.

Updated through 4/9.

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....

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.

Robert W Welkos and Susan King, Los Angeles Times.

It must be noted, of course, that during the final decades of his life, Heston effectively overshadowed his acting career with his off-camera activities as spokesman for the National Rifle Association and other conservative causes.... Indeed, many people - most people? - were so accustomed to thinking of him as a right-wing grey eminence that it was all too easy to forget that, as a younger man, Heston was active in the civil rights movement - he marched alongside Dr Martin Luther King (along with Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier) during the 1963 march on Washington, DC - and campaigned for such decidedly non-conservative Presidential candidates as Adlai Stevenson and John F Kennedy.

I don't pretend to have gleaned great insights into his psyche after a handful of conversations over a decade or so. But Heston was, I suspect, a much more complex fellow - politically, philosophically, whatever - than either his sneering critics or fawning admirers could ever fully appreciate. And I know he was a better actor than many of my bleeding-heart liberal brethren will ever admit.

Joe Leydon.

See also: Ray Pride gathers links and several clips; annotated photos in the LAT; Wikipedia.

Updates: "I have no single favorite Heston role, but in 1998 I had the rare pleasure of interviewing Mr Heston for the release of the Walter Murch-supervised 'restoration' of Touch of Evil (1958), based on the detailed notes give to the studio by Orson Welles (and largely ignored at the time)," writes Sean Axmaker. "It was supposed to be the center of a essay on the film, but the article was canceled and the review never published. I publish it here for the first time."

"With his regal posture, searing blue eyes, perfect jawline and a baritone voice bred for noble declarations, Heston was the ideal vessel for Hollywood grandeur," writes Time's Richard Corliss. "In the 1950s and 60s, the era of the movie epic - those three-hour extravaganzas with a cast of thousands and the passionate enunciation of high ideals - he was the epic hero; it's almost impossible to imagine the genre without him. To any of these films he added millions in revenue, plenty of muscle and 10 IQ points."

"What made him such a surprise to watch, especially when he was sermonizing - and the screenwriters never seemed to run out of things for him to sermonize about - what made him an entertainer was the bang he gave the preaching," blogs the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris. "Heston succeeded at playing these courageous, imposing, appalled, beleaguered, almost classically handsome (too much forehead, too many teeth) men by overplaying them. This manly man's secret weapon was his histrionics - it was camp. Even at his most ridiculous, Heston was hard to resist."

"Between Apes, [The Omega Man] and Soylent Green, Heston became to certain late-Baby-Boomers what John Wayne was to their dads," writes Glenn Kenny, following a rousing defense of Heston's role in making Touch of Evil what it is. "Only in those films Heston was the John Wayne of the dystopia - the inescapable dystopia. He was, then, a pre-adolescent's first effective intimation of Sisyphus."

"In 1966's Khartoum, he adopts a light British accent to play General Charles 'Chinese' Gordon, safeguarding the Sudan against the forces of the Mahdi in the Gladstone era," recalls Robert Cashill. "He is probably as much like Gordon as Laurence Olivier, in Othello blackface, was like the Mahdi. No matter - the clash of acting styles is completely absorbing, and it drives the central conflict home. The picture is one of my favorite historical epics, and unsung."

"Of the many actors I've interviewed I have to say that Mr Heston was the most self-aware about his own strengths and limitations," writes Carrie Rickey. "And that he had a terrific sense of humor. If you were to see only three films of his, I'd nominate Touch of Evil (his participation allowed Orson Welles to get this thriller financed), Will Penny, at his best as the cowboy loner, and Soylent Green, as a furistic cop investigating the murder of a VIP, a movie perfectly scaled to his particular brand of heroism."

"How sad that the last view we had of Charlton Heston... was in the final moments of Michael Moore's 2002 film Bowling For Columbine," blogs the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "His final years may have underscored an image as a shrill and reactionary figure, but Charlton Heston's thrilling, indispensable part in Hollywood history deserves to be remembered."

Also, Brian Baxter: "A French critic once described Heston as the axiom of cinema, but the reviewer who noted that if he had not existed then Hollywood would have needed to invent him, probably got near the truth. 'There was an epic, Everest-like quality to the man and many of the characters he played. He may not have counted as one of the wonders of the world, but he was surely an imposing part of its landscape.'"

The "French critic" was Michel Mourlet, and Dave Kehr has the full quote.

"Axiom, maybe," writes Peter Nellhaus. "But to borrow from the book title of one of his films, he was legend."

"I treasure most two performances he gave nearly two decades apart," writes Paul Clark in ScreenGrab. "The first, of course, is Touch of Evil... At the other end of his career, in the middle of his elder-statesman period, Heston gave what may have been his best performance in Kenneth Branagh's epic production of Hamlet. Ever since his early work, Branagh has love for stunt casting, often to disastrous ends. But Heston's performance is no stunt."

"I wonder sometimes if Heston's performances seemed as funny to people in his day as they seem to us now," writes Peter T Chattaway. "I remember watching Planet of the Apes on the big screen in the early '90s with an audience that laughed uproariously throughout the film. And the scene in The Greatest Story Ever Told where Heston, as John the Baptist, defiantly tries to force-baptize the soldiers that have come to arrest him is a strikingly ridiculous moment in an otherwise sombre film."

