Siegel S., Siegel B. The Encyclopedia Of Hollywood
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movies. He found out specifically why she wanted him
when he was called into her dressing room. In Leonard
Maltin’s interview book, Behind the Camera, Howe relates
the story as follows: “‘You know why I like these pictures,
Jimmy? Because you made my eyes go dark.’ She had pale
blue eyes, and in those days the film was insensitive to blue,
and they washed out. And I didn’t realize how I’d made her
eyes go dark! I walked and stood where I took the pictures,
and there was a huge piece of black velvet. Something told
me, ‘Well, it must be a reflection. The eye is like a mirror.
If something is dark, it will reflect darker.’ So I cut a hole in
it (the velvet), and put my lens through, and made all her
close-ups that way . . . that’s how I became a cameraman. . . .
Everybody who had light blue eyes wanted to have me as
their cameraman!”
It was a time of innovation. Movies were young and the
camera was often a mystery, even to those who depended
upon it for their living. But Howe was a master of unlocking
the camera’s secrets, and his contributions to the 118 feature
films he worked on are incalculable.
His first was Drums of Fate (1923) starring, of course,
Mary Miles Minter. He photographed all genres of film,
from swashbucklers such as The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) to
war movies such as Air Force (1943). He was just as sensitive
to boxing movies, such as the stunningly photographed Body
and Soul (1947), as he was to musicals, such as his crisp Ya n -
kee Doodle Dandy (1942). One of his most memorable movies,
a film that benefited from his knowledge and expertise with
shooting in black and white, was
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER
’s
Seconds (1967).
HOWE, JAMES WONG
208
James Wong Howe, one of Hollywood’s greatest cinematographers, was given the nickname Low Key Howe. His low-key
lighting style gave a distinctively dark and moody look to the films noir of the 1940s.
(PHOTO COURTESY OF MOVIE
STAR NEWS)
Howe dabbled with directing, making one movie, Go
Man Go, in 1952. Happily, he returned to cinematography,
working until 1975 and ending his illustrious career that year
with Funny Lady.
Hudson, Rock (1925–1985) A performer whose
career in the late 1940s and early 1950s was based strictly on
his good looks but who slowly emerged as a competent and
popular actor. Hudson began in action pictures and west-
erns, moved on to romantic dramas in the mid-1950s, and
then flowered in light romantic comedies in the late 1950s
and early 1960s. His career was heavily based on his strong
masculine image but, ironically, it was well known within the
Hollywood community that he was a homosexual. His secret
finally emerged in the media when he fell ill and then died
of AIDS.
Born Roy Scherer Jr., he later took his stepfather’s last
name of Fitzgerald. After graduating from high school he
became a mailman and then a mechanic in the navy during
World War II. He drifted from job to job after the war,
unsure of his direction. Told that with his looks he ought to
be in pictures, he drifted to Hollywood and found that the
movie people agreed. His name was changed to Rock Hud-
son (as fake a name as the industry has ever conjured), and he
was given his chance in a small role in Fighter Squadron
(1948). With no training as an actor whatsoever, he required
38 takes before the director was satisfied with his first line. It
became easier after that, but his was a long learning process
that took several years.
Audiences liked him, though, and he continued to learn
his craft in ever larger roles in low-budget action movies and
westerns such as Undertow (1949), I Was a Shoplifter (1950),
Winchester ’73 (1950), The Desert Hawk (1950), and Toma-
hawk (1951).
By late 1951 and early 1952, Hudson had become a
leading man in a number of films, rounding out the casts of
such modest movies as Bright Victory (1951), and two
BUDD
BOETTICHER
westerns, Horizons West (1952) and Seminole
(1953). His big break came in 1954 when he played the male
lead in Magnificent Obsession, a romantic movie that scored
heavily at the box office, propelling him to matinee-idol sta-
tus. Although he continued acting in occasional action
films, his career veered toward movies such as One Desire
(1955), aimed primarily at female fans, and several Douglas
Sirk films, including All That Heaven Allows (1956), Written
on the Wind (1957), and Tarnished Angels (1958), films that
were dismissed as mere “women’s pictures” in the 1950s but
that have since become considered minor classics.
