Heston's lead in City (never on VHS but frequently televised) made him a star at once. It then took six years for The Ten Commandments' box-office wallop to launch this new superstar into a consistent string of ambitious projects that are still constantly shown today.

Of his early pictures now on DVD, many fans harbor affection for the lurid swamp-girl romance Ruby Gentry (1952, Fox, $15; co-starring Jennifer Jones) and Heston's railing performance as a chauvinist badgering his bride in The Naked Jungle (1954, Paramount, $10; with Eleanor Parker and a lot of South American red ants). On VHS only is The Private War of Major Benson (1955), a military school comedy and sleeper hit at the time that was written by Leave It to Beaver's future writers.

The Heston heyday lasted until about 1968, after which point he got mired as the lead in a bunch of stinkers (Soylent Green, Airport 1975) or went the character-actor route in better movies.

The most praiseworthy of his character turns include playing Cardinal Richelieu in Richard Lester's Musketeers romps (Three and Four) from 1973-74 (available as an Anchor Bay $40 duo); his cameo (wearing an eye patch) as Arnold Schwarzenegger's colleague in 1994's True Lies (Fox, $15); a smooth Player King in Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet (Warner, $27); and some amusingly crotchety romping as Andie MacDowell's father in 2001's funnier-than-its-rep Town & Country (New Line, $10), a flop of historical proportions.

But given the actor's legacy as the big guy with the wide shoulders in movies of biblical weight, Heston beginners need to start with the obvious marquee busters and maybe a couple of overlooked roles he favored himself. These would be:

•The Greatest Show on Earth (1952, Paramount, $10). In just his second major film, Heston landed the male lead (as a circus manager) in its year's top box-office hit. With enough plot to take in a mercy killing and massive train wreck, Cecil B. DeMille's extravaganza is often cited as the worst movie to have taken the Oscar, as if a lot of lackluster picks (from Cimarron to Crash) were half as entertaining.

•The Ten Commandments (1956, Paramount, $25). Paramount broke the bank and earned it back with DeMille's directing swan song, and Heston as Moses (both the young and older, bearded version) avoided the campy (if hugely amusing) histrionics of co-stars Anne Baxter and Edward G. Robinson.

•Touch of Evil (1958, Universal, $15). Though he was absurdly cast as a Mexican narc fighting corruption, this is perhaps the greatest movie with which Heston was ever associated — though his major contribution was championing director/co-star Orson Welles, who was, as always, on the outs with the studio suits. Terrifically reassembled by pros in 1999 to rectify the famous brass-imposed edits.

•The Big Country (1958, MGM/Fox, $15). As Steve the ranch hand, Heston takes an instant dislike to Eastern tenderfoot Gregory Peck, the intended of the ranch owner's daughter (Carroll Baker). Future Ben-Hur director William Wyler's 23/4-hour Western has a memorable fight in which two future American Film Institute chairmen duke it out in a Technirama long shot, artfully showing up as specks amid the vastness the movie's title describes.

•Ben-Hur (1959, Warner, $20 and $40 editions). Heston's Oscar performance off his only nomination solidified his image as the king of historical screen spectacles, and it's doubtful any other actor of the day could have matched him. Uncredited screenwriter Gore Vidal has claimed that Stephen Boyd was instructed to play Messala as if he had a gay thing for Heston's Judah — without letting Heston in on the joke.

•El Cid (1961, Weinstein/Genius, $20 and $40 editions). Spain's 11th-century national hero inspired what remains, with Moses and Ben-Hur, Heston's third signature role. And Sophia Loren (as wife Jimena) strikes an imposing figure as well against Miklos Rozsa's majestic score. Theatrically reissued in 1993, it was, until its January release, one of the most-wanted movies on DVD.

•Major Dundee (1965, Sony, $15). When soon-to-be blackballed director Sam Peckinpah couldn't get the money to finesse his Civil War epic as envisioned, Heston offered to relinquish his salary and found his offer accepted. When this studio-butchered cause célèbre got partly restored into semi-coherency in 2005, one by-product of the added scenes was a more forceful Heston performance (one of his best, in fact).

•The War Lord (1965, Good Times, used copies of the out-of-print DVD go for a bundle). Heston always thought this medieval action drama (surprisingly adapted from a play) was underrated — and it is. He's a knight in love with a peasant (Rosemary Forsyth) from the village he's guarding, a no-no that leads to some stirring battle scenes that director Franklin J. Schaffner thought interfered with the story.

•Planet of the Apes (1968, Fox, $15 and $27 editions). Fox continues to recycle its lucrative Apes franchise, and Heston's beefcake demeanor had a lot to do with the success of the surprise hit that started it all. The picture also got director Schaffner into the big leagues, two years before his Oscar-winning Patton.

•Will Penny (1968, Paramount, $10). One of Heston's oft-cited personal favorites, this authentically mounted Western casts him as a middle-aged cowpoke who finds the woman he loves (Joan Hackett) far too late in life. It's photographed with a lot of purple mountain's majesty by the era's foremost lenser of Westerns: Lucien Ballard (also of True Grit and The Wild Bunch).

Enlarge MGM Heston earned an Oscar for his work in 1959's Ben-Hur. It was the sole nomination of his career, though he also won a humanitarian prize at the 1978 Academy Awards.

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