From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics
Emilie Raymond, . . Univ. Press of Kentucky, $27.95 (376pp) ISBN 978-0-8131-2408-7
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
Reviewed on: 06/05/2006
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 416 pages - 978-0-8131-3842-8
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