Charlton Heston

Apr 7 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

CHARLTON HESTON made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley.

He had the title role in Peer Gynt in 1942 and was Marc Antony in Bradley’s 1949 version of Julius Caesar, for which Heston was paid £26 a week.

Film producer Hal B Wallis spotted him in a 1950 television production of Wuthering Heights and offered him a contract.

More movies followed but most were forgettable, low-budget films.

He was rescued by his old boss Cecil B DeMille, who had given him star billing in his first Hollywood movie, Dark City, a 1950 film noir. DeMille next cast him as the circus manager in the all-star The Greatest Show On Earth, named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952.

The director had long planned a new version of The Ten Commandments, and cast Heston as Moses.

Other films followed: the eccentric thriller Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles; William Wyler’s The Big Country, co-starring with Gregory Peck; a sea saga, The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Gary Cooper.

Then his greatest role: Ben-Hur.

The huge success of Ben-Hur, for which Heston won an Oscar in 1959, made him one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood. He combined big-screen epics like El Cid and 55 Days at Peking with lesser ones such as Diamond Head, Will Penny and Airport 1975.

In late years, Heston drew as much publicity for his crusades as for his performances. In addition to his work as president of the National Rifle Association, he campaigned for Repub- lican presidential and cong- ressional candidates, and against affirmative action.

He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and chairman of the American Film Institute and marched in the civil rights movement of the 1950s.

He later resigned from Actors Equity, claiming the union’s refusal to allow a white actor to play a Eurasian role in Miss Saigon was “obscenely racist.”

In 2002, Heston revealed he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease, saying: “I must reconcile courage and surrender.”

In 2003, Heston was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour.

Charlton Heston, actor; born October 4, 1923, died April 5, 2008