Charlton Heston was one of the last postwar stars to come of age right after the war (as World War II used to be referred to.) He studied acting with the legendary Alvina Krause, the most revered acting teacher of the Midwest, whose students at Northwestern University included Heston, Dick Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, Tony Roberts, the character actor James Olson, Oscar winner Patricia Neal, William Daniels (Dustin Hoffman's father in "The Graduate," playwright and actor George Furth, and many others.

The scene which defines much of Heston's life for me came not in his two most famous roles, the title one in "Ben Hur," the most honored movie of all time, nor as Moses in "The 10 Comandments." No, it came in my favorite Heston movie," The Big Country." It’s the fight scene with Gregory Peck.

Heston played the ramrod, the foreman of the huge ranch, presumably in Texas (it's never named but everything is "big" in that epic western), and he squared off with Peck, the "greenhorn," or "tenderfoot" easterner who'd come to marry the ranch owner's daughter, the object of Heston's affection as well. Director William Wyler filmed it from afar, two men seen in the distance amid an endless sea of grain and grassland. Peck, one of Hollywood's most prominent liberals, was fighting with Heston, whose own politics would turn rightward (as did his friend Ronald Reagan's) later in life.

Politically he was a curiosity -- he marched in the civil rights movements when not many other Hollywood stars had yet taken up the cause. Yet he later campaigned for Jesse Helms, the arch conservative North Carolina senator. Oh and he also campaigned for Strom Thurmond, who'd run for the white house on the 1948 "Dixiecrat" racist platform. Heston was his own man, as witness to his famous (or infamous, depending on your political perspective) speech to his minions of the National Rifle Association.

He was born Charles Cartger on October 4, 1923 in Evanston, a Chicago suburb. It was at Northwestern where he first starred in a student film production of the endless play "Peer Gynt" in 1942, then performed dramas on Chicago radio stations before his professional stage debut in summer stock.

Broadway first saw him billed 15th in "Anthony and Cleopatra" in 1947, as Proculeius, a soldier of “Caesar". More important, he got to work with the great director Guthrie McClintic and Katharine Cornell, then the reigning queen of Broadway. Kirk Douglas had made his stage debut with Ms. Cornell five years earlier. Other Broadway credits were long forgotten "Leaf and Bough," which ran just three performances, followed by "Design for a Stained Glass Window” (there's a title which grabs you!), which ran eight performances in 1950, and then, ten years later, in "The Tumbler," which lasted just six performances. Before heading West, however, he got notices in sweeping TV specials like "Julius Caesar" as Antony, Heathcliff in "Wuithering Heights" and as Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew."

One film historian described Heston as "tall and muscular, with a dominant physical presence and a strong-jawed, patrician facial bone structure suggesting intelligence and dignity," qualities which would soon serve him well.

He didn't lose touch with theater, however, even as Hollywood beckoned. In 1954, for example, he starred with Paul Douglas and Jan Sterling, then husband and wife, in a production of "Born Yesterday," the classic Garson Kanin comedy, in the role made famous in the movie by William Holden, hired by Douglas' blustery character tutor, his dumb blonde wife (Judy Holliday's classic screen role.). The box office quickly sold out, so the producers removed the chairs from the stars' dressing rooms to sell to eager stand by patrons in the aisles. But it was a Moses for director Cecil B. DeMille where he won international fame. One of the early scenes shot was the one in which he carried the tablets down from Mt. Sinai. "I'd better not slip up," he joked.

Just three years later he won his Oscar as Judah Ben Hur, a remake of a silent version, this time for director William Wyler. Wyler was known for doing lots of retakes; something to be avoided in a chariot race, of course. When I interviewed Heston he told me that was the scariest scene he'd ever done, because the use of a double was kept to a minimum. "I was even scared for my double," he said. “Ben Hur” It ranks as one of the greatest action scenes in movie history.

He worked with Orson Welles in "Touch of Evil," a brilliant film noir classic toward the end of the heyday of that genre, "The Wreck of the Mary Deare, Gary Cooper's penultimate film. Soon came "The Big Country" in a supporting role, really, but an unforgettable one with Heston astride in a gorgeous pinto. He played Andrew Jackson in "The Buccaneer" for director Anthony Quinn; the only movie Quinn (coincidentally a former son-in-law of Cecil B. DeMille would direct). After the frivolous "The Pigeon That Took Rome" and "Diamond Head,” he returned to a war epic, in this case the boxer rebellion, in "55 Days At Peking", then another biblical epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told" for director George Stevens, as John the Baptist. (In case you're wondering, the role of Christ went to a young Max von Sydow).

I first met him on the set of "The Agony and the Ecstasy,” in which he portrayed Michelangelo. Not on the set, really. I tagged along to Rome with my father, Broadway columnist Leonard Lyons, in the days when press junkets were really that; the studio sent 50 journalists (and one eager son) to London, then Rome. There in the Sistine Chapel, he gave us an informed tour and detailed explanation of the works of the master artist and sculptor. He found a resurgence to his career in action movies with those "Planet of the Apes" movies, which still have a huge cult about them, gave the role of Anthony another shot in "Anthony and Cleopatra," a still relevant sci-fi drama in "Soylent Green," the screen farewell of Edward G. Robinson, incidentally. He eased into character roles as Cardinal Richelieu in the "Three Musketeer" movies, did another war epic "Midway" and nearly a score of other movies.

One movie was "El Cid," Heston played the legendary medieval spanish hero, with Sophia Loren. If you look closely at the scene when he and Loren ride into Seville, you may spot a stagehand in an alleyway; one of Hollywood's many "goofs."

He did other Westerns like the underrated "Will Penny" and "Major Dundee" and worked with some of Hollywood's greatest directors; Wyler, Stevens, Peckinpah, Franklin J. Schaffner, Rudolph Mate, and William Dieterle, to name a few.

Charlton Heston was one of the few "larger-than-life" postwar stars who left a legacy of great films.