Great roles require great actors, and Charlton Heston played the
greatest roles of the 20th century, or any century: Buffalo Bill,
Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Michelangelo, John the Baptist,
Marc Antony. Heston even played God.
It was while shooting The Ten Commandments on location
at Mount Sinai that Heston, already cast in the starring role of
Moses, talked himself into the biggest part of all. He and
legendary director Cecil B. DeMille were having dinner with the
abbot of St. Catherine's monastery at the base of the mountain.
"I said, 'You know, Mr. DeMille, it seems to me that if you hear
the voice of God, you hear it inside yourself. I'd like very much
to do the voice of God in the burning bush,'" Heston later
recalled. "And he said, 'Well, Chuck, you've got a pretty good part
as it is.' But the abbot, fortunately, was intrigued by that. He
said, 'I think that's an interesting idea.' So Mr. DeMille said,
'Well, we'll see about that.'"
So it is that in the 1956 classic, when Moses hears the
Almighty, he hears his own voice -- disguised by audio effects and
speaking the "thy-thou-thine" language of the King James Bible, but
still unmistakably Heston.
HESTON'S VOICE WAS his greatest asset as an actor. He was handsome,
but so were many other actors. He had the muscular physique
required for such sword-and-sandals epics as Ben Hur, but
directors never had a shortage of brawny leading men, and neither
Steve Reeves nor Johnny Weismuller ever won Oscars. It was his
deep, resonant voice that set Heston apart from the Hollywood
herd.
Some might think he was born with the voice that delivered great
lines like "Let my people go!" However, his majestic vocal quality
was actually the product of training as a stage actor -- from the
Winnetka (Ill.) Community Theatre to Broadway -- years before he
went into movies, where he first worked with DeMille in 1953's
The Greatest Show On Earth.
His stage training gave Heston the gravitas necessary
to seem believably natural when speaking the almost comically
stilted dialogue required by his many historical roles. (Sample
line from The Ten Commandments: "What change is there in
me? Egyptian or Hebrew, I am still Moses. These are the same hands,
the same arms, the same face that was mine a moment ago.")
Even in schlocky sci-fi films, Heston's voice had the power to
turn an otherwise absurd phrase -- "Soylent Green is people!" --
into a memorable line. Roddy McDowell was a fine actor, yet no one
ever quotes his dialogue from Planet of the Apes. Instead,
they remember Heston: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned
dirty ape!" A silly sentence somehow infused with significance,
simply because Heston said it.
AFTER HESTON DIED Saturday at age 84, his friend and National Rifle
Association colleague Wayne LaPierre praised the former NRA
president as "a man who devoted his life to his profession with
grace and dignity."
Dignity was the essence of Heston's onscreen appeal. He was
barely 30 when DeMille cast him as Moses, but already possessed the
mature dignity needed to play the mighty prophet, and Heston was as
believable as the gray-bearded Hebrew lawgiver as he was as the
young Egyptian prince.
The theme of human dignity runs like a thread through Heston's
career, both on and off the screen. Heston was seemingly typecast
as the voice who speaks for the dignity of downtrodden mankind,
whether enslaved by Egyptians or Romans, oppressed by apes, or
euthanized and ground up for food in Soylent Green.
His consistent concern for human dignity helps explain why
Heston, a liberal Democrat in younger years, eventually emerged as
one of conservatism's most visible spokesmen. A prominent supporter
of Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights crusade who joined King
for the 1963 March on Washington, a year later Heston joined his
Hollywood friend Ronald Reagan in supporting Republican Sen. Barry
Goldwater's presidential bid. (As Heston later said, he decided to
support Goldwater after seeing a sign with the Arizona senator's
slogan, "In your heart, you know he's right," and being struck with
the thought, "Son of a bitch, he is right.") Like Reagan,
Heston became an ex-liberal not because he changed, but because
liberalism changed.
Heston's principled consistency was evident in his 1999 speech
at Harvard Law School, where he urged students to engage in
"massive disobedience" against political correctness. "I learned
the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King ... who learned it
from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who
led those in the right against those with the might," Heston said.
"Disobedience is in our DNA."
Heston knew his voice could have a powerful effect. He famously
shocked Time-Warner board members when he showed up for a
stockholders meeting in Beverly Hills and read aloud the violent,
vulgar lyrics of gangsta rapper Ice-T, whose records the company
had released.
The lyrics included the rapper's fantasies about sodomizing Al
Gore's nieces, and as Heston said, his performance "left the room
in echoing silence." Heston had spoken. Ice-T's contract was soon
terminated. (Informed later that the rapper had threatened to kill
him, Heston replied, "Let him try.")
HESTON'S VOICE WAS as impressive when speaking spontaneously as
when reading from a script. At a dinner in the early 1990s hosted
by The American Spectator -- Heston was a supporter of the
magazine for many years -- the actor stood up and gave a ten-minute
impromptu speech on the great issues of the day. He spoke with
"great moral urgency and utter eloquence," remembered editorial
director Wlady Pleszczynski.
Heston's moral urgency was seldom greater than when speaking in
defense of the Second Amendment. The NRA added millions of new
members during Heston's tenure as president, and he brought them to
their feet to applaud what became one of his most famous lines.
It was just an old bumper-sticker slogan, familiar to everyone
in the gun-rights movement, but somehow it had a magic effect when
Heston said it. Standing at the lectern, he held a musket over his
head and, in his famous rumbling baritone, Heston declared that if
anyone wanted to take his guns, his answer could be summed up in
five words: "From my cold, dead hands."
His hands are cold now. His voice is silent. He will be missed.
Requiescat in pace.
topics:
Hollywood, Movies, Law, NATO, Conservatism
