The world lost a great actor on Saturday.
Charlton Heston’s inimitable voice, manner and epic acting talents are on my mind as I think about his passing at age 83.
In his best roles, as Moses in “The Ten Commandments” or George Taylor in “Planet of the Apes,” he was a commanding and menacing alpha male, barking orders through clenched teeth, with a gleam in his eye. Even in terrible 1970s disaster movies, he was a reliably entertaining movie star.
Maybe his politics deviated wildly from my own. But that would never color my appreciation of his movies.
My cousin and I always loved to do impressions of Heston intoning memorable lines from “Commandments” such as, “Blood makes for poor mortar,” or, “The city is made of bricks. The strong make many, the starving make few, the dead make none. So much for accusations.”
We’ll miss you, Charlton.
— Max