In 1937, Huston made his way to Hollywood where he cracked the film industry as a screenwriter; mostly making films that were adapted from books or plays. John was first employed as a writer for Warner Bros. before they allowed him to try his hand at directing his first film, The Maltese Falcon in 1941. Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, John’s screen adaptation received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
During World War II, John filmed documentaries for the U.S. military. In 1946, the U.S. Army confiscated his documentary on war-time trauma Let There Be Light. It was not shown publicly until 1981. In 1960, John directed Old Hollywood legends Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift in The Misfits. During filming, John spent many evenings in the Nevada casinos gambling, drinking, and smoking cigars. Three weeks after the film wrapped, Clark Gable died of a massive heart attack.
John’s films were generally based around the theme of human behavior, at times including scenes which foreshadowed environmental issues that eventually became hot-button topics – such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in 1947 and Night of the Iguana in 1964. The male protagonists in his films were often cited as being "hyper-masculine," while his female characters were portrayed as submissive prizes or seductive sirens.
Huston acted in a number of films, including The Cardinal, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also starred in Roman Polanski's Chinatown, opposite Jack Nicholson. Over the course of his career, Huston received fifteen Oscar nominations.
John’s creative talents extended into other areas of the arts – he was an accomplished painter, and created the 1982 label for Château Mouton Rothschild. He was also surrounded by icons of high-culture, counting Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway amongst his close friends.
John was married five times. Of his marriages to Dorothy Harvey, Lesley Black, Evelyn Keyes, Enrica Soma, and Celeste Shane, all ended in divorce except for Enrica Soma, who died. John’s children followed his film-industry footsteps, including son, director Danny Huston and daughter, actress Anjelica Houston. John directed his father, Walter in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and his daughter, Anjelica, in Prizzi's Honor. Both won Oscars for their performances. The Huston’s have the prestige of being the first family to have three generations of Academy Award winners.
On August 28, 1987, at the age of eighty-one, John lost his life to pneumonia. He is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
YUDDY
