Charlton Heston's career as a commanding male lead provided a one-person Hollywood trek through the pages of world history and a forceful, conservative vision of a world in which America always wins. The Northwestern University acting student's first film appearances were in ambitious amateur 16mm productions of "Peer Gynt" (1941) and "Julius Caesar" (1949), both directed by fellow student David Bradley. After service in World War II, he and his wife Lydia Clarke worked as models in New York and ran a theater in Asheville, NC before he found success on Broadway in Katharine Cornell's
