John Huston: Courage and Art

465 Pages·2011·3.63 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Meyers

BOOKS BY JEFFREY MEYERS
BIOGRAPHY
A Fever at the Core: The Idealist in Politics
Married to Genius
Katherine Mansfield
The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis
Hemingway
Manic Power: Robert Lowell and His Circle
D. H. Lawrence
Joseph Conrad
Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy
Scott Fitzgerald
Edmund Wilson
Robert Frost
Bogart: A Life in Hollywood
Gary Cooper: American Hero
Privileged Moments: Encounters with Writers
Wintry Conscience: A Biography of George Orwell
Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam
Somerset Maugham
Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of
Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt
Modigliani
Samuel Johnson: The Struggle
The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe
CRITICISM
Fiction and the Colonial Experience
The Wounded Spirit: T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom
A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell
Painting and the Novel
Homosexuality and Literature
D. H. Lawrence and the Experience of Italy
Disease and the Novel
The Spirit of Biography
Hemingway: Life into Art
Orwell: Life and Art
BIBLIOGRAPHY
T. E. Lawrence: A Bibliography
Catalogue of the Library of the Late Siegfried Sassoon
George Orwell: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism
EDITED COLLECTIONS
George Orwell: The Critical Heritage
Hemingway: The Critical Heritage
Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs
The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader
The W. Somerset Maugham Reader
EDITED ORIGINAL ESSAYS
Wyndham Lewis: A Revaluation
Wyndham Lewis by Roy Campbell
D. H. Lawrence and Tradition
The Legacy of D. H. Lawrence
The Craft of Literary Biography
The Biographer’s Art
T. E. Lawrence: Soldier, Writer, Legend
Graham Greene: A Revaluation

Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Meyers All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyers, Jeffrey.
John Huston: courage and art / Jeffrey Meyers.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Huston, John, 1906–1987. 2. Motion picture producers and directors—United States—
Biography. I. Title.
PN1998.3H87M49 2011
791.4302’33092—dc22
[B] 2010047642
eISBN: 978-0-30759069-5
JACKET DESIGN BY WHITNEY COOKMAN
JACKET PHOTOGRAPHY: (front, spine) Chinatown © Photofest,
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre © The Everett Collection,
The African Queen and The Maltese Falcon © Photofest;
(back) © Maureen Lambray
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Epigraph
H H
PROLOGUE USTON AND EMINGWAY
B W , 1906–1923
ONE RAVING THE ATERFALL
R Y , 1924–1935
TWO ESTLESS OUTH
M T , 1936–1940
THREE ANY ALENTS
R H , 1936–1940
FOUR ETURN TO OLLYWOOD
B B , 1941
FIVE LACK IRD
T H T , 1941–1942
SIX HE USTON OUCH
I B , 1942–1945
SEVEN NTO ATTLE
W L , 1946–1950
EIGHT OMEN IN OVE
W H , 1947
NINE ITCH UNTS
G M , 1948
TEN OLD IN EXICO
C C , 1948–1950
ELEVEN RIME AND THE ITY
S S . C , 1950–1960
TWELVE ULTANATE OF T LERANS
H D , 1951–1952
THIRTEEN EART OF ARKNESS
P I , 1953–1954
FOURTEEN ARIS AND TALY
Illustration Insert
W W , 1955–1956
FIFTEEN HITE HALE
T , J A , 1957—1958
SIXTEEN OBAGO APAN AND FRICA
M A M , 1959–1961
SEVENTEEN USTANGS ND ISFITS
M O T M , 1962
EIGHTEEN YSTERIES F HE IND
L , 1962
NINETEEN OVERS
I F , 1963–1966
TWENTY GUANA AND THE LOOD
L D , 1967–1969
TWENTY-ONE OVE AND EATH
S B , 1970–1972
TWENTY-TWO PIES AND OXING
C S D I , 1972–1975
TWENTY-THREE ELESTE HANE AND A ESERT DYLL
M M , 1973–1978
TWENTY-FOUR OROCCO AND EXICO
F , 1979–1982
TWENTY-FIVE AILURES
T , 1983–1985
TWENTY-SIX RIUMPHS
R T D , 1986–1987
TWENTY-SEVEN AISING HE EAD
EPILOGUE
Appendix: Huston’s Films
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
ILLUSTRATIONS
1.1. John Huston’s birthplace, 402 S. Adams Street, Nevada, Missouri
(Bushwhacker Museum, Nevada, MO)
1.2. Walter and John Huston, early 1930s
1.3. Dorothy Harvey, c. 1943
1.4. John’s house in Tarzana (Valerie Meyers)
1.5. Eloise Hardt, late 1930s (Eloise Hardt)
1.6. Marietta Tree, mid-1940s (Frances FitzGerald)
1.7. Peter Viertel, John and Ernest Hemingway, 1954 (Literary Estate of
Peter Viertel)
1.8. Ricki Huston, 1960s (Allegra Huston)
1.9. St. Clerans
1.10. John with Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller on the set of The
Misfits, 1961 (Frank and Curtice Taylor Archive)
1.11. Anna van der Heide, early 1960s (Anna van der Heide)
1.12. Zoe Sallis, early 1960s (Zoe Sallis)
1.13. John as Noah in The Bible, 1966 (Frank and Curtice Taylor Archive)
1.14. John directing George Sanders in The Kremlin Letter, 1970 (Frank
and Curtice Taylor Archive)
1.15. John and Celeste Huston, 1972 (Celeste Huston)
1.16. John and Maricela Hernandez, 1973 (Celeste Huston)
1.17. John with Anjelica, Tony, Danny and Allegra at Tony’s wedding,
1978
1.18. John and Danny Huston, early 1980s (Danny Huston)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
John Huston would be worth a biography even if he’d never made a
film. I am pleased to acknowledge the generous and always
illuminating help I received from many people who knew him. For
interviews I would like to thank Jacqueline Bisset, Seamus Byrne,
Barnaby Conrad, Carter De Haven III, Charles Elliott, Hampton Fancher
III, Frances FitzGerald, Michael Fitzgerald, Guy Gallo, Leonard Gardner,
William Gardner, Eloise Hardt, Patrick Hemingway, John Hurt, Allegra
Huston, Celeste Huston, Danny Huston, Stacy Keach, Pancho Kohner,
Susan Kohner, Jan Lavender, Joseph McBride, Walter Mirisch, Michael
Parks, Tim Pigott-Smith, Janet Roach, Zoe Sallis, Wieland Schulz-Keil,
Roberto Silvi, Thom Steinbeck, Curtice Taylor, Penelope Tree, Anna van
der Heide, Bayard Veiller, Christine Viertel and Susannah York. Charles
Elliott, Guy Gallo, Celeste Huston, Zoe Sallis and Anna van der Heide—a
newly discovered lover—also sent valuable material.
I previously interviewed (many of them now gone) Lesley Black, Jack
Cardiff, Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, Afdera Fonda, Evelyn Keyes, Ring
Lardner, Jr., Joseph Losey, Arthur Miller, Ivan Moffat, Inge Morath,
Oswald Morris, Vincent Sherman, Peter Viertel and Sir John Woolf. For
letters I am grateful to Angela Allen, Albert Finney, Robert Gottlieb,
Julie Harris, Anjelica Huston, Tony Huston and Edna O’Brien.
Many friends and colleagues made useful introductions; provided new
medical, legal and cinematic information; and sent films, books, articles
and unpublished papers: Dr. Ellen Alkon, Paul Alkon, Rudy Behlmer,
Mary Berg, Lesley Brill, William Chace, Allen Cohen, Lisa Coletta, Denis
Donoghue, Rory Flynn, Robert Freeman, Kevin Froggatt, Andrew
Gordon, Valerie Hemingway, Norman Holland, Annette Insdorf, Darin
Jensen, Francis King, Thomas Kuhnke, Harry Lawton, Patrick
McGilligan, Mario Menocal, Rachel Meyers, David Peoples, Claude Potts,
Loren Rothschild, Caroline Seebohm, Paul Sidey, Paul Tiessen and Tony
Tracy.
I did my most extensive research in the Huston papers at the Herrick
Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly
Hills, California (Jenny Romero and Stacey Behlmer). These papers span
the years 1932–81, encompass sixty-three linear feet and reveal what
problems Huston encountered and how his films were made. The archive
consists of production files, including script material and research,
correspondence and subject files. They contain material related to both
produced and unrealized projects, including budgets, employment
agreements, casting information, shooting schedules, interoffice memos,
cutting notes, censorship correspondence, publicity clippings and
reviews. I also received important material from the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris (Clélia Guillemot); Bien Public, Dijon (Jean Viansson
Ponte); Carson McCullers Center for Writers, Columbus, Georgia;
Department of the Army; FBI, for Huston’s once-secret files; Film
Comment; German Film Institute, Berlin; J. Paul Getty Museum; GQ:
Gentlemen’s Quarterly; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
Austin, Texas; Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
(Samuel Smallidge); Interview magazine; Legion of Honor Museum, San
Francisco; Los Angeles Superior Court; National Personnel Records
Center, St. Louis; Nevada, Missouri, Public Library; Pacific Film Archive,
Berkeley; Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University;
Sotheby’s, New York; St. Clerans Hotel, Craughwell, County Galway,
Ireland; UCLA Library; Warner Bros. Archive, University of Southern
California Library (Ned Comstock); Vernon County Historical Society,
Nevada, Missouri (Patrick Brophy); Vogue Paris (Stéphane Durand); and
Wisconsin Historical Society. The library of the University of California,
Berkeley, has been a lifelong resource. The translations from Latin,
French, Italian and Spanish are my own.
My agent, Ellen Levine of Trident Media, secured the contract. My
wife, Valerie Meyers, provided vital help with the archival research and
personal interviews. With sound judgment and critical perception she
also scrutinized and improved each chapter, and compiled the index.
Rather than moralizing about Huston’s conduct, I would urge readers
to take pleasure in his impressive achievements.