Nonetheless, Hudson’s most important role of the mid-
1950s was in the epic Giant (1956), in which he starred with
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
and
JAMES DEAN
and for which Hud-
son was honored by his peers with an Oscar nomination as
Best Actor.
After a decade in Hollywood, Hudson entered the most
memorable phase of his career when he costarred with
DORIS
DAY
in Pillow Talk (1959), a bright, breezy comedy that, for its
day, was considered mildly risqué. The film was a huge hit,
and Hudson and Day were teamed together in Lover Come
Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964). They made just
those three films together, but the impact they had was so
great that it is often assumed that they acted together far
more frequently. Hudson did go on to make other light
comedies, including Man’s Favorite Sport (1964) and Strange
Bedfellows (1965), but they did not feature Day.
Hudson surprised audiences and critics alike when he
starred in
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER
’s brilliant Seconds (1966). It
was unarguably the actor’s best performance in his nearly 20
years in the movie business. The film, unfortunately, was
ahead of its time, so it wasn’t the hit it should have been. No
other major box-office winners followed and, despite his still
youthful good looks, his film career was suddenly in jeopardy.
He continued to make the occasional movie during the
1970s but with little effect. Instead, he wisely put his efforts
into developing a television career. He starred in the hit show
McMillan and Wife from 1971 through 1975. In the last
decade of his life, he tried starring in two other TV series,
neither of which caught on, and later made a modest come-
back in a recurring role in the prime-time TV soap Dynasty.
In the end, however, he will probably be remembered by
many as the first major Hollywood star to die of AIDS.
Hughes, Howard (1905–1976) This eccentric bil-
lionaire remains one of the most fascinating figures in Hol-
lywood history despite the relatively few movies with which
he is closely associated. But in spite of his modest output as
a producer, Hughes is directly responsible for having cre-
ated three movie stars and four landmark films. He is also
the man who presided over the demise of
RKO RADIO PIC
-
TURES
,
INC
.
Hughes began life with a silver spoon in his mouth—he
was the son of the man who revolutionized the oil industry
with the invention of a new, powerful drill bit—but he pro-
ceeded to turn that spoon to platinum. Tragically, both
Hughes’s parents died within two years of each other while
he was in his teens. The orphan millionaire took over the
Hughes Tool Company at the age of 18 and decided soon
thereafter to go into the movie business.
Hughes’s Uncle Rupert was one of Hollywood’s most
successful screenwriters, and it was through this relation that
Hughes had become acquainted with the movie business. His
Uncle Rupert, however, advised him to stay out of Holly-
wood and was of no help to him, except inadvertently to spur
the stubborn 20 year old on to success.
Hughes’s career as a producer started badly. He made
Swell Hogan (1925) starring Ralph Graves, a movie so poor
that Hughes refused to ever let it be shown. The second
film he produced was Everybody’s Acting (1926), which was a
modest hit. His third film, however, brought him a measure
of respect in a town that had written him off as a naive rich
kid. The movie was Two Arabian Knights (1927), and it won
the
ACADEMY AWARD
as Best Director of a Comedy for
LEWIS MILESTONE
.
With his early success, Hughes was emboldened to make a
film that was close to his heart. The young man was fascinated
HUGHES, HOWARD
209
by airplanes, and his next movie, Hell’s Angels (1930), was
devoted to them. The film project was begun in 1928, but this
time Hughes was intimately involved in the production. It was
with Hell’s Angels that he was deservedly tagged with the repu-
tation of being both a meddler and a perfectionist. Two other
Hughes productions would be released while this movie, a
labor of love, was being filmed. After two directors quit
because of his interference, Hughes finally took over the direc-
torial chores of Hell’s Angels himself.
The movie was shot as a silent film, but most of the
footage had to be tossed out (except for the aviation scenes)
because of the talkie revolution. For the reshooting, one
important addition was made by Hughes; he hired a virtually
unknown actress,
JEAN HARLOW
, as his new leading lady. In
the process, he turned her into a star.
The film was a hit, thanks to Harlow and the aviation
footage. The total cost of the film (excluding the human toll
of three fliers who died in crashes during the production) was
nearly $4 million. Despite its box-office pull, the movie was
so expensive that it barely broke even.
