John Huston’s life story is more colorful than most of the films he made. But there is a kind of authenticity to his work that could only come from real life experience. As a young man, Huston was a stage actor, a professional prizefighter. He won the amatuer lightweight championship of California in the 1920s and an officer in the Mexican Cavalry.
In 1932, he co-scripted probably the best but least known version of the Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday story, which starred his father and Harry Carey. Leonard Maltin described the film as "stark and realistic — with a knockout finale."
Running Out of Money, Food
He quit Hollywood and traveled to London and Paris, nearly starving to death. Back home, he briefly was editor of an illustrated magazine, "Midweek Pictorial." In 1933, he played the title role of Abraham Lincoln in the WPA-produced play in Chicago.
In the mid-1930s, John Huston settled down to screenwriting at Warner Bros. Eventually, he made his directorial debut in 1941 with "The Maltise Falcon.”
During World War II, he served in the Signal Corps where he produced two of the finest documentaries ever made about war, "The Battle of San Pietro" and "Let There Be Light." So harrowing were the films that the U.S. government held back their general release until 1980. There is not one scene of bloodshed in either film, I might add.
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" was Huston’s first film after World War II. One sequence shows Huston’s mastery of film technique. In the next to last sequence, bandits have made off with the burros belonging to the three prospectors. They bring them to the small village where Bogart and his friends bought them. A small boy recognizes the burros. He runs to tell the Federales. Officials question the bandits. They decide the bandits are guilty, march them to a wall, order each man to dig a hole, to smoke a last cigarette and to face a firing squad. The soldiers promptly bury the bandits in the hole they had just dug. The whole sequence is in Spanish. No subtitles. Yet the audience knows exactly what is happening.
Garfield and Reagan — Presidents?
The three prospectors represent three stages of life — Walter Huston is the craggy old man, philosophical and hoping for a small strike so he can live out his final days in comfort.
Bogart is the middle-aged loser, bitter and resentful. He dreams of showing the world that "nobody messes with Fred C. Dobbs."
Finally, Tim Holt played the youngest of the trio of prospectors. He was still dreaming of greener pastures, hoping for a better life. Holt, the son of silent film star Jack Holt, who briefly appears as a hobo in a Tampico flophouse, received bad reviews for his part in the movie. John Garfield and Ronald Reagan were considered for the role. Reagan wanted it badly but studio boss Jack Warner decreed that he should star in a clunker called "Stallion Road." When Reagan objected, Warner threatened him with suspension.
"I tried hard to get that part," Reagan is said to have told Huston.
"You didn’t try hard enough," was Huston’s laconic reply.
Tim Holt had a curious career. Featured in some of the most famous films of the late 1930s and ‘40s, he appeared as a young cavalry officer in "Stagecoach," was directed by Orson Wells in "The Magnificent Ambersons," and played Virgil Earp in John Ford’s masterpiece, "My Darling Clementine." For the most part, he starred in B Westerns through the 1950s, when he retired. His bio says that as a boy, he attended the Pacific Military Academy that was founded by Harry Culver, the founder of Culver City.
One final note of interest:
Robert Blake who later achieved fame as television’s "Baretta" and notoriety as an accused murderer,
appears as a small boy who sells Bogart a winning lottery ticket.
A friend and I were discussing the career of Bogart, an unlikely leading man if there ever was one.
According to stuntman and character actor Gil Perkins (they
appeared together in a 1930 film at Fox), Bogart told him that he was going back to New York to live theater.
"If I was as good looking as Charles Farrell, I might stand a chance," Bogart told him.
Didn’t You Used to Be?
Bogart returned to New York in 1932. He went on to startle the world as Duke Mantee in Robert E. Sherwood’s "The Petrified Forrest." Robert Sacchi who made a lucrative career out of impersonating Bogart, told me that Bogart bore a resemblance to John Dillinger, who was still on the run when the play opened. When Bogart burst through the door, he snarled, "All right, everybody, sit down, have a beer and listen to the music. If anybody makes a false move, I’ll kill the whole lot of you." The audience gasped at the resemblance.
Sacchi bore such an amazing resemblance to Bogart that once while filming a product presentation for the Broadway Department Store, a little old lady approached him. She cooed, "Mr. Bogart, you certainly don’t look your age."
I put forth the theory that the Bogart cult that had flourished in the 1960s and’70s had pretty much run its course. Bogart was part of the Great Depression/World War II era that younger audiences knew little or nothing about. My friend disagreed. He felt that the Bogart cult was still alive. Another friend told me that he’d read a recent survey that identified Bogart as the most popular American actor in film.
(I always thought that honor went to Cary Grant.) We both agreed that Bogart had some of the most memorable lines in the movies. "That’s because he was good friends with all the great writers," I said.
Here, for your pleasure, are some of those lines. See if you can match the line with the film:
"It’s kinda late…Louie and the boys will give you a ride home."
(“The Roaring Twenties” — 1939.)
"Don’t be too sure. I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be."
(“The Maltese Falcon" — 1941.)
"It’s the stuff that dreams are made of."
(“The Maltese Falcon” — 1941.)
"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns in all the world, and she walks into mine."
(“Casablanca” — 1942.)
"I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like ‘em
myself. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings."
(“The Big Sleep” — 1946.)
"My, my, my. Such a lot of guns around town, and so few brains."
(“The Big Sleep” — 1946.)
"Would you stake a fellow American to a meal?"
(“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” — 1948.)