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Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1924) is an iconic Academy Award-winning American film actor, best known for playing larger-than-life heroic roles such as Moses in The Ten Commandments and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur. He has been long involved in political issues and was president of the National Rifle Association in the years 1998 to 2003.
Early career
Heston was born in Evanston, Illinois to Lila Charlton and Russell Whitford Carter. When he was ten, his parents divorced. Shortly thereafter, his mother married Chester Heston. The new family moved to well-off Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. Heston (his new surname) attended New Trier High School.
He enrolled in the school's drama program, where he performed with such outstanding results that he earned a drama scholarship to Northwestern University from the Winnetka Community Theatre in which he was also active. While still in high school, he played in the silent 16 mm amateur film adaptation of Peer Gynt made by David Bradley. Several years later the same team produced Julius Caesar, in which Heston played Mark Antony.
In 1944, Heston left college and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps. He served for two years as a B-25 radio operator/gunner stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the Eleventh Air Force, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant.
While in the service, he married fellow Northwestern student Lydia Marie Clarke in 1944. After the war, the two lived in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, where they worked as models. Seeking a way to make it in theater, they decided in 1947 to manage a playhouse in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1948, they went back to New York where Heston was offered a supporting role in the Broadway play Antony and Cleopatra, starring Katherine Cornell, for which he earned acclaim. He also had success in television, playing a number of roles in CBS's Studio One, one of the most popular anthology dramas of the 1950s.
Film career
In 1950, he earned recognition for his appearance in his first professional movie, Dark City. His breakthrough came in 1952 with his role of a circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth. But the muscular, 6 ft 3 in, square jawed Heston became an icon by portraying Moses in The Ten Commandments, a part he was chosen for reportedly because director Cecil B. DeMille thought that he bore an uncanny resemblance to the statue of Moses by Michelangelo. He has played leading roles in a number of fictional and historical epics—such as Ben-Hur, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking and Khartoum—during his long career. He once quipped, "They seem to think I have a Medieval face!". He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1959 performance in the title role of Ben-Hur, one of 11 earned by that film.
Heston also starred in a number of science fiction films and disaster films between 1968 and 1974, some of which, like Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, Soylent Green, and Earthquake, were hugely successful at the time of their release and have since become cult classics.
Heston fought at times for his artistic choices. In 1958, he maneuvered Universal International into allowing Orson Welles to direct him in Touch of Evil, and in 1965 he fought the studio in support of Sam Peckinpah, when an attempt was made to interfere with his direction of Major Dundee, despite the fact that Peckinpah was so temperamental that at one point the normally even-keeled Heston found himself threatening the diminutive director with his cavalry sabre when he felt that Peckinpah was mistreating his cast. Heston was also president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1966 to 1971.
In 1971 he made his directorial debut with Antony and Cleopatra, an adaptation of the William Shakespeare play that he had performed during his earlier theater career.
Starting with 1973's The Three Musketeers, Heston began playing an increasing number of supporting roles and cameos. Despite this, his immense popularity has never died, and he has seen a steady stream of film and television roles ever since. He starred in the prime-time soap, The Colbys from 1985 to 1987, his only stint on series television. Heston has an instantly recognizable voice, and was often heard as a narrator. Heston had cameos in the films Tombstone and True Lies. With his son Fraser, he starred in and produced several made for cable movies, including remakes of "Treasure Island" and "A Man For All Seasons". Heston received great reviews for his 1992 series on the A&E cable network, "Charlton Heston Presents The Bible", which has achieved great success on video and DVD. In 1993, he appeared in a cameo role in Wayne's World 2, in a scene wherein main character Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) requests that a small role be filled by a better actor than the performer currently filling it, and played a small part as a rancher in the Western Tombstone (1993). That same year, he hosted Saturday Night Live.
In 2001, Heston made a cameo appearance in Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes. In the film, he plays an elderly, dying ape who introduces arms to his species by giving a pistol to his son, perhaps as a nod to his then-current role in the National Rifle Association.