Hughes went on to produce other films in the early
1930s, and two of them were truly memorable. The first of
these was The Front Page (1931), directed by Lewis Milestone
and based on the hit play by
BEN HECHT
and Charles
MacArthur. This comedy about journalists established the
image of newspapermen as tough, wisecracking, and
resourceful loners.
The second important film Hughes produced in the early
1930s was Scarface (1932), the gangster movie that launched
PAUL MUNI
’s film career as well as hastened the strict
enforcement of the
HAYS CODE
.
After Scarface, Hughes temporarily ended his career as a
producer. He later resurfaced, making The Outlaw (1943), the
first “sexy” western. In the process, he turned busty 19-year-
old
JANE RUSSELL
into a star, just as he had Jean Harlow a
decade earlier. The racy film was an enormous success
despite its poor quality, but more important, it was a break-
through in the effort against movie censorship.
Through the balance of World War II, Hughes, a pioneer
in commercial aviation, concentrated on aviation projects for
the war effort.
He returned to Hollywood in the latter half of the 1940s,
producing, among other things, Mad Wednesday (1947), with
PRESTON STURGES
directing. The film, starring the former
silent-screen comedian
HAROLD LLOYD
, had its moments,
but it was poorly received by audiences.
Hughes then stunned Hollywood by purchasing the ail-
ing RKO studio in 1948, which he proceeded to run into the
ground over an eight-year period before selling it in 1955.
He made very few quality movies during his RKO period,
although there were some modest money-makers. The best
of the lot were Flying Leathernecks (1951) and Split Second
(1953). At the end of his Hollywood career, he tried to top
the success of Hell’s Angels with Jet Pilot (1957), but the film
was both an artistic and commercial failure.
The enigmatic Hughes meant more to Hollywood than
the movies he produced. He was a symbol of its excesses and
eccentricities—and also of its glamour. He dated some of the
movie capital’s most famous stars, including
KATHARINE
HEPBURN
,
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND
,
GINGER ROGERS
,
LINDA
DARNELL
,
LANA TURNER
,
BETTE DAVIS
,
YVONNE DE
CARLO
,
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
,
AVA GARDNER
, and Jean Peters,
whom he married in 1955.
Hughes, who had been living outside of the United
States, died while being transported to Texas by airplane. For
a man who loved airplanes as much as Hughes, to die while
in flight was certainly an ironic end.
Hughes, John (1950– ) A screenwriter, director, and
sometime producer who cornered the 1980s youth market,
making both thoughtful and entertaining movies about
teenagers from their point of view. Less well known is the
fact that Hughes has also been a successful writer-director of
outlandish comedies, responsible in large measure for many
of the National Lampoon films of the last decade.
Hughes began his show business career as a gag writer
before succumbing to the lure of advertising. When his
unusual sense of humor could no longer be contained, he
began to write for National Lampoon magazine, eventually
becoming a contributing editor. His association with the
magazine brought him the opportunity to pen the screenplay
for National Lampoon’s Class Reunion (1982). It was not well
received by the critics, but it did well enough at the box office
to successfully launch Hughes’s screenwriting career.
Though he was half responsible (he cowrote the screen-
play) for the bomb Nate and Hayes (1983), he came into his
own as a screenwriter with two major critical and box-office
hits, Mr. Mom (1983) and National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983).
His subsequent zany comedies fared less well with the critics
but were generally winners at the box office. His later hits of
this kind were National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985),
which was based on his story, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
(1987), which he also directed, The Great Outdoors (1988),
and Uncle Buck (1989).
His reputation as “a voice of a young generation” has
come from another set of movies. They, too, have been come-
dies but are sympathetically focused on the trials and growing
pains of teenagers and lack any trace of condescension.
Hughes directed and occasionally produced a string of these
films, making his directorial debut with Sixteen Candles (1984).
He followed that success by writing, directing, and pro-
ducing The Breakfast Club (1985), a bold and somewhat inno-
vative movie for the teen market that had the audacity to
simply let a handful of young people speak their minds on
film. It was a major hit, highlighting the talents of several
young actors and helping to turn them into teen stars, among
them Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson,
Emilio Estevez, and Ally Sheedy.
Hughes wrote several other youth-market movies,
including the pleasantly silly Weird Science (1985) and Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off (1986). He followed those films with a
departure, She’s Having a Baby (1988), a movie that chal-
lenged his teenage audience to face the prospects of marriage
and parenthood. The film was neither a critical nor a com-
mercial success.
