Charlton Heston Is Dead

The man who parted the Red Sea, who dared dicker with his pontiff, who sought justice in a border town, who fought zombies, talking apes, and pagans: Charlton Heston is dead at age 84.

Richard Corliss over at Time has a respectful overview of his life and career. Christianity Today film reviewer Peter Chattaway offers his own thoughts on Heston’s late-career cameos .

Heston was one of those towering figures you could count on to bring a certain dignity to even the most surreal premises, and who wouldn’t get swallowed up or overwhelmed by CinemaScope. Who’s left of his generation of equal stature? Peter O’Toole. Maybe Connery. That’s about it.

I always wondered if Heston wouldn’t have crafted a better Howard Roark in The Fountainhead than the one fashioned by Gary Cooper. Even Cooper was disappointed with his rendering of Roark’s final court speech, which laid bare his—read: Ayn Rand’s—philosophy. (I am, however, retrojecting an older and epic-tested Heston back into a 1949 film. The original adaptation of the Rand novel would never have been greenlighted with an inexperienced youth in the lead, and it is very unlikely that Heston could have pulled off Roark’s self-assurance and capital-P Presence that early in his career.)

In any event, a few choice lines from the films Heston did, in fact, make:

“A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.”

“There are no strangers among those who seek God’s forgiveness.”

“Soylent Green is people!”

“You may conquer the land. You may slaughter the people. But that is not the end. We will rise again.”

And, of course: