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.