HUGHES, JOHN
210
After directing Uncle Buck (1989), an insipid comedy fea-
turing John Candy, and Curly Sue (1991), a depression-era
throwback to
SHIRLEY TEMPLE
’s formula films that appealed
primarily to youthful audiences, Hughes found another way
to address his loyal following. He turned almost exclusively
to screenwriting about children and animals. He wrote
Beethoven (1992) and 101 Dalmatians (1996) and then wrote
the three blockbuster Home Alone films (1990, 1992, and
1997) in which the young protagonist (Macaulay Culkin, ini-
tially) brutalizes dimwitted trespassers and would-be robbers.
The last film that he wrote (as of 2004) was Maid in Manhat-
tan, a Cinderella story and vehicle for
JENNIFER LOPEZ
. Dur-
ing the 1990s Hughes also produced 13 films, including Maid
in Manhattan.
See also
BRAT PACK
;
BRODERICK
,
MATTHEW
;
TEEN
MOVIES
.
Hurt, William (1950– ) A gifted, versatile, and
unpredictable actor who has made a strong impression on the
screen in a relatively modest number of starring roles since
beginning his film career in 1980. Tall and handsome, he
could have easily been a romantic Hollywood leading man.
Instead, he has chosen to portray an odd and intriguing
assortment of characters, establishing himself as a serious
actor who cares little for the trappings of stardom.
Hurt’s father was a U.S. State Department official, and
the young boy lived in a number of exotic South Pacific
locales before his parents finally divorced. As a teenager, he
lived briefly in New York City before his mother married
Henry Luce III, the son of the founder of Time magazine.
Hurt then found himself continuing his education at the elite
Middlesex School in Massachusetts. It was there that he
started to act.
He began his college career at Tufts University as a the-
ology major but soon switched to theater. Upon graduation,
he attended Juilliard to further his study of acting.
Next, he traveled to Oregon, where he acted in a theater
festival presentation of Long Day’s Journey into Night in 1975.
Hurt later made his major breakthrough in the Circle Reper-
tory Company production of My Life in 1977, winning an
Obie (Off-Broadway) Award for his performance.
Hurt continued acting for Circle Rep through the rest of
the 1970s, refusing film offers until finally taking a leading
role in Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980). The movie
received mixed reviews, but the actor was acknowledged by
the critics. He was next cast as the hero in the thriller Eye-
witness (1981), and both he and the movie enjoyed a modest
success. His third feature, the
FILM NOIR
suspense film Body
Heat (1981), written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, was a
solid success for both Hurt and his costar,
KATHLEEN
TURNER
(in her film debut).
Hurt, for his part, wasn’t terribly interested in stardom,
except for the clout it gave him to help get good roles. He
happily joined the large ensemble cast of
LAWRENCE KAS
-
DAN
’s highly regarded The Big Chill (1983), deliberately
played down his role as the Russian detective in the disap-
pointing Gorky Park (1983), and then took the offbeat role
of a daydreaming homosexual prisoner in the low-budget
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), an art-house hit that
brought Hurt an Oscar as Best Actor for his unconven-
tional portrayal.
The actor has continued to pursue good roles wherever
he can find them, often returning to the stage to work. In
films, he has continued to take on challenging roles, such as
in Children of a Lesser God (1986), knowing that deaf costar
Marlee Matlin would inevitably be the movie’s focal point,
and Broadcast News (1987) in which he played an anchorman
of mediocre intelligence, knowing that actress Holly Hunter
and actor Albert Brooks would steal the show. Happily, a
number of critics commented on Hurt’s understated per-
formance. He also reteamed with his Body Heat director
Lawrence Kasdan and costar Kathleen Turner to give yet
another quietly powerful performance in The Accidental
Tourist (1988).
During the 1990s, Hurt alternated between playing leads
and supporting roles in a wide variety of films. He starred in
Until the End of the World (1991), directed and written by
Wim Wenders, the talented German director. The following
year, he had the lead in an adaptation of Albert Camus’s The
Plague, and he played a Welsh postmaster in Second Best
(1994). One of his best roles during the decade was as the tor-
mented Rochester in still another adaptation (1996) of Char-
lotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. In One True Thing (1998) he played
a professor whose wife is dying of cancer. He had supporting
roles in several films, the most notable of which was A.I.:
Artificial Intelligence (2001).
