Background

Ethnicity: Heston was partially of Scottish descent, including from the Clan Fraser, but the majority of his ancestry was English.

Charlton Heston was born as John Charles Carter on October 4, 1924 in Evanston, Illinois, United States. He was a son of Russell Whitford and Lilla (Charlton) Carter. His earliest immigrant ancestors arrived in America from England in the 1600s. Heston's maternal great-grandparents, and namesakes, were Englishman William Charlton from Sunderland and Scotswoman Mary Drysdale Charlton. They emigrated to Canada, where his grandmother, Marian Emily Charlton, was born in 1872.

When Heston was 10 years old, his parents divorced after having three children. Shortly thereafter, his mother remarried and Charlton and his younger sister Lilla and brother Alan moved to Wilmette, Illinois.

His stage name was formed from the mother's maiden name – Charlton, and the surname of his stepfather – Heston.

Education

Heston attended New Trier High School. From the Winnetka Community Theatre in which he was active, he earned a drama scholarship to Northwestern University where he studied from 1941 to 1943.

Career

Charlton Heston joined the military in 1944. He enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces and served for two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner aboard a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the 77th Bombardment Squadron of the Eleventh Air Force. He reached the rank of staff sergeant.

Heston started his career as an actor in 1948 when he debuted on Broadway as Praculeius in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and on television in Studio One plays. His first Hollywood film was Dark City. His breakthrough came when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as a circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth. In 1954, he made two adventure films for Paramount - The Naked Jungle and Secret of the Incas, which was shot on location at the archeological site Machu Picchu. He also starred in such films as The Far Horizons, The Private War of Major Benson and Lucy Gallant.

In 1956 Heston played the role for which he would remain best known, that of Moses in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. After that he starred in Three Violent People, The Buccaneer, and Ben-Hur. Heston next began researching his role as Spain's great hero in El Cid and soon left for location filming abroad. In 1962 he began shooting the World War II comedy The Pigeon That Took Rome in Italy. After that he worked on two 1962 film releases: Diamond Head and 55 Days at Peking. Heston's acting projects in 1963 included the roles of John the Baptist in George Stevens's Greatest Story Ever Told and Thomas Jefferson in The Patriots for Hallmark Hall of Fame and scenes from Mister Roberts upon the twentieth anniversary of the New York City Center Theatre.

In 1968 Heston starred in the western Will Penny, a role that he counted among his favourites, and in Planet of the Apes, the first in a short series of science-fiction films for the actor. He had a minor role in the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes and later starred in the cult favourites The Omega Man and Soylent Green. He twice played Mark Antony, in Julius Caesar and in Antony and Cleopatra, which he also directed.

Heston’s other memorable roles include Jack London’s hero John Thornton in The Call of the Wild and Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers and its sequel The Four Musketeers. He also starred in the disaster movies Skyjacked, Airport 1975, and Earthquake. In addition, he appeared in a number of television movies, notably portraying Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, Long John Silver in Treasure Island, Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood, and Brigham Young in The Avenging Angel. His last acting role was in the film drama Genghis Kahn: The Story of a Lifetime.

Charlton Heston published his first book In the Arena: An Autobiography in 1997. Later he wrote such books as The Courage to be Free, The Actors Life: Journals 1956–1976, To Be a Man: Letters to My Grandson and Charlton Heston Presents the Bible. In 1996, Heston had a hip replacement. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998. Following a course of radiation treatment, the cancer went into remission. On August 9, 2002, he publicly announced that he had been diagnosed with symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease. Heston died on the morning of April 5, 2008, at his home in Beverly Hills, California.

Achievements

• Charlton Heston was an American actor, political activist and writer who was known for his chiseled features and compelling speaking voice and for his numerous roles as historical figures and famous literary characters. He appeared in almost 100 films over the course of 60 years.
  
  Heston received the Golden Apple Award in 1956. He was twice awarded the Academy Award. In 1961, he received the David di Donatello Award. He received the Golden Globe Award in 1962 and 1967. Heston also was awarded the Bambi Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2003 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  
  Heston's cinematic legacy was the subject of Cinematic Atlas: The Triumphs of Charlton Heston, an 11-film retrospective by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center that was shown at the Walter Reade Theatre from August 29 to September 4, 2008. On April 17, 2010, Heston was inducted into the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum's Hall of Great Western Performers. Charlton Heston was commemorated on a United States postage stamp issued on April 11, 2014.

Works

More photos

• book

  • To Be a Man: Letters to My Grandson

    (While the public has followed his stellar career, and has...)

    1997
  • Charlton Heston Presents the Bible

    (A heartwarming collection of stories from the King James ...)

    1997
  • In the Arena

    (Known for both his legendary film career and his politica...)

    1997
  • The Courage to be Free

    (For many, just his name spoken aloud reverberates with au...)

    2000
  • The Ten Commandments 1956
  • Beneath the Planet of the Apes 1970
  • Watch Treasure Island 1990

• movie

  • Watch The Far Horizons

    (An ambitious, historic attempt to explore and document an...)

