Word: hestons
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Nobody wanted to see Charlton Heston in the business suit or polo shirt that other stars of the '50s and '60s wore. The present was too puny a place to confine him. But put him in a toga or a military uniform from any millennium, or strip him to the waist to reveal that finely muscled torso, then let his tense, intense baritone voice articulate a noble notion, and you had Hollywood's ideal of Mensa beefcake. In the era of the movie epic, he was the iconic hero, adding to these films millions in revenue, plenty of muscle...
...Heston, who died April 5 at 84, was unique among Hollywood stars. Of no other actor could you say, He was born to play Moses, Ben-Hur, El Cid, Michelangelo. At the very moment Marlon Brando was freeing film-acting from good manners, Heston proved there was thrilling life in the endangered tradition of speaking well and looking great. And when he wasn't the movies' avatar of antique glory, he was our emissary to the future: the last man on earth in two dystopian science-fiction films, Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man. Heston was the alpha...
...Heston remained NRA President until 2003, when he resigned in acknowledgment of Alzheimer's ravages. That year, the Association erected, in front of its D.C. headquarters, a 10-ft. bronze likeness of Heston as the cowboy Will Penny, brandishing a handgun. The man who seemed like sculpture on screen had become a statue in honor of his favorite cause...
...somehow fitting that Heston should be viewed as a larger-than-life anachronism. He is an emissary from a time when movies took themselves and their subjects seriously, when a leading man didn't have to crack wise to win over the audience, when stalwart trumped facetious, and screen conversation was more eloquent and elevated. In all those decades of heroes, Heston never once played one based on a comic book; his films? sources were the Bible, ancient history and Shakespeare...
...inconceivable that such movies could be made today - in part because popular culture has changed no less than political fashions. But mainly because there's no one remotely like Charlton Heston to give them stature, fire and guts...