Huston, Anjelica (1951– ) The daughter of film
director
JOHN HUSTON
was born in California but raised in
St. Clerans, County Galway, Ireland. She later moved with
her mother to London and then to New York, where she
worked as a model. She made her motion picture debut at the
age of 15 in A Walk With Love and Death, directed by her
father. In 1969, she auditioned for the role of Ophelia in
Tony Richardson’s London production of Hamlet; although
the role finally was unconventionally cast with Marianne
Faithfull, Huston played one of the ladies-in-waiting to
Queen Gertrude on both stage and screen. In the mid-1970s,
Huston moved to Los Angeles and continued her acting
career, appearing in The Last Tycoon (1976), The Postman
Always Rings Twice (1981, starring
JACK NICHOLSON
, with
whom she had a long relationship), and secondary roles in
other films. In 1985 she won an Oscar as Best Supporting
Actress in Prizzi’s Honor, directed by her father.
Her first lead was in Gardens of Stone, directed by
FRAN
-
CIS FORD COPPOLA
in 1987, the same year that she
appeared as Gretta Conroy in her father’s production of
James Joyce’s The Dead. Her presence as a remarkable con
artist in Stephen Frears’s The Grifters (1990) made the film
distinctive, as did her portrayal of the Grand High Witch in
Nicolas Roeg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches
(1990). Another grotesque supernatural role was that of
Morticia in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family
Values (1993). In 1998, she played an even more sinister role
HUSTON, ANJELICA
211
as Drew Barrymore’s stepmother in Ever After: A Cinderella
Story (1998). Recent appearances include The Golden Bowl
(2000), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Blood Work (2002), and
Daddy Day Care (2003).
Huston, John (1906–1987) A director, screenwriter,
and actor who made many of Hollywood’s most admired
films during a long directorial career that spanned more than
45 years. Huston directed several kinds of films but did his
best work with serious adventure movies. He elevated such
genres as the crime drama, the detective film, the war movie,
and the boxing film to new heights of artistry. He was also an
excellent screenwriter who was a skillful adapter of other
writers’ works. In fact, the vast majority of the feature films
Huston wrote and directed were adaptations. He was among
the first wave of talented writer-directors to come into
prominence in Hollywood in the early 1940s.
During his first 12 years as a director, Huston was one of
Hollywood’s golden boys, but his reputation was later
attacked by auteurist critics who found no unifying theme in
his work. In the 1970s, however, critics rediscovered Hus-
ton’s unique and highly creative ability to direct films whose
heroes show a quixotic sort of courage, and Huston’s entire
career underwent a substantial reevaluation. Regardless of
questions of theme, however, it has always been clear that
Huston was a gifted filmmaker who made his movies with
intelligence, wit, and considerable style.
The son of actor
WALTER HUSTON
, he began and ended
his life as an actor. Huston made his stage debut at the age of
three and worked quite often with his father on the vaudeville
circuit in his youth. He nearly died when he was 12 years old
from an enlarged heart and kidney but fully recovered. Two
years later he quit high school to become a prize fighter, win-
ning 23 of 25 amateur bouts and garnering the Amateur
Lightweight Boxing Championship of California.
If his childhood wasn’t colorful enough, Huston’s early
adult life was nearly blinding in its eccentricity. He became a
professional stage actor in his late teens, enjoying some suc-
cess, but ended that to join the Mexican army, becoming a
cavalry officer. He later performed in horse shows, wrote a
musical play for puppets, and then made his film debut as an
actor in a small role in William Wyler’s The Shakedown
(1928). He went on to appear in two other early sound fea-
tures but walked away from that opportunity as well, becom-
ing a short-story writer and a reporter. The obviously
talented but unfocused Huston continued his career changes
throughout the early to mid-1930s, collaborating on several
HUSTON, JOHN
212
Anjelica Huston in The Witches (1990) (PHOTO COURTESY WARNER BROS.)
screenplays, most notably two that starred his father, A House
Divided (1931) and Law and Order (1932). Later, he ran off to
Europe to study art, nearly starving on the streets of Paris.
