John Huston
American actor, writer, director
Born
05 August 1906
in NevadaMissouriUnited States
Died
28 August 1987
John Marcellus Huston - an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The
Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Misfits (1961), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). He received 15 Oscar nominations, won twice, and directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston, to Oscar wins in different films. Most of Huston’s films were adaptations of important novels, often depicting a "heroic quest," as in Moby Dick. Before
becoming a Hollywood filmmaker, he had been an amateur boxer, reporter, short-story writer, portrait artist in Paris, a cavalry rider in Mexico, and a documentary filmmaker during World War II. In 1942 he was activated by the U.S. Army to make films for the Army Signal Corps. While in uniform with the rank of captain, he directed and produced three films that some critics rank as "among the finest made about World War II: Report from the Aleutians (1943), about soldiers preparing for combat; The Battle of San Pietro (1944), the story (censored by the Army) of a failure by America’s intelligence agencies which resulted in many deaths, and Let There Be Light (1945), about psychologically damaged veterans, also censored for 35 years, until 1981. Upon returning to Hollywood once the war was over, he co-wrote the film, The Stranger (1946), although he was not credited.
The film was directed and produced by Orson Welles, who also acted the part of a Nazi war criminal who manages to settle in
New England under an assumed name. Huston lived the macho, outdoors life, unencumbered by convention or restrictions, and is often compared in style or flamboyancy to an Ernest Hemingway or Orson Welles.
