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Moses to Michelangelo
RANDOR GUY
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Whether ‘Ben Hur’ or ‘Ten Commandments,’ Charlton Heston, who passed away recently, became synonymous with the characters that he played.
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Varied roles: (From left): Charlton Heston as Henry VIII (Crossed Swords), Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and Moses (The Ten Commandments).
“I have played three [American] Presidents, three saints and two geniuses. If that doesn’t create an ego problem nothing does!” said Charlton Heston. He once said that among Hollywood stars he was known to be practically ego-free. This ‘sand and saint star’ (as a critic labelled him) played Michelangelo, Henry the Eighth and Moses. He also played Marc Antony on stage.
That he was ego-free became evident during the making of ‘El Cid’ (1961) in which his character ages by 20 years. He took to the role and aged with enthusiasm, while his co-star Sophia Loren refused to do so. “Grandmothers can be glamorous and one day, you’ll be too!” he told her.
When the American Film Institute in Hollywood established a new award, known as the Charlton Heston Award, the first recipient was Charlton Heston of course!
Background
John Charlton Carter was born on October 4, 1924, in a place called ‘No Man’s Land,’ an unincorporated area near Chicago. Soon the Carter family moved to rural Michigan where the boy learnt to hunt and fish. When he was 10, his parents divorced. The trauma he faced made him a loner, shy and withdrawn.
His mother Lilla re-married and John took his stepfather’s surname, Heston. The Heston family, like other American families, faced the difficulties that the Depression of the early 1930s brought in its train.
John went to school in rural Illinois and to overcome his shyness, joined the school theatre troupe. His schoolmate Lydia Clarke, also a part of the theatre group, decided to help him. She asked him to teach her to speak her lines.
This exercise helped the future star and soon they began to date. They married in March 1944. Unlike Hollywood marriages, this one lasted for 64 years, till Heston’s death.
A modest scholarship enabled him to get trained in acting and he managed to get roles in New York theatre. In late 1940s, he headed for Hollywood and made his debut in ‘Dark City’ (1950). Studios offered him the usual seven-year contracts, but Charlton Heston (as he came to be known) wanted to be free to negotiate on short-term contracts or even on film to film basis. The decision brought him the dividends.
Turning point
An encounter with Cecil De Mille fetched him the role of the circus owner in ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’ (1952). Then De Mille made him Moses in his extravaganza, ‘The Ten Commandments’ (1956). This was the turning point in Heston’s career. It was a huge success at the box-office. Besides playing Moses, Heston was also the Voice of God in the movie.
‘Ruby Gentry’ (1962), directed by King Vidor, also contributed to the versatility of Heston. The movie was considered erotic then, thanks to the love scenes between Heston and Jennifer Jones, who played a tempestuous, provocative beauty.
His reputation was enhanced by films such as ‘Pony Express’ (1950), ‘The President’s Lady’ (1952), ‘Buccaneer’ (1958), ‘El Cid’ (1961), ‘The Agony And The Ecstasy’ and ‘The Planet of the Apes’ (1967).
The William Wyler super-hit ‘Ben Hur’ (1959), got Heston the Best Actor Oscar. In the film’s famous chariot race segment, directed by legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, Yakima’s son, Joe, doubled for Heston.Socially and politically active, Heston was the president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and also of the American Film Institute (AFI).
Over six feet tall and athletic, Charlton Heston was a rare kind of gentleman in Hollywood. A strong and silent man, he spoke and did what he felt and did what he believed in.
Larger than life hero
Charlton Heston’s often one-dimensional but towering screen presence, will be recalled with special affection and nostalgia in a country which likes its heroes larger than life. For Indians, whose cinema-going days stretch back to the 1950s and
1960s, Heston will remain an indelible memory as the man who parted the Red Sea in ‘The Ten Commandments’; won the most thrilling chariot race ever filmed in and as ‘Ben Hur’; painted the Sistine Chapel as a temperamental Michelangelo in ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’; rode out to do battle, even after he had died in the Spanish legend ‘El Cid’; died defending Imperial interests as the British army general Gordon in ‘Khartoum’ and displayed grit and compassion as an ageing cowboy in one of his very few Westerns, ‘Will Penny.’
Cecil B. De Mille felt Heston bore a striking resemblance to a statue of Moses by Michelangelo, which is why when it came to casting for his Biblical opus, ‘The Ten Commandments,’ he selected the same actor whom he had featured four years earlier in the 1952 circus melodrama, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth.’ Interestingly, Heston was to appear in another Bible story a decade later — as John the Baptist — in ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ where Max Von Sydow played Christ.
The 11 Oscars that ‘Ben Hur’ won at the1960 Academy Awards, remains a record that was unchallenged for many decades, till ‘Titanic’ and ‘Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King’ equalled it in another era. And it fetched Heston his only Oscar as an actor.
He tended to dominate every film he starred in — even fairly routine costume multi-starrers like ‘55 Days in Peking.’ And he gave the first two films in the ‘Planet of the Apes’ series a bit of class, in what was otherwise sci-fi hokum, in his role of an astronaut.
Small but striking role
Younger film-goers might recall his smaller but still striking role as the scheming Cardinal Richelieu in two 1970s remakes of French swashbuckler, ‘The Three Musketeers’; while fans of maritime thrills recall his role as the skipper of a deep submergence rescue vessel which goes to the aid of a stricken nuclear submarine in ‘Gray Lady Down.’
With Los Angeles falling apart in ‘Earthquake,’ Heston finds time to carry on an extra marital affair with Genevieve Bujold to the chagrin of his possessive wife (Ava Gardner). It was a film that first introduced a technology called Sensurround, where the seats in select theatres vibrated with portions of the low frequency sound effects, giving viewers a rather too realistic feel of an earthquake. Heston’s extra-cinematic activities attracted hardly any notice here — neither his strong support for the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. nor his latter day rightward lurch that saw him support gun enthusiasts of the National Rifle Association.
But his moving statement when he discovered he was succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease in 2002 became a popular blog item in recent years: “I wanted to prepare a few words for you now, because when the time comes, I may not be able to. I can part the Red Sea, but I can’t part with you, which is why I won’t exclude you from this stage in my life. If you see a little less spring in my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you’ll know why. And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway. ..Please feel no sympathy for me. I don’t. I just may be a little less accessible to you, despite my wishes.”
He ended by quoting Prospero, in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest.’ “Be cheerful, sir/Our revels now are ended/.We are such stuff /As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. "
Anand Parthasarathy
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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