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Heston the man not same as movie portrayals

He had grace, charm and a point of view

Published on Monday, Apr 07, 2008

I didn't know Charlton Heston, who died Saturday, but I crossed paths with him a couple of times when he was promoting TV projects. And those encounters reminded me of a couple of things.

The first was that Heston was a lot more than those set-in-stone characters he played in movies.

I knew that, of course, from seeing films other than his monuments — the morally ambiguous and wrong-headed characters he played early in his career, and the comparably textured ones he would occasionally take on later. (Look at his Richelieu in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers, or his football commissioner in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday.)

But I also remember a long-ago news conference, when Heston was sharing the table with Jean Marsh of Upstairs Downstairs fame.

Heston was not only courtly and charming with the press, he was with great delight playing, even flirting a bit, with Marsh. I am sure nothing naughty resulted, but they were having a splendid little time — Marsh seeming almost girlish at his attention, Heston greatly enjoying the chance to play a bit of a rascal.

But the larger lesson to be drawn from that news conference, and other times I saw Heston, or reading his writings about the actor's life, was that he was an often thoughtful man, one possessing a good bit of grace, and personally very appealing.

I mention this because some of Heston's political views were not my own. But in Heston I could always see a demonstration of why we should try to separate the artist from the art when it came to political views.

Indeed, when Michael Moore took on Heston in Bowling for Columbine, I didn't see Moore confronting the walking symbol of the National Rifle Association. I saw Moore bullying a decent man — and one who, we learned around that time, was fighting symptoms of Alzheimer's.

Would I have wanted Heston — or Clint Eastwood, for that matter — to set national policy? No. Has each brought pleasure to moviegoers, including me? You bet.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. Contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

 

I didn't know Charlton Heston, who died Saturday, but I crossed paths with him a couple of times when he was promoting TV projects. And those encounters reminded me of a couple of things.

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