Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston[1] (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor and political activist.[2] He gained stardom for his leading man roles in numerous Hollywood films including biblical epics, science-fiction films and action films. He won the Academy Award as well as nominations for three Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards. He won numerous honorary accolades including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1967, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1971, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003.[3][4]
Charlton Heston
April 5, 2008 (aged 84)
Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church Columbarium
Pacific Palisades, California, U.S.
- Actor
- activist
1941–2003
- Republican (after 1987)
- Democratic (before 1987)
2, including Fraser Clarke Heston
Kayne Robinson
1944–1946
Heston gained stardom for his leading roles as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), and as the title role of Ben-Hur (1959), the later of which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. His other notable credits include The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Secret of the Incas (1954), Touch of Evil (1958), The Big Country (1958), El Cid (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Khartoum (1966), Planet of the Apes (1968), Julius Caesar (1970), The Omega Man (1971), Antony and Cleopatra (1972), Soylent Green (1973), The Three Musketeers (1974), Airport 1975 (1974), Earthquake (1974), and Crossed Swords (1978). He later acted in Mother Lode (1982), Tombstone (1993), True Lies (1994), Alaska (1996), and Hamlet (1996).
In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the civil rights movement. Heston left the Democratic Party in 1987 to become a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston was a five-term president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), from 1998 to 2003. After announcing he had Alzheimer's disease in 2002, he retired from both acting and the NRA presidency.[5]
Early life[edit]
Family[edit]
John Charles Carter[1] was born on October 4, 1923, in Cook County, Illinois, to Lilla (née Baines; 1899–1994) and Russell Whitford Carter (1897–1966), a sawmill operator. His autobiography[6] states that he was born in Wilmette, Illinois, while most sources state he was born in adjacent Evanston, Illinois.[7][8][9] His birth certificate, registered when he was 11 days old, gives his name as Charlton Carter and says he was born in Evanston.[10]
Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood.[11] Heston was partially of Scottish descent, including from the Clan Fraser, but the majority of his ancestry was English. His earliest colonial ancestors arrived in America from England in the 1600s.[12][13][14][15][16] His 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.[17] In his autobiography Heston refers to his father participating in his family's construction business. When Heston was an infant, his father's work moved the family to St. Helen, Michigan.[18] It was a rural, heavily forested part of the state, and Heston lived an isolated yet idyllic existence, spending much time hunting and fishing in the backwoods of the area.[6]
When Heston was ten years old, his parents divorced after having three children. Shortly thereafter, his mother remarried and Charlton, with his younger sister Lilla and younger brother Alan, next moved to Wilmette. Heston and his two siblings took the surname of his mother’s new husband. The three children attended New Trier High School, which would become the high school also for the movie stars Rock Hudson and Ann-Margret.[19] He recalled living there, "All kids play pretend games, but I did it more than most. Even when we moved to Chicago, I was more or less a loner. We lived in a North Shore suburb, where I was a skinny hick from the woods, and all the other kids seemed to be rich and know about girls".[20]: xii Contradictions on paper and in an interview surround when "Charlton" became Heston's first name. His birth certificate lists his name as Charlton Carter, and the 1930 United States Census record for Richfield, Michigan, in Roscommon County, shows his name as being Charlton J. Carter at age six.[21] Later accounts and movie studio biographies say he was born John Charles Carter. When Russell Carter died in 1966, Charlton's brother and sister changed their surname from Carter to Heston the following year; Charlton did not.[1]
Charlton was his maternal grandmother Marian's maiden name,[17] not his mother Lilla's. This is contrary to how 20th-century references read and what Heston said. When Heston's maternal grandmother and his true maternal grandfather Charles Baines[22] separated or divorced in the early 1900s, Marian (née Charlton) Baines married William Henry Lawton in 1907.[23] Charlton Heston's mother, Lilla, and her sister May were adopted by their grandfather and changed their last name to Charlton in order to distance themselves from their biological father, Mr. Baines, who was an undesirable father figure.[24][25] The Carters divorced in 1933 and Lilla Carter married Chester Heston. The newly married Mrs. Heston preferred her children use the same last name as hers.[26] It was thus as Charlton Heston that he appeared in his first film with younger brother Alan Carter (small role), an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1941).[27] His nickname was always Chuck.
