From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics

Heston was as much a bellwether in real-life politics as he was in Hollywood biblical epics, according to this intriguing biographical study. Historian Raymond surveys Heston's political life from his days as a civil rights marcher, Lyndon Johnson supporter and Screen Actors Guild president to his later turn as a Republican stalwart and National Rifle Association president. She analyzes this trajectory not as a rightward trek but as rooted in bedrock ideals—individualism, equal opportunity, moral responsibility—through shifting ideological tides. Throughout, she pegs Heston as a "visceral neoconservative" unwittingly in tune with neocon intellectuals like Irving Kristol (but without the Trotskyist past). In blockbusters from The Ten Commandments to Planet of the Apes , his resonant baritone, craggily handsome face and muscular, seminude physique glamorized an image of conservative masculinity that would color his offscreen political crusades. Raymond's film commentary is stiffly didactic ("Moses demonstrates his moral brand of individualism when he halts construction to save a slave woman") and her indulgent attitude—she sees no inconsistency between Heston's early union activism and his later stumping for right-to-work laws—can seem obtuse. Still, her well-researched, if somewhat smitten, profile sheds light on conservatism as a mass cultural phenomenon through one of its iconic luminaries. Photos. (Aug.)