John Huston
John Huston was an influential American filmmaker, born in 1906 in Nevada, Missouri, to actor Walter Huston and writer Rhea Gore Huston. Although he initially pursued a career in boxing, he shifted to acting and writing, gaining experience in New York and later working for major studios such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. Huston's directorial career began in earnest with the acclaimed 1941 film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Maltese Falcon, which solidified his reputation as a talented screenwriter and director. He went on to create several notable films, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, and The African Queen, earning him numerous accolades, including Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Despite some unsuccessful adaptations early in his career, Huston achieved critical success with later works like The Man Who Would Be King and Wise Blood. He received multiple honors throughout his career, including a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984. Huston's legacy continued posthumously with the release of his last film, an adaptation of James Joyce's "The Dead," which was well-received by critics and showcased his enduring impact on cinema.
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Subject Terms
John Huston
- Born: August 5, 1906
- Birthplace: Nevada, Missouri
- Died: August 28, 1987
- Place of death: Middletown, Rhode Island
Biography
Born in the hamlet of Nevada, Missouri, in 1906, John Marcellus Huston was the son of Walter Huston, an actor, and Rhea Gore Huston, a writer and newspaper reporter. A restless youth, Huston quit high school at age sixteen in the hope of becoming a professional boxer, but two years later he was working as an actor in Greenwich Village, where he appeared in Sherwood Anderson’s plays Triumph of the Egg and Ruint in 1924 and 1925. He then became a reporter for Graphic and did some writing for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in California and for Gaumont-British Picture Corporations in England before going to Paris in the early 1930’s to study art.
Huston returned to New York to become the editor of Mid-Week Pictorial and to direct Broadway plays between 1939 and 1941, eventually returning to California as a writer for Warner Bros. studios. By 1941, following the success of his screenplay The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, he was promoted to director, a career that World War II interrupted but he resumed in 1945. The success of his film adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s novel, The Maltese Falcon, released in 1941, clearly established Huston as an outstanding screenwriter.
In 1948, Huston founded Horizon Films with S. P. Eagle and began a period of intense activity, collaborating on, and in some cases directing, a number of screenplays that included The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen and Moulin Rouge. Not all of Huston’s adaptations of novels were successful. His screenplays based on Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick were failures. However, Huston redeemed himself with his adaptations of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King, for which he wrote the screenplay, and of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1979), both of which evoked highly favorable critical comment.
Huston received Academy Awards both for Best Director and Best Screenplay for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in 1949. The film also won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Director, the Writers Guild Award, and the One World Award. Academy Award nominations followed for The Asphalt Jungle in 1950, The African Queen in 1951, and Freud in 1962. Huston’s work over the years was honored with dozens of national awards and with an honorary Litt.D. degree from Trinity College in 1970. He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984.
Huston’s last years were marked by considerable activity. He directed an adaptation of Richard Condon’s novel, Prizzi’s Honor, that received enthusiastic critical comment when it was released in 1985. The film was less important for its depiction of a light love story involving two killers-for-hire than for its sensitive depiction of a large, extended Sicilian family. Huston followed this success with the late film he directed, an adaptation of James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead,” which was released after Huston’s death in 1987. Film critics were extremely favorable in their reviews of this film, which marked a high point in Huston’s professional life.