Reply #15: I wasn't aware that he was activie in the Civil Rights Movement...

[spin]

you learn something new everyday.

Heston campaigned for Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960.<17> Reportedly when an Oklahoma movie theater premiering his movie El Cid was segregated, he joined a picket line outside in 1961.<18> Heston makes no reference to this in his autobiography, but describes traveling to Oklahoma City to picket segregated restaurants, much to the chagrin of Allied Artists, the producers of El Cid.<19> During the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. In later speeches, Heston said he helped the civil rights cause, "long before Hollywood found it fashionable."<20>.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlton_Heston

You are probably right on his being senile.

He won a battle with prostate cancer, but in August of 2002 announced that he had "symptoms consistent with the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease." He chose not to hide this, in a desire, as he put it, to remain in touch with his audience.
http://www.classicmovies.org/articles/aa092902a.htm