re: Charlton Heston (1924-2008)

Janet — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:17:20 GMT

I recently read Jimmy Cagney's autobiography and he spoke at length about how he had become soured on his lifelong liberalism by the student protests of the Sixties. I wonder if the same wasn't true of Heston and others of their generation.

re: Charlton Heston (1924-2008)

Phil Nugent — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:50:16 GMT

Heston's politics were a lot more complex than the head-of-the-NRA cartoon that he himself parodied in his cameo in the "Planet of the Apes" remake, and there's a lot there that's worth not just remembering but celebrating. He was out front as a highly public advocate for the Civil Rights Movement from a time when you didn't see a lot of white celebrities marching and carrying signs; he also attacked McCarthyism and the Vietnam war and campaigned for such presidential candidates as Adlai Stevenson and John and Robert Kennedy. For at least half his life, he was a liberal Democrat; as with Frank Sinatra and a lot of not-famous people, the two-fisted Republicanism was a late-life development that may have grown out of a desire to find a reason that he didn't seem to be the center of the universe any longer. But even after he started embracing people like Nixon and stroking his guns, he tried to stay above politics in his work, even scandalizing some of his associates with hs eagerness to create opportunities to act with Vanessa Redgrave, and treating those he disagreed with respectfully. In return, he earned the right to more respect than those liberal filmmakers who saw his Alzheimer's as something to revel in or exploit. (I could name two.)