Actor, activist Charlton Heston dies at 84

As a marquee natural, the name Charlton Heston easily filled the bill when it came to signifying an epic star whose mere presence could bankroll a costly movie extravaganza.

Yet it never spurred a boom in namesakes, which is fitting because Heston had an acting style that has not been replicated in the post-World War II era.

The legendary actor died Saturday night at 84 at his home in Beverly Hills. While no cause of death has been given, Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease, saying, “I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure.”

On screen, he was as unique as they come. Think of Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford from a later generation or Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck and Johnny Depp from today’s. You can not imagine any of them doing what to Heston came naturally: holding stone tablets or looking at home in a loincloth.

Like John Wayne, he could play the dominating individual in a Panavision frame of hundreds, yet no one would have even tried to cast Wayne as a galley slave. Heston was at his best in biblical or medieval times.

Even in his heyday, Heston was a tough actor to size up. Put him in a comic or conventional romantic role that any relaxed B-lister could ace, and he could appear stiff and even pompous. But give him a role that was littered with minefields or even nearly unplayable, and he could give you a movie Moses, Ben-Hur or El Cid for the ages.

As one who stood up and was counted marching for civil rights in the 1960s, Heston eventually surrounded himself with conservative Republicans. And this took a toll on his acting career, as his controversial 1998-2003 presidency of the National Rifle Association tended to obscure his screen achievements.

Easter tradition

But whenever Easter rolled around, we’d be reminded of his clout, as the zillionth network broadcast of “The Ten Commandments” again submerged most of its competition under all those sinking horses in the Red Sea.

Heston’s big-screen career enjoyed uncommonly good fortune from the beginning, which is not to say he lucked out overnight. Born in 1924 as John Charles Carter, he studied acting at his hometown Evanston, Ill.’s Northwestern University, where he also met his only wife, Lydia Clarke, who was by his side when he died.

Before World War II service in the Army Air Force, he appeared at age 18 in a 1941 version of “Peer Gynt” for filmmaker David Bradley — then as Marc Antony in Bradley’s postwar “Julius Caesar,” which used to be shown in ’50s and ’60s high school English classes. The budget was low (someone’s comment about the “roaring Tiber” is followed by a shot of what looks like bath water), but stage experience combined with many late-’40s roles in early TV gave Heston enough of a reputation to land the lead in his first Hollywood feature.

It was in 1950’s film-noirish “Dark City,” whose limited delights today mostly come from watching its young star slap around Jack Webb. But on just his second picture, Heston caught a huge break. He hooked up with Cecil B. DeMille, the one director of the day who, even more than Alfred Hitchcock, had box-office clout to equal that of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

The result was “The Greatest Show on Earth,” which was 1952’s biggest hit and an intentionally over-the-top movie often wrongly cited as the worst film to ever win the best picture Oscar. (It’s not even close.) As a circus manager, Heston is appealing and even easygoing, a rare trait for his big-screen endeavors.

The movie’s success guaranteed him top billing for years at Paramount, his home studio. But the real advantage to the DeMille connection was putting Heston in line for the lead in the last and biggest film DeMille directed: the gargantuan remake of his own “The Ten Commandments.”

Artfully ludicrous for 31⁄2 hours, the 1956 “Commandments” is the most durable year-end blockbuster from a year packed with them: “Giant,” “Around the World in 80 Days” and “War and Peace.” Both as the young and old Moses, Heston keeps his head above water in a sea of entertaining excess (Edward G. Robinson’s snarling Dathan, Anne Baxter’s next-to-nympho Nefretiri), his confident don’t-mess-with-God demeanor an effective contrast to Yul Brynner’s Rameses, who always seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“Commandments” could be considered Heston’s own most durable movie, as well. The other candidate would be 1959’s “Ben-Hur,” a gamble that saved MGM from bankruptcy while taking 11 Oscars (best picture and Heston’s own included). The accolades were spurred by the famed chariot race sequence, which, ironically, William Wyler didn’t direct. But Heston had immense respect for the record 12-time best-director nominee, who the year before had nurtured one of the actor’s best performances as a ranch foreman in “The Big Country.”

The last of Heston’s “big three” historical epics was 1961’s “El Cid,” a portrait of Spain’s legendary hero. Heston has said the film is somewhat underrated (in terms of Robert Krasker’s photography) but also not the movie overall that it could have been (suggesting director Anthony Mann wasn’t Wyler). Later, but long before “Cid” got a national theatrical re-issue in 1993 under the imprimatur of admirer Martin Scorsese, Heston became one of the most thoughtful and articulate of all actors when it came to discussing the filmmaking craft. Had DVDs been invented 10 years earlier, we would have seen him all over the place spinning memories on bonus features.

The ’60s counterculture forced Heston into premature “emeritus” status. The kinds of movies in which he excelled went out of fashion, and you could almost predict that his efforts as Michelangelo in “The Agony and the Ecstasy” would elicit critics’ comments pointing out which of the title’s nouns ruled the result. After “El Cid,” only 1968’s “Planet of the Apes” was a major hit, though in a long litany of critical disappointments, there’s good work if you look. (He was always disappointed that his work in “Will Penny,” also from ’68, went underappreciated in an era when the movie Western was enjoying its last hurrah.)

He was a key contributor (as Cardinal Richelieu) in director Richard Lester’s marvelous “Three” and “Four Musketeers” romps, was well-received as Sir Thomas More in a TV version of “A Man for All Seasons” and helped get James Cameron’s “True Lies” rolling in a welcome eyepatched cameo with Arnold Schwarzenegger (a kind of Republican love fest).

Off-screen roles

But more and more in the public’s consciousness, he was identified with off-camera endeavors: presidency of the Screen Actor’s Guild, chairmanship of the American Film Institute and finally, in 1998, presidency of the NRA.

His remarks grew more strident as his NRA tenure progressed, and he was widely criticized for spearheading pro-gun rallies shortly after school shootings in Colorado and Michigan. Michael Moore famously challenged Heston in his home (tastelessly, but also powerfully) for the climax of 2002’s “Bowling for Columbine” — ironically, the last Heston significant numbers of viewers are ever likely to see onscreen.

But some TV movie stations exist to show and re-show the kind of epic Heston personified, so classic Heston remains, now — and perhaps evermore.