Finally, after short stints in America as a magazine editor
and, again, as a stage actor, Huston returned to Hollywood to
begin his film career in earnest. He tried his hand at screen-
writing again. This time he had a real impact, collaborating
on the screenplays of a number of major hits, among them
Jezebel (1938), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Dr.
Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940), and Sergeant York (1941). His
most important early screenplay, though, was for High Sierra
(1941). He had struck a deal with mogul
JACK WARNER
that
he would be allowed to both write and direct a movie of his
own if the film was a success. High Sierra was, of course, a
smash hit, and Huston had his chance.
For his first film as a writer-director, Huston decided to
remake Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, a novel that
had been turned into a film twice before. With perfect cast-
ing, tight direction, and adroit screenwriting (he was the first
to realize that Hammett’s dialogue was perfectly suitable for
the screen), Huston turned
THE MALTESE FALCON
(1941) into
one of Hollywood’s all-time classics.
He directed two more films of only modest distinction
before heading off to war as a filmmaker in the Signal Corps.
During World War II he made a number of stirring docu-
mentaries, two of which are considered landmark films, The
Battle of San Pietro (1945) and Let There Be Light (1946), the
latter so shattering in its depiction of the effects of shell
shock that it was kept under wraps by the Pentagon for sev-
eral decades.
On returning to Hollywood, Huston made what many
consider his greatest film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
(1948). One of the first films of the studio era to be made
largely on location (in Mexico), the movie brought Huston’s
father an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and earned the
director his only Academy Award.
The decade following The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was
a rich and rewarding one for Huston. During that time he
made many of his best movies, among them Key Largo (1948),
The Asphalt Jungle (1950, for which he was nominated for an
Oscar for Best Director), The Red Badge of Courage (1951),
The African Queen (1951, for which he was again nominated),
Moulin Rouge (1953, for which he gained yet another nomi-
nation), Beat the Devil (1954, a latter-day cult favorite), Moby
Dick (1956, an ambitious undertaking that was much better
than critics of the day realized), and Heaven Knows, Mr. Alli-
son (1957, an underrated minor masterpiece that had much in
common with his earlier African Queen).
1956 was a turning point in Huston’s career; Moby Dick
was harpooned by the critics and sank at the box office. As he
was used to one hit after another, Huston’s erratic commer-
cial success in the late 1950s and 1960s seemed like a fall
from grace. His first genuinely bad movie was The Barbarian
and the Geisha. Some fascinating critical and/or commercial
flops followed, including The Roots of Heaven (1958), Freud
(1962), The Bible (1964), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967),
Sinful Davey (1969), and A Walk with Love and Death (1969),
the latter film starring his daughter, Anjelica Huston.
But very good movies were to be found as well, a few of
them hits, during that period: The Unforgiven (1960), The
Misfits (1961), The Night of the Iguana (1964), and Casino
Royale (1967)—all had much to recommend them.
In spite of these successful movies, it seemed as if the great
director was in serious decline. But Huston fooled those who
thought his best days were behind him when he directed one
of the finest films about boxing ever made, Fat City (1972).
Suddenly rediscovered, Huston went on to make, among
other movies, the much-admired The Man Who Would Be King
(1975), the art-house hit Wise Blood (1979), and Prizzi’s Honor
(1985), for which he won his fifth Oscar nomination for Best
Director and for which his daughter, Anjelica, won an Oscar
for Best Supporting Actress. With Anjelica’s award, the Hus-
ton family became the first Hollywood dynasty to have three
generations honored by the academy.
The final film Huston directed was James Joyce’s The
Dead (1987), a lovely effort that served as a fitting end to an
illustrious career.
But John Huston was not content to stop working. He
acted far more often in his later years. His long, evocative
face and sonorous voice made him a much-in-demand char-
acter actor, and in addition to making appearances in some of
his own films, he also acted in others’ films, including The
Cardinal (1963), Candy (1968), Chinatown (1974), The Wind
and the Lion
(1975), and W
inter Kills (1979). His last per-
formance was in his adopted son director Danny Huston’
s
Mr. North (1988), but he collapsed during the production and
asked
ROBERT MITCHUM
to replace him. John Huston died
of emphysema before the picture was completed.