Off screen
Heston was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998, and it went into remission the next year following a course of radiation treatment. In August 2002, Heston publicly announced that he was diagnosed as suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In July 2003, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, from President George W. Bush at the White House. In March 2005, various newspapers reported that family and friends of Heston were apparently shocked by the rapid progression of his illness, and that he is sometimes unable to get out of bed. In August 2005, a rumor circulated that Heston had been hospitalized with pneumonia at a Los Angeles hospital, but this was never confirmed by the family. In April 2006, various news sources reported that Heston's illness was at an advanced stage and his family were worried he might not survive the year, but he did. According to his son Fraser, his father is doing as well as can be expected and is now an invalid at his Hollywood mansion.
Political beliefs
In his earlier years, Heston was a Democrat, campaigning for Presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. A civil rights activist, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963. In 1968, following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Heston appeared on The Joey Bishop Show and, along with fellow actors Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas and James Stewart, called for gun controls to be introduced by Congress. In 1969 Heston was asked by some Democrats to run for the California State Senate, a move that would have likely had bipartisan support in the state. He declined because he wanted to continue acting.
He was also an opponent of McCarthyism and racial segregation, which he saw as only helping the cause of Communism worldwide. He was opposed to the Vietnam War and considered Richard Nixon a disaster for America.
In the 1980s, however, Heston began to support more conservative positions on such issues as affirmative action and gun rights. Heston joined the Republican Party. He has campaigned for Republican candidates and Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
He is an honorary life member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and was its president and spokesman from 1998 until his resignation in 2003. As NRA president he is perhaps best known, while raising an antique Sharps Rifle over his head at the 2000 NRA convention, for saying that presidential candidate Al Gore would take away his Second Amendment rights "from my cold, dead hands". (In announcing his resignation in 2003, he would again raise a rifle over his head, this time repeating only the famous five words of his 2000 speech.)
Heston has been harshly criticized by advocates of gun control. Michael Moore interviewed Heston in his home in the 2002 documentary film Bowling for Columbine asking questions of him regarding an NRA meeting being held in Denver, Colorado in April 1999, shortly after the Columbine high school massacre in nearby Littleton and the very publicized shooting and death of 6-year-old Kayla Rolland in her first grade classroom near Flint, Michigan, Moore's home town. Moore begins the interview by showing Heston that he is a fellow member of the NRA, gaining his interest. Heston eventually stands and walks away from Moore mid-interview when he realizes Moore is criticizing him for holding the meeting mentioned above.
Many of the festivities and activities of the convention in Denver were cancelled; an annual meeting was still held in compliance with NRA bylaws, as well as the applicable federal and New York state laws for a corporation such as the NRA. Actor George Clooney joked about Heston's Alzheimer's and defended his comments saying that Heston deserved whatever was said about him for his involvement with the NRA; Heston responded by saying that Clooney lacked "class," and said he felt sorry for Clooney, as Clooney had as much of a chance of developing Alzheimer's as anyone else.
In 1996 Charlton Heston attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations. There he agreed to pose for a group photo that included Gordon Lee Baumm, the founder of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and former White Citizens Council organizer. Former conservative Republican Senator George Allen (VA) as also appears in the photo which was published in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC's newsletter, the Citizens Informer.
According to his autobiography In the Arena, Heston also recognised the right of freedom of speech exercised by others. In an address to students at Harvard Law School entitled Winning the Cultural War, Heston expressed his disdain for political correctness and its chilling effect on free speech, stating "If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys - subjects bound to the British crown." He has also stated that "Political correctness is tyranny with manners."
Heston is also an opponent of abortion and gave the introduction to a 1987 pro-life documentary by Bernard Nathanson called "Eclipse of Reason" which focuses on late-term abortions. Heston also served on the Advisory Board of Accuracy in Media (AIM), a conservative media watchdog group founded by the late Reed Irvine.
Agamemnon Films
Charlton Heston is the chairman and co-founder of Agamemnon Films.
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Britannia Radio | online radioJon Voight Calls Obama 'False Prophet' 9.6.2009 FIGHTING EVIL CHARLTON HESTON: Charlton Heston.. Shlomo Wollins joins Tamar and talk all over the faЗon de parler that President Obama gave this stand ready up week in Cairo. ... Continue reading
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