When James Cameron needed an actor who could believably intimidate Arnold
Schwarzenegger in his 1994 film True Lies, he turned to the guy who
parted the Red Sea and faced down a sea of "damn, dirty apes": Charlton
Heston.
Few other actors have run the gamut that Heston has, from towering classics
(Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments) to cult films (Planet of
the Apes, Omega Man) and out-and-out cinematic cheese
(Earthquake, Airport) — and in almost all of them he has
managed to take off his shirt, God bless him. That firm — and
oft-clenched — jaw and Romanesque nose made the actor the only clear
choice to portray a gallery of larger-than-life roles, from Moses to Andrew
Jackson, from Michelangelo to El Cid, from John the Baptist to Cardinal
Richelieu.
Sure, the politically conservative Heston is best-known since the early '90s
for his gun-totin' image as president and outspoken advocate of the National
Rifle Association, but our movie history would be so much poorer if we chose
to boycott his films over a little politics. Who else but Chuck could have
had the authority to demand that Pharaoh "let my people go" in The Ten
Commandments (a part he played when he was only 32) or survived the
horrors of slavery to triumph in the nail-biting chariot race in
Ben-Hur (a film that was a precursor to 2000's "the general who
became a slave who became a gladiator" Best Picture winner,
Gladiator)?
Born Charles Carter in Evanston. Ill., on Oct. 4, 1924, the 6-foot, 2-inch
actor later adopted his mother's maiden name of Charlton. He was raised in
the rural woods of St. Helen, Mich., where he occupied himself with reading,
play-acting, and learning to hunt. His mother divorced his father when he
was 9, a traumatic event for their son. Mom relocated to Winnetka, Ill.,
where she soon remarried; young Charlton then adopted the last name of his
stepfather, Chet Heston. Winnetka's New Trier High was too small to support
any sports teams, so Charlton turned his energies to acting.
In 1941, Heston won the lead role in a friend's student film, Peer
Gynt. The next step was Broadway, where he made his debut in Antony
and Cleopatra as a solider; then it was on to live TV, where the
24-year-old established himself with turns as Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and
Jane Eyre's brooding Rochester.
Heston earned his feature-film debut as a no-good gambler in the 1950 film
Dark City, playing opposite sultry Lizabeth Scott — it would be
one of the few times in his long career that he didn't portray an
out-and-out hero. A chance spotting by Cecil B. DeMille resulted in the
newcomer being given the lead of harsh circus master Brad Braden in The
Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1952. When
DeMille decided to make The Ten Commandments, the biblical epic to
end all biblical epics, he again tapped the man with the deep voice and
heroic profile, this time to play Moses the lawgiver.
From then on, "epic spectacle" and Heston went together like sword and
sandals. His The Big Country director, William Wyler, tapped Heston for the title role of
Ben-Hur, a part for which he won the 1959 Best Actor Oscar, snatching
the trophy away from fellow contenders Jimmy Stewart (up for Anatomy of a
Murder) and Jack Lemmon (brilliant in Some Like It Hot).
For an actor so identified with large-canvas historical epics, the sci-fi
classic Planet of the Apes represented a big leap. Pitting this
symbol of American strength (in the character of time-traveling astronaut
Col. George Taylor) against a planet of talking apes in the great 1968 film
yielded such touchstone scenes as a caged Heston yelling, "Get your stinking
paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" and "It's a madhouse! A madhouse!" And
who can forget Apes' finale, in which a beaten-down Heston makes a
stunning discovery and pounds the sand with his fists, bellowing, "Damn
them! Damn them all to hell!"? Heston agreed to take part in the first
Apes sequel only on the condition that his character be killed off.
The studio, 20th Century Fox, obliged, and Ricardo Montalban supplied some
of the missing machismo in subsequent Apes pics.
It is worth noting that in director Tim Burton's 2001 "reimagining" of
Apes, former underwear model and leading man Mark Wahlberg
disappointed legions of fans by steadfastly refusing to be objectified by
wearing a loincloth, as Heston did in the 1968 version. Perhaps it was just
as well: As Variety critic Todd McCarthy sniffed, "Wahlberg couldn't
fill Heston's loincloth," referring not to Wahlberg's well-endowed image
(earned by his role as porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights), but
to his low-key presence, when compared to Heston's "totemic overacting," to
quote another critic, Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum.
Other cult-film high points in Heston's career include his shocked
revelation in 1973's futuristic freakout Soylent Green that "Soylent
Green is made of people! You've got to tell them! Soylent Green is people!"
and his role in 1971's post-apocalyptic Omega Man (another sci-fi
classic, incidentally, that was mentioned as a remake project for both
Cameron and Schwarzenegger at one point), in which, as the last unmutated
guy around, he uses every gun in Los Angeles to combat a city overrun by
flesh-eating zombies.
We also have Heston to thank for Orson Welles taking the directorial reigns
of 1958's Touch of Evil, a film in which the great director had only
been set to play the corrupt sheriff of a seedy Mexican border town. At
Heston's urging, Welles directed the film too, and turned in what has been
called the greatest B-movie ever made. Heston darkened his skin to play the
Mexican lawyer in the film and later regretted not adopting a Spanish accent
for the role.
The titanic screen icon was called on to provide the God-like narration of
the 1998 disaster flick Armageddon — he had experience for the
part, since he had also voiced God (as well as Moses) in The Ten
Commandments all those years ago.
Heston recently sent up his own gun-happy image in the 2001 box-office dud
Town & Country and in a cameo as an aged ape in Burton's Planet of
the Apes, in which he explains the true origin of man to son Thade (Tim
Roth), showing him a human-fashioned gun as proof.
— Sharon Knolle
