Hollywood Royalty

There were three Charlton Hestons.

One was the very fine leading man who could actually anchor a movie and used his power to get Orson Welles' last Hollywood directing job (Touch of Evil), as well as anchoring the brilliant Planet of the Apes and iconic 1970's science fiction pictures Soylent Green and The Omega Man.

Then there was the parody of Heston, sometimes seeming self-parody, of his rock-jawed line delivery and toga-esque performances.

Finally, there was the National Rifle Association Heston where, as President of that organization, he seemed bizarrely tone-deaf to the gun-fueled slaughter of Columbine high school students, a hero to the callous, the selfish, the brutes.

Of the first Heston, let it be said that he had the chops and held the screen. It seems that Australia is minting this sort of leading man these days. Can an urban kid do it, or does it have to be someone closer to the land, a Midwesterner like Heston or Brad Pitt? And Heston had excellent taste, a huge fan of both Welles and Laurence Olivier, even turning down a big role with Marilyn Monroe to do an Olivier play, and doing less successful pictures in his later years because he liked them, including his personal favorite, Will Penny.

The second Heston, the hammy guy, we loved him, too. Thank him for giving something to parody. And he seemed very smart about this as well, going against it brilliantly as Cardinal Richelieu in the Richard Lester versions of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. Heston played the evil Cardinal like a leading man, without gimmicks, and with great intelligence and grace. And if you really hate ham, then you're denying yourself one of the greatest final scenes ever, on the beach in front of the Statue of Liberty, in a world ruled by simians.

As for the political Heston, it's nice to see obits reminding us that he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King before it became fashionable, also lending his voice to an important civil rights documentary. Although I was very unhappy about his role with the NRA, I was also embarrassed by Michael Moore's ambush of Heston at his home, which made the aged actor seem the gracious one, and Moore the opportunist, desperate to score points with which to buttress attention to his otherwise salient documentary, Bowling for Columbine.

It's interesting that the other dominant rightwing actor who was once a liberal Democrat, Ronald Reagan, also suffered from Alzheimer's Disease towards the end of his life. One wonders if such a political shift might someday be revealed as a very early stage indicator of the disease. After all, scientist have already proven that liberal brains and conservative brains respond differently to the same set of stimuli.

It's also nice to find out that Heston's original name, John Carter, had to be changed for being too close to that of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of his Mars series (starting with A Princess of Mars). It's actually hard to imagine a better actor to cast in that role, although it appears Heston never had the opportunity to play Carter.

So give the man his conservative flaws. As an actor, he contributed liberally to the opening of the imagination.

Oh, and by the way, soylent green...is people.