Online listening tip. Gloria Hillard on NPR; the link will also lead you to a 1990 interview with Heston on Fresh Air.

Updates, 4/7: "I would like to offer a few words about one of the last American movie stars," writes Manohla Dargis in a piece for the NYT devoted primarily to Touch of Evil; honorable mention goes to Major Dundee: "As he had with Welles, Mr Heston showed great loyalty to his troubled director and threatened to walk if the studio fired [Sam] Peckinpah, who was drinking heavily throughout the production. Mr Heston forfeited his salary in the bargain. As much as I admire Major Dundee, my fondness for Mr Heston can be traced back to the films I saw growing up, most important his great dystopian trilogy: Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1971) and Soylent Green (1973). This was the Charlton Heston I first met and loved and the one I still love, the last man on Earth, the raging consciousness, the horrified hero."

"Gods don't get more flawed than Charlton Heston," writes PopMatters' Bill Gibron. "He was a Hollywood he-man that actually found time for invention and experimentation, a gun-toting political conservative who had, at one time, made a life changing career choice championing speculative films that dealt with decidedly liberal issues."

"Should we be influenced in any way by the opinions that actors hold on subjects outside their profession, or give a damn about their beliefs?" asks Ronald Bergan, blogging for the Guardian.

Craig Phillips floats a theory concerning Heston's political arc (for more, see Andy McSmith and Ciar Byrne in the Independent) and lists his top six Heston films.

"What Heston gave his historical characters was the power of his own belief in them, no matter how improbable the setting," writes the Self-Styled Siren. "His finely detailed memoirs reveal a man who never wanted for self-respect, and it translated into a screen persona that absolutely demanded your credulity. Heston believed he was Moses, El Cid, a heterosexual Michelangelo, believed it with such burning intensity he swept the audience along. You may question the setting, the special effects, the dialogue, the dialect, the leading lady's eyeliner, but never Heston's absolute conviction in his character."

"Even if, like me, you were too young to know that Heston had incarnated the granite-jawed, macho American hero even when he was climbing down the mountain with a stone tablet in each paw, it was sort of clear why the people who made these movies wanted him at their center," writes Phil Nugent. "Heston was stiff in a way that spelled out 'ESTABLISHMENT HERO FIGURE' in block letters 50 feet high.... To cook up a hellscape of the future or a contemporary Los Angeles falling down like a house of cards, and then to cast Heston as the ineffectual hero proving that the center cannot hold, was to appear to be making a statement about how the times, they were a-changin'."

Slate runs a 1998 piece by David Plotz:

Those who liken him to Reagan misunderstand Heston. It is an easy comparison. Both are Democrats who converted to conservative Republicanism. Both are actors who involved themselves in politics. Both served as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Both are marvelous speakers.

But here is the critical point about Heston: He never grabbed the ring. He declined invitations from Democrats and Republicans to run for the Senate in California and resisted efforts to draft him into the 1988 presidential race. He was an actor, is an actor, and will always be an actor. His life is comfortable, and he sees no reason to change it.

"I just love Heston," writes Harry Knowles at AICN. "His range was exactly what it needed to be - and like Harrison Ford after him - it was his iconography that defined him - and like Ford - his acting ability was greatly underestimated... the fact is he conveyed emotions to an audience that accepted him. He is and will always be one of the great film stars of all time."

Updates, 4/8: "[I]f Charlton Heston were a young star today, there would be no context in which he could be, well, Charlton Heston," writes Carina Chocano in the LAT. "It's not just that Heston played the epic hero throughout most of his career, it's that he embodied postwar America, a younger, more vital, less morally compromised America in a way that it's no longer possible to do.... To behold Heston in chains, behind bars or even in a morally compromised situation was to behold the classical ideals of moral clarity, youthful vigor and civilization oppressed by the depraved, the primitive, the corrupt. He stood, he observed, he suffered. Heston's muscular body and hard, determined jaw were made to endure injustice, to absorb and transform it into virtuous action."

"My favorite Heston role, I think, in terms of just being completely entertained by his work on a really basic movie fan level, is in 1954's South American jungle tale The Naked Jungle, where he pits his wits against an army of vicious, devouring, and unstoppable army ants," writes Medusa at Movie Morlocks. "Yikes! What a movie!"

Tim Lucas notes that TCM will be broadcasting "a 15-hour marathon of memorable Heston performances" on Friday.

Updates, 4/9: Nice headline over Stephen Bracco's piece at PopMatters: "Charlton Heston: 1200 BC - 2022 AD."

"Movie heroes are made to be so cloyingly likable these days; they're given cute kids or dogs or a telling character trait that telegraphs a heart of gold. Pah! I grew up in the dying days of the Golden Age of Heroes, when men of action didn't worrying about whether they'd be liked. Charlton Heston always seemed such a man to me." Richard Harland Smith at Movie Morlocks.

Posted by dwhudson at April 6, 2008 4:03 AM