Charlton Heston has died at the age of 83. He was one of the last of the great golden age Hollywood actors and they just don’t make them like him anymore.
Charlton Heston was an old school actor who took just about any job that was offered to him. He was a square jawed tough guy with a deep and powerful voice. Like millions of others I grew up with Charlton Heston’s Moses parting the Red Sea, though I was much more impressed that Vincent Price and Edward G Robinson were in The Ten Commandments than I was by Charlton Heston.
My favorite Charlton Heston movie was The Planet of The Apes, though Solvent Green and The Omega Man come in as close second and third. Charlton Heston made several odd movies in his long career, and Planet of The Apes may be the weirdest. It is the story of three, or was it four? men who crash land on a strange world where Apes are the dominate intelligent species, not humans. This film had bizarre music, over the top make-up, and lots of jumping up and down. The strange alien planet, of course, turned out to be Earth.
I guess the last movie I saw Charlton Heston in was Bowling for Columbine, where he was a confused old man and finally had to get up and walk away from his interview with mondo annoying director Michael Moore. Charlton Heston made a lot of movies, but I was really only a fan of a few of them. I remember Airport, the film that helped launch the disaster film industry, and I liked it, but I mainly remember George Kennedy chewing on a cigar. Another ensemble piece was The Greatest Show on Earth about a group of circus people and the dangers of life under the Big Top. When I was a kid, I really like that movie. I haven’t seen it years though. The Ten Commandments was on just the other day, and I stopped by for a few minutes, but soon turned to another station. I am just not that into epic anymore.
But if I do feel like an epic sometime, I know that I can always reach for a Charlton Heston film to fill the void.
