The late Hollywood icon Charlton Heston was raised in northern Michigan, where he had his first acting stints.
Not so well known is that this film legend was deeply steeped in the political history of Michigan, which he fondly called "my home state" although he was born in Illinois and went back there for high school.
It was in the tiny Roscommon County hamlet of St. Helen where his father ran a lumber mill that Heston, as a boy in plays in a one-room school, began honing skills he displayed in playing what he called historical "formidable fellas" Moses, John the Baptist, Julius Caesar, Michelangelo and Andrew Jackson.
Before there was the booming voice of Moses, there was the squeaky voice of a kid with just one line playing Santa Claus, "crouching in a cardboard fireplace, so I could come out at the end and say, 'Merry Christmas.'"
"He cherished his Michigan roots and was supportive of preserving Michigan history," said ex-Gov. William G. Milliken, who had a "Dear Chuck/Dear Bill" correspondence relationship with Heston, who was as far to the right in the GOP as Milliken has been to the left.
Although in earlier years he was president of the Screen Actors Guild and campaigned for such Democrats as John F. Kennedy, Heston became a conservative crusader and president of the National Rifle Association. He was vigorous on the trail for Republican President Ronald Reagan, including a 1984 rally in Detroit.
For movie buffs, the most enduring image of Heston might be as a bearded and robed Moses, coming off the mountain in "The Ten Commandments," or as a lean chariot-racing gladiator in "Ben-Hur," for which he won the 1959 best actor Oscar.
For gun buffs, the memorable image would be at the podium of a NRA convention, waving a rifle and famously vowing that the only way it would be taken away was "from my cold, dead hands."
In reporting on his April 7 death, the Associated Press recalled that Heston once delivered a jab at then-President Bill Clinton, saying "America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns."
In the 1980s there was faint, flickering talk of Heston running for the U.S. Senate from Michigan (Illinois-born Hillary Clinton, via Arkansas, became senator from New York), and, far more seriously, from California.
But Heston told Parade in 1986: "I'd rather play a senator than be one." And, as he said in an old interview aired Friday night on Turner Classic Movies before a showing of "Ben-Hur," if he ran and won, "I could never act again, and that's unacceptable to me."
Scott Craig, a former Chicago-based network producer now residing in Leland, directed Heston's narration of two films shown on public TV. One was about Northwestern University, where Heston had an acting scholarship. Craig recalls Heston being "formal, but polite," at one point telling Craig: "I'll re-read, as long as you tell me why."
Craig's other gig with Heston was for the 1982 narration of "Stewards of the State: The Governors of Michigan," a half-hour film that the now-defunct Milliken Foundation financed as a gift to what was then called the Michigan Division of History for viewing in schools, museums and elsewhere.
As a Milliken functionary and author of the script (later expanded as a book published by The Detroit News and the Historical Society of Michigan), I joined Craig for the recording at Heston's rambling home on the rim of Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills.
Heston did more than read the script. He honed it, stopping periodically to suggest changes or reminisce about Michigan's early days.
The script said Stevens T. Mason, who was 26 when Michigan achieved statehood in 1837, was Michigan's youngest governor. After recording this, Heston paused to say he thought Mason was the youngest governor of any state. He said: "Let's record it both ways and you check it out."
Turns out he was right.
Once Scott Craig's film was completed and scheduled for 1983 release on public TV, Heston wrote Milliken that he was "grateful for the chance to do something for my home state."
George Weeks retired in 2006 after 22 years as political columnist for The Detroit News. His weekly Michigan Politics column is syndicated by Superior Features.
