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Hollywood legend dies
06/04/2008 08:46 - (SA)
Los Angeles - Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing Ben-Hur and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84.
The actor died on Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, family spokesperson Bill Powers said.
Powers declined to comment on the cause of death or provide further details.
"Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life. He was known for his chiselled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and, of course, for the roles he played," Heston's family said in a statement. "No one could ask for a fuller life than his. No man could have given more to his family, to his profession, and to his country."
Did he have Alzheimer's?
Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease, saying, "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure."
With his large, muscular build, well-boned face and sonorous voice, Heston proved the ideal star during the period when Hollywood was filling movie screens with panoramas depicting the religious and historical past. "I have a face that belongs in another century," he often remarked.
The actor assumed the role of leader offscreen as well. He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and chairperson of the American Film Institute and marched in the civil rights movement of the 1950s. With age, he grew more conservative and campaigned for conservative candidates.
In June 1998, Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association, for which he had posed for ads holding a rifle. He delivered a jab at then-President Bill Clinton, saying, "America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns."
Heston stepped down as NRA president in April 2003, telling members his five years in office were "quite a ride. ... I loved every minute of it."
Received many honours
Later that year, Heston was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour. "The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life," President George W Bush said at the time.
He engaged in a lengthy feud with liberal Ed Asner during the latter's tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild. His latter-day activism almost overshadowed his achievements as an actor, which were considerable.
Heston lent his strong presence to some of the most acclaimed and successful films of the mid-century. Ben-Hur won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). Heston's other hits include: The Ten Commandments, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, Planet of the Apes and Earthquake.
He liked the cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed:
Andrew Jackson (The President's Lady,
The Buccaneer), Moses (The Ten Commandments), title role of El Cid, John the Baptist (The Greatest Story Ever Told), Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy), General Gordon (Khartoum), Marc Antony (Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra), Cardinal Richelieu (The Three Musketeers), Henry VIII (The Prince and the Pauper).
Lonely childhood
Heston made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley, who later became a noted film archivist.
Film producer Hal B Wallis spotted Heston in a 1950 television production of Wuthering Heights and offered him a contract. When his wife reminded him that they had decided to pursue theatre and television, he replied, "Well, maybe just for one film to see what it's like."
The huge success of Ben-Hur and Heston's Oscar made him one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood.
At his birth in a Chicago suburb on October 4 1923, his name was Charles Carter. His parents moved to St Helen, Michigan, where his father, Russell Carter, operated a lumber mill. Growing up in the Michigan woods with almost no playmates, young Charles read books of adventure and devised his own games while wandering the countryside with his rifle.
Charles's parents divorced, and she married Chester Heston, a factory plant superintendent in Wilmette, Illinois, an upscale north Chicago suburb. Shy and feeling displaced in the big city, the boy had trouble adjusting to the new high school.
He took refuge in the drama department.
Married fellow student
"What acting offered me was the chance to be many other people," he said in a 1986 interview. "In those days I wasn't satisfied with being me."
Calling himself Charlton Heston from his mother's maiden name and his stepfather's last name, he won an acting scholarship to Northwestern University in 1941. He excelled in campus plays and appeared on Chicago radio. In 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and served as a radio-gunner in the Aleutians.
In 1944 he married another Northwestern drama student, Lydia Clarke.
Heston wrote several books: The Actor's Life: Journals 1956-1976, published in 1978; Beijing Diary: 1990, concerning his direction of the play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial in Chinese; In the Arena: An Autobiography, 1995; and Charlton Heston's Hollywood: 50 Years of American Filmmaking, 1998.
Besides Fraser, who directed his father in an adventure film, Mother Lode, the Hestons had a daughter, Holly Ann, born August 2 1961.
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