It is difficult to erase from memory his image waving the weapon with which he took the stand so many times as president of the National Rifle Association of the United States. He left the presidency of the group in 2003 and died of pneumonia almost five years later, on April 5, 2008, but that “they will only take it from my cold, dead hands!”, in reference to his 1866 Winchester, would accompany to Charlton Heston until his deathbed.
That it is that fanaticism and that intransigence that endure in memory is an injustice for an actor who continued the tradition of the great adventurers of the screen started by Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn and embodied the hero like no one else. So much so that he ended up believing it. Perhaps by then Heston, who would have been one hundred years old today, had forgotten much of his acting achievements. He had been retired from acting for years because he had suffered from a degenerative disease similar to Alzheimer’s since 2002, which involved memory loss and a gradual deterioration of vital functions.
An only child, John Charles Carter was born on October 4, 1923 in Evanston, a suburb a few miles from Chicago. He grew up in rural Michigan. There he devoured every book that fell into his hands and imagined giving life to the characters that swarmed through its pages. Before he was ten years old, his parents divorced and the little boy stayed with his mother. Years later Lilla would marry Chester Heston, a last name that the actor would eventually end up using as his stage name.
It was in Chicago where the acting bug began to bite deeply into him. His roles in school plays were so celebrated that in 1942 she received a scholarship to study drama. Only the Second World War could draw a parenthesis to an artistic career for which he already seemed predestined. So it was. After three years at the front, Heston and his wife, the photographer and actress Lydia Clarke, with whom he would be until the end of his days, went to New York where they began to work as models at an art school. . His success in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, a play on Broadway, opened the doors first to television and then to Hollywood.
He debuted on the big screen in 1950 with ‘Shadow City’, by William Dieterle, and two years later he became the circus director of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’, with which Cecil B. DeMille would win the Oscar for the best movie. Heston failed to capitalize on the success of the film, which became the second highest-grossing film in history behind ‘Gone with the Wind’, and was pigeonholed as a tough, beefy hero in westerns and B-movies such as ‘The Secret of the Incas’ or ‘When the Marabunta Roars’, in which his powerful physical presence made him shine.
It was once again Cecil B. DeMille who saw beyond his photogenicity and discovered that combination of poise, sincerity and modesty with which he played Moses in ‘The 10 Commandments’ (1956). Later came his consecration among critics with feature films such as ‘Horizontes de grandeza’ (1958) and what many consider his best work, that of the honest police officer Miguel Vargas in ‘Sed de mal’, by Orson Welles.
Great characters
Undisputed king of Technicolor blockbusters, he worked under directors such as Sam Peckinpah, Laurence Olivier and George Stevens, and specialized in historical figures such as Michelangelo, Cardinal Richelieu, El Cid, Mark Antony, Buffalo Bill, Henry VIII, John the Baptist, Thomas More or President Jackson. None of them earned him an Oscar. His only statuette was obtained when he got on a chariot and beat the Roman Messala in the most spectacular race in the history of cinema.
Heston said that the protagonist of ‘Ben-Hur’ (1959) had not been especially difficult for him because, unlike the great historical figures he had played, this one had emerged from his imagination.
Later, he would become interested in science fiction with titles such as ‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968) or ‘The Last Man… Alive’ (1973) and would even opt for disaster cinema with ‘Earthquake’ (1974). Starting in the eighties, his presence diminished on the big screen and on television, with roles of all kinds and cameos in titles such as ‘Dynasty’, ‘Los Colbys’, ‘Risky Lies’ or ‘Armageddon’ (1998), where He served as narrator.
It was his tenure in the National Rifle Association that marked the last years of his life. In the documentary ‘Bowling for Columbine’, Michael Moore revealed the increasingly conservative ideology of an actor who in 1963 had participated in the march to Washington for civil rights that took place on August 28, 1963, in the one where Martin Luther King pronounced his famous ‘I have a dream’. Among his latest roles, his return to the ape franchise stands out, with Tim Burton’s ‘remake’ in 2001, where this time he played the monkey Zaius. It was a nice way to come full circle, only clouded by his fierce defense of guns.
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