Editorials > Charlton Heston, 83

American actor Charlton Heston died yesterday in his home in Beverly Hills at the age of 83. He had been suffering the effects of Alzheimer's disease since 2002, when he publicly announced he would be withdrawing from public life.

Heston rose to fame as towering historical characters in high profile epics such as "The Ten Commandments," "The Greatest Show on Earth," "El Cid," and his Oscar-winning performance in William Wyler's "Ben-Hur." He also played roles in smaller films such as the unlikely Mexican detective in Orson Welles's classic film noir "Touch of Evil." His later career was mainly comprised of science fiction and disaster movies, such as "Planet of the Apes," "Soylent Green," and "The Omega Man."

Throughout his life, he dedicated himself to controversial political activism, though his banner changed over time. In 1963 he participated in the March on Washington, at which Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. He campaigned for Democratic presidential nominees John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, and opposed the Vietnam War. Perhaps the most surprising bit of news from his liberal past is that following Robert Kennedy's death in 1968, he appeared on "The Joey Bishop Show" to call for Public Support of President Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968. But by the 1980s he had become an ardently conservative Republican who opposed affirmative action and gun control laws. He later became the president of the National Rifle Association, and in 2000 made his famous remark that Al Gore would take his rifle "from my cold dead hands."

Whatever one's opinions of his politics, Heston was an actor who could command the screen and starred in quite a few films that left indelible marks on the history of cinema. Rest in peace, Moses.

(LA Times) 

-David Morgan