Education[edit]
Heston frequently recounted that while growing up in northern Michigan in a sparsely populated area, he often wandered in the forest, "acting" out characters from books he had read.[28] Later, in high school, he enrolled in New Trier's drama program, playing the lead role in the amateur silent 16 mm film adaptation of Peer Gynt, from the Ibsen play, by future film activist David Bradley released in 1941. From the Winnetka Community Theatre (or the Winnetka Dramatist's Guild, as it was then known) in which he was active, he earned a drama scholarship to Northwestern University.[29][30] He attended college from 1941 to 1943 and among his acting teachers was Alvina Krause.[29] Several years later, Heston teamed up with Bradley to produce the first sound version of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, in which Heston played Mark Antony.[31]
World War II service[edit]
In March 1944 Heston married Northwestern University student Lydia Marie Clarke at Grace Methodist Church in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. That same year, he joined the military. Heston 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.[32][33] He reached the rank of staff sergeant.
After his rise to fame, Heston narrated for highly classified U.S. Armed Forces and Department of Energy instructional films, particularly relating to nuclear weapons, and "for six years Heston [held] the nation's highest security clearance" or Q clearance. The Q clearance is similar to a DoD or DIA clearance of top secret.[34]
Personal life[edit]
Marriage[edit]
In March 1944 Heston married Northwestern University student Lydia Marie Clarke at Grace Methodist Church in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina.
Religious beliefs[edit]
Heston was an Episcopalian, and has been described as "a spiritual man" with an "earthy flair", who "respected religious traditions" and "particularly enjoyed the historical aspects of the Christian faith".[95]
Illness and death[edit]
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. In 2000, he publicly disclosed that he had been treated for alcoholism at a Utah clinic in May–June of that year.[96]
On August 9, 2002, he publicly announced (via a taped message) that he had been diagnosed with symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease.[97] In July 2003, in his final public appearance, Heston received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House from President George W. Bush. In March 2005, various newspapers reported that family and friends were shocked by the progression of his illness and that he was sometimes unable to get out of bed.[98]
Heston died on the morning of April 5, 2008, at his home in Beverly Hills, California, with Lydia, his wife of 64 years, by his side. He was 84 years old. Heston also survived by their son, Fraser Clarke Heston, and daughter, Holly Ann Heston. The cause of death was not disclosed by the family.[99][100] A month later, media outlets reported his death was due to pneumonia.[101]
Early tributes came in from leading figures; President George W. Bush called Heston "a man of character and integrity, with a big heart ... He served his country during World War II, marched in the civil rights movement, led a labor union and vigorously defended Americans' Second Amendment rights." Former First Lady Nancy Reagan said that she was "heartbroken" over Heston's death and released a statement, reading, "I will never forget Chuck as a hero on the big screen in the roles he played, but more importantly I considered him a hero in life for the many times that he stepped up to support Ronnie in whatever he was doing."[102]
Heston's funeral was held a week later on April 12, 2008, in a ceremony which was attended by 250 people including Nancy Reagan and Hollywood stars such as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olivia de Havilland, Keith Carradine, Pat Boone, Tom Selleck, Oliver Stone (who had cast Heston in his 1999 movie Any Given Sunday), Rob Reiner, and Christian Bale.[103][104][105]
The funeral was held at Episcopal Parish of St. Matthew's Church in Pacific Palisades, the church where Heston had regularly worshipped and attended Sunday services since the early 1980s.[106][107] He was cremated and his ashes were given to his family.[108]
By Heston: