Film legend Charlton Heston is dead

Sometimes an actor can become so identified with a role, one can be forgiven the impression that it was the only one he ever played. This, alas, was the case with Charlton Heston and his role as Moses in The Ten Commandments.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2002. He died at his home in Beverly Hills last night.. He was 83.

Of course, when I first saw Heston in this movie I was at such an impressionable age that I really thought he was the Moses I read so much about in Sunday School. And even though I enjoyed one of his other films even more – perhaps not surprisingly another biblical epic, Ben Hur – on screen he was always Moses to me.

That is, until he played a real-life role as the redneck president of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Because filmmaker Michael Moore parodied him in this role with such devastating effect in Bowling for Columbine that, for the first time on film, I saw Heston not as Moses, but as a doddering fool with a Dr-Strangelove obsession with big guns.

Not to mention that his role as a mouthpiece for National Rifle Association (NRA) overshadowed the other more notable real-life role he played as civil rights activist:

Clearly, this off screen line was worthy of his on screen legend. But neither it nor any of the lines he delivered in his movie career suffices as an appropriate epitaph. Because, with all due respect to God’s Ten Commandments, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, penned by Founding Father James Madison, fits the bill just right:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Farewell Charlton

(And I pray the real-life Moses does not hold your portrayal of him against you.)

Related Articles:
Heston’s obit in the New York Times

Charlton Heston