Charlton Heston‘s career peaked during the ’50s and ’60s — The Greatest Show on Earth, The Ten Commandments, Touch of Evil, The Big Country, Ben-Hur, El Cid, Planet of the Apes. In the ’70s he mostly became a prisoner of sci-fi and disaster films — The Omega Man, , Skyjacked, Soylent Green, Earthquake (1974), Airport 1975, Midway, Two-Minute Warning, Gray Lady Down. It got so I was feeling sorry for the poor guy.
If you ask anyone his performance as the devious and scheming Cardinal Richelieu in Richard Lester‘s The Three Musketeers (’74) and in the Four Musketeers follow-up was easily bis best ’70s performance, and arguably the last really first-rate role that he lucked into. “I did the picture because of Dick Lester,” Heston told the N.Y. Times‘ Mark Shivas.
