Charles Carter, 1924-2008

By Rob Christopher in News on Apr 6, 2008 1:49PM

We know him better by his stage name, a combination of his mother's maiden name and his stepfather's last name: Charlton Heston. He was born in Evanston in 1924, spent part of his childhood in Wilmette, and then in 1941 went to Northwestern on an acting scholarship. After several years of nondescript beefcake roles, Cecil B. DeMille cast him as Moses in The Ten Commandments. And that was that. Said DeMille, "My choice was strikingly confirmed when I had a sketch made of Charlton Heston in a white beard and happened to set it beside a photograph of Michelangelo's famous statue of Moses. The resemblance was amazing; and it was not merely an external likeness."

Here was a man who marched on Washington with Dr. King and campaigned for JFK, yet also protested rap lyrics and served a stint as president of the NRA. Onscreen however he kept such incongruity hidden. We'll remember him best in three roles where a weird dignity somehow remains unsoiled even after decades of parody. As the heroic astronaut in the Rod Serling-penned Planet of the Apes, he gets to bellow and go nude. In The Omega Man, he's the last man on earth, forced to battle nightly with contact-wearing pasty albino mutants. And of course Earthquake: nimbly dodging falling debris in 70's aviator glasses and a safari jacket (also famous as the movie where 59-year old Lorne Greene plays the father of 52-year old Ava Gardner).

What are your favorite Heston roles? (See Movie City Indie for a great cross-section of clips).