Charlton Heston is dead:

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing “Ben-Hur” and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other figures in movie epics of the ’50s and ’60s, has died. He was 84.

The actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, family spokesman Bill Powers said.

[. . .]

With his large, muscular build, well-boned face and sonorous voice, Heston proved the ideal star during the period when Hollywood was filling movie screens with panoramas depicting the religious and historical past. “I have a face that belongs in another century,” he often remarked.

Publicist Michael Levine, who represented Heston for about 20 years, said the actor’s passing represented the end of an iconic era for cinema.

“If Hollywood had a Mt. Rushmore, Heston’s face would be on it,” Levine said. “He was a heroic figure that I don’t think exists to the same degree in Hollywood today.”

Heston was one of my favorite actors. His historical films like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and BEN-HUR were sweet, but my favorites were his later, sci-fi stuff: PLANET OF THE APES, SOYLENT GREEN (which I wrote about here a couple of months ago), and THE OMEGA MAN.

Everyone remembers Heston as a crazy sort of gun nut who chaired the NRA for a number of years, but back in the Fifties he was an activist in the civil rights movement, publicly speaking out against segregation before it was fashionable in Hollywood and marching with Martin Luther Kin Jr in Washington D.C.

Charlton Heston was a badass, a man’s man. His death, though not unexpected, is still very sad news.

JAB