    1955
  • Antony and Cleopatra 1972
  • Dark City 1950
  • The Greatest Show on Earth 1952
  • The Savage 1952
  • The Naked Jungle 1954
  • Three Violent People 1957
  • Ben-Hur 1959
  • Major Dundee 1965
  • Will Penny 1968
  • Midway 1976
  • The Mountain Men 1980

• ьщмшу

  • El Cid 1961

Religion

Charlton Heston was described as "a spiritual man" with an "earthy flair", who "respected religious traditions" and "particularly enjoyed the historical aspects of the Christian faith".

Politics

In 1955 - 1961 Heston endorsed Democratic candidates for President, and signed on to petitions and liberal political causes. From 1961 until 1972 he continued to endorse Democratic candidates for President. He became nationally visible in 1963 in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1972 he rejected the liberalism of George McGovern and supported Richard Nixon for President. In the 1980s, he gave strong support to Ronald Reagan during his conservative presidency. In 1995, Heston established his own political action fund-raising committee and jumped into the internal politics of the National Rifle Association. He gave numerous culture wars speeches and interviews upholding the conservative position, blaming media and academia for imposing affirmative action.

In 1956 Heston campaigned for Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. In the 1964 election, he endorsed Lyndon B. Johnson, who had masterminded the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress over the vociferous opposition of Southern Democrats. That year, Heston publicly opposed California Proposition 14 that rolled back the state's fair housing law, the Rumford Fair Housing Act.

Heston also supported Barry Goldwater for President. He said that this support was the event that helped turn him against gun control laws. He was one of those people who issued a statement in support of President Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968. He endorsed Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 Presidential election.

Heston opposed the Vietnam War during its course, however later he changed his opinion. In 1969 he was approached by the Democratic Party to run for the United States Senate against incumbent George Murphy, but Heston said that he could never give up acting. By the 1980s, Heston supported gun rights and changed his political affiliation from Democratic to Republican. In 1987, he first registered as a Republican and later he campaigned for Republicans and Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

Heston charged that CNN's telecasts from Baghdad were "sowing doubts" about the allied effort in the 1990–91 Gulf War. In a 1997 speech called "Fighting the Culture War in America", Heston rhetorically deplored a culture war he said was being conducted by a generation of media people, educators, entertainers, and politicians against. He was a high-profile president of the National Rifle Association and he once vowed that the only way the government would take away his gun was from his "cold, dead hands". In April 2003, he sent a message of support to the American forces in the Iraq War, attacking opponents of the war as "pretend patriots".

Views

Charlton Heston was against racism. He resigned in protest from Actors Equity, saying the union's refusal to allow a white actor to play a Eurasian role in Miss Saigon was "obscenely racist". While filming The Savage, Heston was initiated by blood into the Miniconjou Lakota Nation, saying that he had no natural American Indian heritage, but elected to be "Native American" to salvage the term from exclusively referring to American Indians. He also opposed abortion and introduced Bernard Nathanson's 1987 anti-abortion documentary, Eclipse of Reason, which focuses on late-term abortions.

Quotations: "Let me make a short, opening, blanket comment. There are no "good guns". There are no "bad guns". Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody – except bad people."

"You could say that the paparazzi and the tabloids are sort of the "assault weapons" of the First Amendment. They're ugly, a lot of people don't like them, but they're protected by the First Amendment – just as "assault weapons" are protected by the Second Amendment."

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."

"Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind."

"I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself. This meant that I had to come to understand Moses well enough to believe in my portrayal of him."

"To me Moses is all men grown to gigantic proportions."

"Once we talk to God, once we get his commission to us for our lives we cannot be again content. We are happier. We are busier. But we are not content because then we have a mission – a commission, rather."

"It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first."

"I have played some of the great men in history and I believe in the great man who does heroic deeds, even in these egalitarian times."

Membership

Charlton Heston was a member of the Los Angeles Center Theatre Group and American Film Institute. He also was a member and a president of the National Rifle Association of America. Heston was the president of the Screen Actors Guild.

• Screen Actors Guild , United States

  1965 - 1971

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Richard Corliss: "From start to finish, Heston was a grand, ornery anachronism, the sinewy symbol of a time when Hollywood took itself seriously, when heroes came from history books, not comic books. Epics like Ben-Hur or El Cid simply couldn't be made today, in part because popular culture has changed as much as political fashion. But mainly because there's no one remotely like Charlton Heston to infuse the form with his stature, fire, and guts."

Connections

Charlton Heston married Lydia Marie Clarke on March 17, 1944. The marriage produced two children.

Father:

Russell Whitford Carter

Mother:

Lilla Carter

Wife:

Lydia Clarke

Lydia Clarke was an American actress and photographer.

Son:

Fraser Clarke Heston

Fraser Clarke Heston is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter and actor.

Daughter:

Holly Ann Heston

Grandson:

Jack Heston

Grandson:

Charlie Rochell

Grandson:

Ridley Charlton Rochell

Brother:

Alan Carter

Sister:

Lilla Carter

References

• Charlton Heston: An Incredible Life
  2009
• From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics
  2006
• Hollywood Left and Right
  2011