John Huston

John Huston

Born John Marcellus Huston
August 5, 1906(1906-08-05)
Nevada, Missouri, U.S.
Died August 28, 1987 (aged 81)
Middletown, Rhode Island, U.S.
Spouse(s) Dorothy Harvey (1925-1926)
Lesley Black (1937-1945)
Evelyn Keyes (1946-1950)
Ricki Soma (1950-1969)
Celeste Shane (1972-1977)

John Marcellus Huston (August 5 1906 – August 28 1987) was an American film director and actor. He was known for directing the films, The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The African Queen (1951), The Misfits (1960), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). He was the son of actor Walter Huston and the father of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Huston (pronounced "Hew'-stun", like the city Houston) 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[1], 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. 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 (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." However 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.

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).

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.

Personal life

Huston, an Episcopalian,[2] was married five times, to:

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 (by Zoe Sallis).

Among his friends were Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway. According to a documentary film about Huston's life, 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 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[4] 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.[5]

Huston is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

Filmography

Statue of John Huston, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

As director

As screenwriter

As actor

Does not include films which he also directed

References

  1. ↑ wc.rootsweb.com
  2. ↑ The religion of director John Huston
  3. ↑ Running Around in High Circles
  4. ↑ [Art by Directors, Karl French, Granta 86, 2004, ISBN 0 90 314169 8
  5. ↑ Running Around in High Circles

External links

Awards and achievements
Preceded by
Omar Shariff
for Lawrence of Arabia		 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
1964
for The Cardinal		 Succeeded by
Edmond O'Brien
for Seven Days in May
Academy Award for Best Director

John Ford (1941) · William Wyler (1942) · Michael Curtiz (1943) · Leo McCarey (1944) · Billy Wilder (1945) · William Wyler (1946) · Elia Kazan (1947) · John Huston (1948) · Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1949) · Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1950) · George Stevens (1951) · John Ford (1952) · Fred Zinnemann (1953) · Elia Kazan (1954) · Delbert Mann (1955) · George Stevens (1956) · David Lean (1957) · Vincente Minnelli (1958) · William Wyler (1959) · Billy Wilder (1960)

 · (1927–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)
Hosts of the Academy Awards ceremonies

Bob Hope (1961) · Bob Hope (1962) · Frank Sinatra (1963) · Jack Lemmon (1964) · Bob Hope (1965) · Bob Hope (1966) · Bob Hope (1967) · Bob Hope (1968) · Helen Hayes / Alan King / Sammy Davis, Jr. / Jack Lemmon (1972) · Carol Burnett / Michael Caine / Charlton Heston / Rock Hudson (1973) · John Huston / Burt Reynolds / David Niven / Diana Ross (1974) · Sammy Davis, Jr. / Bob Hope / Shirley MacLaine / Frank Sinatra (1975) · Goldie Hawn / Gene Kelly / Walter Matthau / George Segal / Robert Shaw (1976) · Warren Beatty / Ellen Burstyn / Jane Fonda / Richard Pryor (1977) · Bob Hope (1978) · Johnny Carson (1979) · Johnny Carson (1980)

 · (1929–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)
Films directed by John Huston
1940s
The Maltese Falcon • In This Our Life • Across the Pacific • Report from the Aleutians • The Battle of San Pietro • Let There Be Light • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre • Key Largo • We Were Strangers
1950s
The Asphalt Jungle • The Red Badge of Courage • The African Queen • Moulin Rouge • Beat the Devil • Moby Dick • Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison • The Barbarian and the Geisha • The Roots of Heaven
1960s
The Unforgiven • The Misfits • Freud the Secret Passion • The List of Adrian Messenger • The Night of the Iguana • The Bible: In the Beginning • Reflections in a Golden Eye • Casino Royale • Sinful Davey • A Walk with Love and Death
1970s
The Kremlin Letter • Fat City • The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean • The Mackintosh Man • The Man Who Would Be King • Wise Blood
1980s
Phobia • Victory • Annie • Under the Volcano • Prizzi's Honor • The Dead
Persondata
NAME Huston, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huston, John Marcellus
SHORT DESCRIPTION American film director and actor
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Nevada, Missouri, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1987
PLACE OF DEATH Middletown, Rhode Island, U.S.