Until he became head of the NRA, Charlton Heston was actually a likeable fellow for most. Beyond his distinguished career in radio, TV and movies he was a genuine humanitarian. When Martin Luther King got into major legal trouble in the early 1960s (over a trumped up perjury charge), it was Heston and several other actors who led a fundraising drive to help pay King's bills -- later he marched with King in the famous 1963 demonstration in Washington.
Why a former head of the Screen Actors Guild would later join the NRA, a very conservative group, I haven't been able to figure out. His now infamous interview with Michael Moore, recorded before it was learned he had Alzheimer's, certainly placed him in a poor light when he couldn't explain adequately how the gun lobby rubbed it in the faces of the families who had lost loved ones in school shootings.
Sadly, it's because of that interview that I can't bring myself to watch The Ten Commandments anymore.
Still, he had a good life -- and at least now he's in peace.
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