Huston, Walter (1884–1950) An actor who could
always be counted on to give an intelligent, thoughtful per-
formance. Though he came to the movies in middle age and
was a rather ordinary looking man, there were few film actors
who could hold an audience’s attention like Huston; he had a
magnetic screen presence. Huston knew how to underplay a
role, and he was enormously versatile, playing everything
from historical figures to romantic leads, to villains and kindly
old characters in a film career that lasted more than 20 years.
Born Walter Houghston in Toronto, he tried to lead a
“normal” life but was ultimately drawn to acting. Trained as
an engineer, he chose to work on the stage, and did so with
modest success until marrying his first wife in 1905 (with
whom he had a son, the future writer-director John Huston).
With a wife and child to care for, Huston soon deserted the
stage for a series of jobs as an engineer.
The regular working life did not appeal to Huston, and
he eventually returned to acting in 1909, becoming a bigger
star than ever before. He was a hit in vaudeville during the
1910s and his career soared even as the first of his three mar-
riages soured. His reputation was such that Huston was
offered starring roles on Broadway in the mid- to late 1920s,
and he scored major successes on the Great White Way in
such plays as Mr. Pitt and Desire under the Elms.
Lured to Hollywood during the sound-film revolution,
he made his movie debut in Gentlemen of the Press (1928),
HUSTON, WALTER
213
soon making an impact in the title role of
D
.
W
.
GRIFFITH
’s
final masterwork, Abraham Lincoln (1930). The early 1930s
was Huston’s best era. He gave vivid performances in such
memorable movies as The Criminal Code (1931), A House
Divided (1932), American Madness (1932), and Rain (1932).
After returning to Broadway and scoring rave reviews in
Dodsworth, he reprised his role for the 1936 film version of
the play and was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award.
Huston was seen less on the screen in the later 1930s but
had a major triumph in All That Money Can Buy (1941), gar-
nering his second Academy Award nomination as Best Actor.
It was also in 1941 that Huston’s son, John, emerged as a hot
young writer-director with The Maltese Falcon, a film in which
the elder Huston made a cameo appearance as Captain
Jacoby, dying on Sam Spade’s couch with the falcon in his
arms. He also made a cameo appearance in Huston’s second
film, In This Our Life (1942).
By this time, Huston had settled into character parts, and
he could be seen to fine effect playing such roles as
JAMES
CAGNEY
’s father in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), for which he
was honored with an
ACADEMY AWARD
nomination for Best
Supporting Actor, ambassador Joseph E. Davies in the ill-
fated Mission to Moscow (1943), and Ling Tau in Dragon Seed
(1944). Huston continued to give strong performances in
major hit films throughout the rest of the decade, shining in
such movies as And Then There Were None (1945), Dragonwyck
(1946), and Duel in the Sun (1947).
Modern audiences undoubtedly remember Huston best
for his role as the wise old prospector in his son’s classic The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). His performance
brought him a Best Supporting Oscar just three years before
his death in 1950. Huston’s last film was Furies (1950), but
his recorded talk-singing rendition of “September Song”
from the stage production of Knickerbocker Holiday became a
posthumous hit for the actor when it was used in the film
September Affair (1950).
See also
HUSTON
,
JOHN
.
Hutton, Betty (1921– ) A big, bright, brassy star—
mostly in musicals—over a 10-year period from 1942 to
1952, Hutton self-destructed, and her film career came to an
abrupt end. Hutton was known for her incredible exuberance
and energy, which earned her the nickname “The Blonde
Bombshell.” It was a moniker that had little to do with her
looks (which were fine) but a lot to do with her implacable
personality; she didn’t merely perform—she bulldozed.
Among her other nicknames were “The Huttentot” and
“The Blonde Blitz.”
Born Betty June Thornburg, she was the younger sister of
Marion (Thornburg) Hutton who later became a big-band
vocalist with the Glenn Miller orchestra. Their father died
when the sisters were young, and both girls were forced to
fend for themselves. Betty began by singing on street corners,
eventually becoming a band singer and then working her way
into vaudeville. Broadway beckoned and Hutton made her big
breakthrough as the star of the stage musical Panama Hattie in
1940. Paramount took notice and signed her to a contract.
Her first film was The Fleet’s In (1942), in which she filled
a supporting comic-relief role. She scored with audiences and
critics as a man-crazy female, a role she played in a string of
musicals, such as Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Happy Go Lucky
(1943), and Here Come the Waves (1944). Hutton proved that
she did not need to sing in films to succeed when she starred
with her long-time costar Eddie Bracken in
PRESTON
STURGES
’s classic comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
(1944). Then she went a step further, proving her ability as a
dramatic actress by playing the once famous nightclub impres-
sario Texas Guinan in the hit movie Incendiary Blonde (1945).
