HOWZAT

He engaged in a lengthy feud with liberal Ed Asner during the latter’s tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild. His latter-day activism almost overshadowed his achievements as an actor, which were considerable.

Heston lent his strong presence to some of the most acclaimed and successful films of the midcentury.

Ben-Hur won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). Heston’s other hits include The Ten Commandments, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, Planet of the Apes and Earthquake.

The actor loved to list the number of historical figures he had portrayed, including Andrew Jackson twice, in The President’s Lady and The Buccaneer; Moses, in The Ten Commandments; the title role of El Cid; John the Baptist (The Greatest Story Ever Told); Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy); General Gordon (Khartoum); Marc Antony twice, in Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra; Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers; and Henry VIII in The Prince and the Pauper.

Heston made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley, who later became a noted film archivist. He had the title role in Peer Gynt in 1942 and was Marc Antony in Bradley’s 1949 version of Julius Caesar, for which Heston was paid $50 a week.

Film producer Hal B. Wallis (Casablanca) spotted Heston in a 1950 television production of Wuthering Heights and offered him a contract. When his wife reminded him that they had decided to pursue theatre and television, he replied: “Well, maybe just for one film to see what it’s like.”

Heston earned star billing from his first Hollywood movie, Dark City, a 1950 film noir. Cecil B. DeMille next cast him as the circus manager in the all-star The Greatest Show On Earth, named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952.

A succession of forgettable low-budget films followed, ranging from The Savage to Lucy Gallant, and Heston's career seemed to be languishing until his old boss DeMille rescued him.

The director had long planned a new version of The Ten Commandments, which he had first made as a silent in 1923, with a radically different approach that combined biblical and modern stories. He was struck by Heston’s facial resemblance to Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses, especially the similar broken nose, and put the actor through a long series of tests before giving him the role.

The Hestons’ newborn, Fraser Clarke Heston, played the role of the infant Moses in the film.

More films followed including the eccentric thriller Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles; William Wyler’s The Big Country, costarring with Gregory Peck; and a sea saga, The Wreck of the Mary Deare, with Gary Cooper.

Then came the film that gave him what was considered to be his greatest role and catapulted him into the Hollywood stratosphere: Ben-Hur.

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