A Persona Carved in Stone

One of his earliest films was a noir titled "Dark City," but his face and frame were entirely too free of neurosis for the world of film noir. In almost no time, he moved to center ring roles -- "The Greatest Show on Earth," as a circus boss in 1952, for DeMille. By 1953 he was Buffalo Bill Cody in "Pony Express," his first iconic role. It just seemed to get better and better, and certainly by the time of "The Ten Commandments" he had arrived. That role also cemented him in place as Mr. Monument to the Great Western Way.

If you pine for some hint of scandal or even minor weakness, Heston's life isn't the place to look. He got married early (to Lydia Clarke), stayed married, had kids and seemed never to make the gossips.

In his private life, he was given to follow that strange calling that is half public service and half self-aggrandizement with the distinction frequently blurred. He was a six-term president of the Screen Actors Guild, an early celebrity marcher in the civil rights crusade, and his beloved status in Tinseltown was certainly validated when he received the Academy Awards' Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1977.

Why then, it must be asked, did he take the leadership of the NRA, never the most popular of lobbying outfits in Washington? One cynical explanation is that the old star was looking for an audience that would treat him as he had been treated in the late '50s and early '60s, almost as a god.

But the abuse he took! The anger he generated. The fury he absorbed from a Hollywood and a critical community that were turning ever more liberal in the wake of the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Good Lord, he didn't need that at all.

The only answer can be: He believed. His had to have been a ramrod sense of the Second Amendment and he never varied from it. Hate his politics or love them, you have to say: There was a man.

When I met him at that NRA event (I am a member; he had read some of my novels), I was disappointed. He was -- no other word will do -- old. He had an old man's stooped posture and an extremely tentative way of speaking, as if clarity were an issue. His features, once so mythic, now seemed fragile, draped with a loose parchment of delicate, spotted skin. He didn't walk so much as shuffle, as if he were already wearing those hospital paper shoes; it was as if he had a walker with an oxygen tank attached.

We exchanged cordialities and banalities (can't remember a word of it), and then it was time for him to address the crowd. He shuffled slowly into the big room, and the spotlight came on him, and it was as if with each step he tossed off a decade. His shuffle became a stride and then almost a strut. His posture went from the question mark of age to the exclamation point of youth. His lungs filled, revealing the full breadth of his wide shoulders. His neck turned iron, his chin came aloft, his vision sharpened, and the years just fell away like leaves. When he spoke he boomed in Moses' triumphant baritones, delivering the Tablets to the believers.

I thought: Good for Chuck. Magnificent to the end.