John Huston Biography
Summary
"John Marcellus Huston" (; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He was known for directing the films "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948), "Key Largo" (1948), "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950), "The African Queen" (1951), "Moulin Rouge" (1952) "The Misfits" (1960), "The Man Who Would Be King" (1975), and "Annie" (1982). He was the son of actor Walter Huston and the father of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.
Early life
Huston was born in Nevada, Missouri, the son of the Canadian-born actor, Walter Huston, and Rhea Gore, a sports reporter; he was of Scots-Irish descent on his father's side, his ancestral surname was Houston, and English and Welsh on his mother's. Huston was raised by his maternal grandparents, Adelia Richardson and John Marcellus Gore.
As a ten year old he was stricken by a serious illness which left him all but bedridden for several years. On his recuperation, this acted as the spur to pursue a full life, both intellectually and physically.
Career
Huston began his film career as a screenwriter and made films mainly adapted from books or plays. Among other films, Huston worked on the scripts of "Juarez" (1939), "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" (1940) and "High Sierra" (1941).
Huston's films were insightful about human nature and human predicaments. They also sometimes included scenes or brief dialogue passages that were remarkably prescient concerning environmental issues that came to public awareness in the future, in the period starting about 1970; examples include "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) and "The Night of the Iguana" (1964). "The Misfits" (1960) was written by Arthur Miller and featured an all-star cast including Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach, and was the last screen appearance of screen icons Gable and Monroe. It is well-known that Huston spent long evenings carousing in the Nevada casinos after filming, surrounded by reporters and beautiful women, gambling, drinking, and smoking cigars. Gable remarked during this time that 'if he kept it up he would soon die of it.'
After filming the documentary "Let There Be Light" on the psychiatric treatment of soldiers for shellshock, Huston resolved to make a film about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. The film, "Freud the Secret Passion", began as a collaboration between Huston and Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre dropped out of the film and requested his name be removed from the credits. Huston went on to make the film starring Montgomery Clift as Freud.
In the 1970s, he was frequently an actor in Italian films, and continued acting until the age of 80 ("Momo", 1986).
Huston is also 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).
Many of his films were edited by Russell Lloyd, who was nominated for an Oscar for editing "The Man Who Would Be King" (1975).
The six-foot-two-inch, brown-eyed director also acted in a number of films, with distinction in Otto Preminger's "The Cardinal" (1963) for which he was nominated for the Academy award for Best Supporting Actor and in Roman Polanski's "Chinatown" (1974) as the film's central corrupt businessman and incestuous father.
John Huston received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1983.
Academy Awards
In 1941, Huston was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for "The Maltese Falcon". He was nominated again and won in 1948 for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", for which he also received the Best Director award.
Huston received 15 Oscar nominations in the course of his career. In fact, he is the oldest person ever to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar when, at 79 years old, he was nominated for "Prizzi's Honor" (1985). He also has the unique distinction of directing both his father Walter and his daughter Anjelica in Oscar-winning performances (in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Prizzi's Honor", respectively), making the Hustons the first family to have three generations of Academy Award winners.
In addition, he also directed 13 other actors in Oscar-nominated performances: "Sydney Greenstreet", "Claire Trevor", "Sam Jaffe", "Humphrey Bogart", "Katharine Hepburn", "José Ferrer", "Colette Marchand", "Deborah Kerr", "Grayson Hall", "Susan Tyrrell", "Albert Finney", "Jack Nicholson" and "William Hickey". Alongside his daughter and father, Bogart and Trevor also won for their performances.
Personal life
Huston, an Atheist, was married five times, to:
Dorothy Harvey - This, his first marriage, lasted 7 years: Dorothy and John were divorced in 1933.
Lesley Black - It was during his marriage to Black that he embarked on an affair with married New York socialite Marietta FitzGerald. While her lawyer husband was helping the war effort, the pair were once rumoured to have made love so vigorously, they broke a friend's bed. When her husband returned before the end of the Second World War, Huston went back to Hollywood to await Marietta's divorce. However, on a trip to Barbados she fell in love with billionaire British MP Ronald Tree, and decided to marry him instead. Huston was heart broken, and after an affair with the fashion designer and writer Pauline Fairfax Potter, married again.
Evelyn Keyes - The Hustons adopted a son Pablo (from Mexico); (his affair with Fairfax Potter continued during the marriage).
Enrica Soma - They had two children: a daughter, Anjelica Huston, and a son, Walter Antony 'Tony' Huston, now an attorney. Soma also had a daughter, Allegra Huston, as the result of an extramarital affair with John Julius Norwich; Huston treated the girl as one of his own children following Soma's death four years later.
Celeste Shane.
All marriages ended in divorce except his fourth, to Soma, who died. In addition to his children with Soma, he was also the father of the director Danny Huston (with the author Zoe Sallis).
Among his friends were Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway. According to a documentary film about Huston's life (John Huston: The Man, the Movies, the Maverick), he struck and killed a female pedestrian with his car at the corner of Gardner and Sunset in Los Angeles when he was in his late 20s. He was exonerated of wrongdoing at the follow-up inquest.
