Heston's Bearing, Toughness Endured

He videotaped a farewell speech and released it to the media, ending it with a touch of Shakespeare's farewell for Prospero in "The Tempest":

"We are such stuff

"As dreams are made on, and our little life

"Is rounded with a sleep."

In October of 2002, looking frail, he made an appearance at a meeting of his beloved National Rifle Association in Manchester, N.H. A friend handed him a flintlock, which Heston held over his head in a customary pose. He challenged his enemies to pry the rifle "from my cold dead hands."

Even in affliction, he hadn't lost that Heston bearing.

I began covering Heston shortly after his arrival in Hollywood in 1952. He was an articulate young fellow, always friendly and outgoing. In one interview, he commented that producers didn't see him as a 20th-century man.

"All the good modern parts go to Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant," he complained mildly.

"When you see Jack Lemmon at the beginning of a picture walking down the halls of a big office building," he said, "you immediately believe him as a junior executive of a corporation. When you see me on horseback in chain mail, they seem to believe that I belong there."