John Huston
John Marcellus Huston (/ˈhjuːstən/ ⓘ HEW-stən; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1980.
For other people named John Huston, see John Huston (disambiguation).
John Huston
August 5, 1906
August 28, 1987 (aged 81)
- United States (until 1964)
- Ireland (from 1964)
- Film director
- screenwriter
- actor
1930–1987
- Walter Huston (father)
1942–1946
Son of actor Walter Huston, he studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris. He then moved to Mexico and began writing, first plays and short stories, and later working in Los Angeles as a Hollywood screenwriter, and was nominated for several Academy Awards writing for films directed by William Dieterle and Howard Hawks, among others. His directorial debut came with The Maltese Falcon (1941), which despite its small budget became a commercial and critical hit; he would continue to be a successful, if iconoclastic, Hollywood director for the next 45 years.
Huston directed acclaimed films such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), The Misfits (1961), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Annie (1982), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987). During his 46-year career, Huston received 14 Academy Award nominations, winning twice. Huston acted in numerous films receiving nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for The Cardinal (1963), and Chinatown (1974) respectively. He also acted in Casino Royale (1967), Myra Breckinridge (1970) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). He voiced the wizard Gandalf in The Hobbit (1977).
Huston has been referred to as "a titan", "a rebel", and a "renaissance man" in the Hollywood film industry. He traveled widely, settling at various times in France, Mexico, and Ireland. Huston was a citizen of the U.S. by birth but renounced this to become an Irish citizen and resident in 1964. He later returned to the U.S., where he lived the rest of his life.[1] He is the father of actress Anjelica Huston, whom he directed to an Oscar win.
Career[edit]
1930–1939: Early career and directorial debut[edit]
During his stay in Mexico, Huston wrote a play called Frankie and Johnny, based on the ballad of the same title. After selling it easily, he decided that writing would be a viable career, and he focused on it. His self-esteem was enhanced when H. L. Mencken, editor of the popular magazine American Mercury, bought two of his stories, "Fool" and "Figures of Fighting Men." During subsequent years, Huston's stories and feature articles were published in Esquire, Theatre Arts, and The New York Times. He also worked for a period on the New York Graphic. In 1931, when he was 25, he moved back to Los Angeles in hopes of writing for the blossoming film industry. The silent films had given way to "talkies", and writers were in demand.[6] His father had earlier moved there and already gained success in a number of films.
Huston received a script editing contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions but, after six months of receiving no assignments, quit to work for Universal Studios, where his father was a star. At Universal, he got a job in the script department, and began by writing dialogue for a number of films in 1932, including Murders in the Rue Morgue, A House Divided, and Law and Order. The last two also starred his father, Walter Huston. A House Divided was directed by William Wyler, who gave Huston his first real "inside view" of the filmmaking process during all stages of production. Wyler and Huston became close friends and collaborators on a number of leading films.[6]
Huston gained a reputation as a "lusty, hard-drinking libertine" during his first years as a writer in Hollywood.[2] Huston described those years as a "series of misadventures and disappointments". In 1933 he was in a romantic relationship with actress Zita Johann. While driving drunk, with Johann as passenger, he hit a parked car sending Johann through the glass windshield. She suffered head trauma and Huston was charged with driving while intoxicated. His brief career as a Hollywood writer ended suddenly when he struck and killed actress Tosca Roulien, wife of actor Raul Roulien, while driving. There is a rumor that actor Clark Gable was responsible for the accident, but that MGM general manager Eddie Mannix paid Huston to take the blame. Gable was on location filming a movie, however, proving that rumor untrue.[7] A coroner's jury absolved Huston of blame, but the incident left him "traumatized". He moved to London and Paris, living as a "drifter."[2]
By 1937, the 31-year-old Huston returned to Hollywood intent on being a "serious writer." He married again, to Lesley Black. His first job was as scriptwriter with Warner Brothers Studio, and he formed his personal longterm goal to direct his own scripts. For the next four years, he co-wrote scripts for major films such as Jezebel, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Juarez, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, and Sergeant York (1941).[2] He was nominated for Academy Awards for his screenplays for both Ehrlich and Sergeant York. Huston wrote that Sergeant York, which was directed by Howard Hawks, has "gone down as one of Howard's best pictures, and Gary Cooper had a triumph playing the young mountaineer."[8]: 77
Huston was recognized and respected as a screenwriter. He persuaded the Warners to give him a chance to direct, under the condition that his next script also became a hit.
Huston wrote:
As an actor[edit]
While he had done some stage acting in his youth and had occasionally cast himself in bit parts in his own films. Earlier in his career, he had played bit parts in his own films, such as the unnamed rich American in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Towards the end of his career, Huston began to play more prominent roles in films by other directors. In 1963, director Otto Preminger asked if he would portray a Boston prelate in The Cardinal, and, writes author Philip Kemp, he "virtually stole the picture."[5] He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role. He had a little participation (as did many others) in 1967's Casino Royale as actor and director. He acted in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) as the film's master villain, Noah Cross. For his performance he earned a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. He also acted as President Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of state John Hay in The Wind and the Lion. Huston enjoyed acting and denied that he took it all that seriously. "It's a cinch," he once said, "and they pay you damn near as much as you make directing."[5]
He continued to take prominent supporting roles for the next two decades, including 1974's Chinatown (directed by Roman Polanski), and he lent his booming baritone voice as a voice actor and narrator to a number of prominent films. His last two films, 1985's Prizzi's Honor, and 1987's The Dead, filmed while he was in failing health at the end of his life, were both nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He died shortly after completing his last film. Huston said he did not regard himself very highly as an actor, saying he was proud only of his performance in Chinatown. But he had also greatly enjoyed acting in Winter Kills.[31] He also played the Lawgiver in Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
Huston is famous to a generation of fans of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories as the voice of the wizard Gandalf in the Rankin/Bass animated adaptations of The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980).
Huston played the lead in Orson Welles's last completed film, The Other Side of the Wind. In it he played an aging filmmaker named Jake Hannaford who was having great problems getting financing for his latest uncompleted film. Much of his portrayal was filmed in the spring of 1974 in Carefree, Arizona, at Southwestern Studio and a nearby mansion. But due to political and financial complications, The Other Side of the Wind was not released until the fall of 2018.
Archives[edit]
The moving image collection of John Huston is held at the Academy Film Archive. The film material at the Academy Film Archive is complemented by production files, photographs, and personal correspondence found in the John Huston papers, 1932–1981, at the academy's Margaret Herrick Library.[46] The film archive preserved several of John Huston's home movies in 2001.[47]