Huston visited Ireland in 1951 and stayed at Luggala, County Wicklow, the home of Garech Browne, a member of the Guinness family. He visited Ireland several times afterwards and on one of these visits he purchased and restored a Georgian home, St Clerans, of Craughwell, County Galway. He became an Irish citizen in 1964 and his daughter Anjelica attended school in Ireland at Kylemore Abbey for a number of years. A film school is now dedicated to him on the NUIG campus. Huston is also the inspiration for the 1990 film "White Hunter Black Heart" starring Clint Eastwood, who also directed.
Huston was an accomplished painter who wrote in his autobiography, "Nothing has played a more important role in my life". As a young man he studied at the Smith School of Art in Los Angeles but dropped out within a few months. He later studied at the Art Students League of New York. He painted throughout his life and was particularly interested in Cubism and the American school of Synchromism. He had studios in each of his homes and owned a wide collection of art including a notable collection of Pre-Columbian art In 1982 he created the label for Château Mouton Rothschild.
He died from emphysema on August 28, 1987 in Middletown, Rhode Island. A few weeks before, Marietta visited him and his electrocardiogram "started jumping with excitement as soon as she entered the room." She was, his friends maintained, the only woman he ever really loved.
Huston is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
Filmography
As screenwriter
" The Storm" 1930 - "Dir:" William Wyler (written with Charles Logue, Langdon McCormick, Tom Reed & Wells Root)
"A House Divided" 1931 - "Dir:" William Wyler (written with John B. Clymer, Olive Edens and Dale Every)
"Murders in the Rue Morgue" 1932 - "Dir:" Robert Florey (written with Tom Reed & Dale Van Every)
"The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse" 1938 - "Dir:" Anatole Litvak (written with John Wexley)
"Jezebel" 1938 - "Dir:" William Wyler (written with Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel, & Robert Buckner)
"High Sierra" 1941 - "Dir:" Raoul Walsh (written with W.R. Burnett)
"The Maltese Falcon" 1941 - "Dir:" Huston
"Sergeant York" 1941 - "Dir:" Howard Hawks (written with Abem Finkel, Harry Chandler, & Howard Koch)
"The Killers" 1946 - "Dir:" Robert Siodmak (written with Anthony Veiller)
"Three Strangers" 1946 - "Dir:" Jean Negulesco (written with Howard Koch)
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" 1948 - "Dir:" Huston
"Key Largo" 1948 - "Dir:" Huston (written with Richard Brooks)
"We Were Strangers" 1949 - "Dir:" Huston (written with Peter Viertel)
"The African Queen" 1951 - "Dir:" Huston (written with James Agee)
"Moulin Rouge" 1952 - "Dir:" Huston (written with Anthony Veiller)
"Beat the Devil" 1953 - "Dir:" Huston (written with Truman Capote)
"Moby Dick" 1956 - "Dir:" Huston (written with Ray Bradbury)
"Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" 1957 - "Dir:" Huston (written with John Lee Mahin)
"The Night of the Iguana" 1964 - "Dir:" Huston (written with Anthony Veiller)
"The Man Who Would Be King" 1975 - "Dir:" Huston (written with Gladys Hill)
"Mr. North" 1988 - "Dir:" Danny Huston (written with Janet Roach & James Costigan)
As actor
"Does not include films which he also directed"
"The Cardinal" (1963, dir: Otto Preminger)
"Candy" (1968, director: Christian Marquand)
"Rocky Road to Dublin (Documentary) " (as Interviewee, 1968, director: Peter Lennon)
"De Sade" (1969, dir: Cy Endfield)
"Myra Breckinridge" (1970, dir: Michael Sarne)
"Man in the Wilderness" (1971, dir: Richard C. Sarafian)
"The Bridge in the Jungle" (1971)
"Rufino Tamayo: The Sources of his Art" (documentary) (1972, dir: Gary Conklin)
"Battle for the Planet of the Apes" (1973, dir: J. Lee Thompson)
"Chinatown" (1974, dir: Roman Polanski)
"Breakout" (1975)
"The Wind and the Lion" (1975, dir: John Milius)
"Tentacles" (1977, dir: Ovidio G. Assonitis)
"The Greatest Battle" (1978, dir: Umberto Lenzi)
"The Bermuda Triangle" (1978, dir: René Cardona, Jr.)
"Angela" (1978, dir: Boris Sagal)
"The Visitor" (1979, dir: Giulio Paradisi)
"Winter Kills" (1979, dir: William Richert)
"A Minor Miracle" (1983, dir: Raoul Lomas)
"Notes from Under the Volcano" (documentary) (as himself, 1984, dir: Gary Conklin)
"Lovesick" (1984, dir: Marshall Brickman)
"The Black Cauldron (1985)" Narrator
"Momo" (1986, dir: Johannes Schaaf)
External links
(They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?)
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about John Huston.
