John Huston
For other people named John Huston, see John Huston (disambiguation)John Marcellus Huston (
August 5,
1906 â€"
August 28,
1987) was an American
film director and
actor.
Early life
He was born in
Nevada, Missouri, the son of the
Canadian-born actor,
Walter Huston, and Rhea Gore; he was of Scottish and Irish descent on his father's side. Huston was raised by his maternal grandparents, Adelia Richardson and John Marcellus Gore.
Career
He began his film career as a
screenwriter and made films mainly adapted from books or plays. The six-foot-two-inch, brown-eyed director also acted in a number of films, with distinction in
Otto Preminger's
The Cardinal for which he was nominated for the
Academy award for
Best Supporting Actor and in
Roman Polanski's Chinatown as the film's central heavy against
Jack Nicholson.
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 (1947) and
Night of the Iguana (1964). Huston also directed
The Misfits (film) with an all-star cast including
Clark Gable,
Marilyn Monroe,
Montgomery Clift, and
Eli Wallach. Famously, 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'. Ironically, and tragically, Gable died three weeks after the end of filming from a massive heart attack while Huston went on to live for twenty-six more years.
In the 1970s, he was a frequent actor in
Italian films.
Academy Awards
In
1941, Huston was nominated for an
Academy Award for
Writing Adapted Screenplay for
The Maltese Falcon and again in
1948 for
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He was also an accomplished
painter who created the
1982 label for
Château Mouton Rothschild.
John Huston received 15
Oscar nominations in the course of his career. He 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.
Personal life
Huston, an
Episcopalian,[
1] was married to (1) Dorothy Harvey, (2) Lesley Black, (3)
Evelyn Keyes, (4) Enrica Soma, and (5) Celeste Shane. All but the marriage to Soma, who died, ended in
divorce; according to his third wife, Huston had an affair with the American fashion designer and writer
Pauline Fairfax Potter in the 1940s. Among his children are the director
Danny Huston and the actress
Anjelica Huston.
Among his friends were
Orson Welles and
Ernest Hemingway.
Huston visited Ireland in 1951 and stayed at Luggala,
County Wicklow, the home of
Garech Browne, a member of the Guinness family. He visted Ireland several times afterwards and on one of these vists he purchased and restored a
Georgian home, St Clerans, between
Loughrea and
Craughwell,
County Galway. He became an
Irish citizen and his daughter Anjelica attended school in Ireland at
Kylemore Abbey for a number of years.
He died from
emphysema on
August 28,
1987 in
Middletown,
Rhode Island, at the age of 81. He is interred in the
Hollywood Forever Cemetery in
Hollywood, California.
As director
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
In This Our Life (1942)
Across the Pacific (1942)
The Battle of San Pietro (1945)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947)
Key Largo (1948)
We Were Strangers (1949)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
The Red Badge of Courage (1951)
The African Queen (1951)
Moulin Rouge (1953)
Beat the Devil (1953)
Moby Dick (1956)
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)
The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958)
The Roots of Heaven (1958)
The Unforgiven (1960)
The Misfits (1960)
The Secret Passion (1962)
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
The Night of the Iguana (1964)
The Bible: In The Beginning (1966)
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)
Casino Royale (1967)
Sinful Davey (1969)
A Walk with Love and Death (1969)
The Kremlin Letter (1970)
Fat City (1972)
Man in the Wilderness (1971)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
The Mackintosh Man (1973)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Wise Blood (1979)
Phobia (1980)
Victory (1980)
Annie (1982)
Under the Volcano (1984)
Prizzi's Honor (1985)
The Dead (1987)
As an actor
This list 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)
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973, dir:
J. Lee Thompson)
Chinatown (1974, dir:
Roman Polanski)
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)
A Minor Miracle (1983, dir:
Raoul Lomas)
Lovesick (1984, dir:
Marshall Brickman)
Momo (1986, dir:
Johannes Schaaf)
*
NNDB Entry*
John Huston's Gravesite