Hutton’s career slowed down in the later 1940s, with just
a few memorable films, including her
BIOPIC
about the silent
serial queen Pearl White, called The Perils of Pauline (1947).
Dream Girl (1948) and Red, Hot and Blue (1949) followed.
Finding the right roles for a talent such as Hutton’s was not
an easy task, but the ideal vehicle came along when Judy Gar-
land was forced to drop out of Annie Get Your Gun (1950) due
to illness. Paramount loaned Hutton to MGM for the film,
and she scored a major triumph.
HUTTON, BETTY
214
The irrepressible Betty Hutton was known as the Blonde
Bombshell and for good reason, as seen here.
(PHOTO
COURTESY OF MOVIE STAR NEWS)
MGM wanted to buy her contract but Paramount had
plans of their own for their new superstar. She was teamed
with
FRED ASTAIRE
in Let’s Dance (1951), and Paramount
gave her the lead in its biggest film of 1952, Cecil B.
DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. It was yet another hit,
winning a Best Picture Oscar. With her career at its height,
Hutton followed her success with a musical-star turn in
Somebody Loves Me (1952), the story of vaudeville star Blos-
som Seeley.
Then disaster struck. Hutton married her choreographer,
Charles O’Curran, and demanded that he be made her direc-
tor. Paramount said no, and Hutton walked. She broke her
contract, and her Hollywood fame and fortune came to a
dead stop. She didn’t appear in a movie again for another five
years and then only in a small, overlooked film called Spring
Reunion (1957). She performed ably in it but didn’t elicit any
other offers.
Plagued by four unsuccessful marriages, a drug problem,
fights with managers, and, finally, bankruptcy, Hutton slid from
nightclub work to stock production to a failed Broadway come-
back to walking out on a low-budget western in 1966. In 1974,
she was discovered working as a housekeeper in a Catholic rec-
tory in Rhode Island. Later, she took a job as a hostess at a Con-
necticut jai-alai complex. Eventually, in a daring and nostalgic
move that brought theater audiences to their feet, she returned
to Broadway in 1980 for three weeks to replace the vacation-
ing Alice Ghostley as Mrs. Hannegan in the hit musical Annie.
The thunderous applause and warm critical attention she
received had little effect on her; she returned to working for
the Catholic Church, and little has been heard from her since.
HUTTON, BETTY
215
Ince, Thomas H. (1882–1924) A writer, director, and
producer who was a seminal figure in the development of
film production. A contemporary of
D
.
W
.
GRIFFITH
, Ince
was a shrewd and talented filmmaker who insisted that fully
written shooting scripts be prepared rather than the custom-
ary rough outlines from which directors improvised. In addi-
tion to his tight supervision over the preparation of
screenplays, he also oversaw the work of other directors and
editors, establishing the position of studio production chief,
which would become the norm during the studio system’s
golden era. Thanks to his penchant for planning and efficient
organization, Ince, as both a director and later as Holly-
wood’s first true producer, made many of the early industry’s
best paced, most tightly made movies.
Born Thomas Harper Ince to a show-business family, he
began to act at the age of six. When he grew older, Ince
aspired to an acting career in theater, but the often out-of-
work thespian appeared in the movies as early as 1906 when
he acted in Seven Ages. In 1910, without any prospects for
success on the stage, he finally succumbed to the lure of
motion pictures and, like D. W. Griffith, began to act regu-
larly in front of the camera.
Shortly thereafter, he had the good fortune to begin his
directorial career, making several films that starred
MARY
PICKFORD
, among them Their First Misunderstanding (1910)
and Artful Kate (1911). He learned his trade well and soon
developed a reputation for making fluid, fast-placed, realistic
movies—many of them westerns. Ince also developed a rep-
utation as a smart showman who spared no expense to give
his films a high production gloss. He had a studio built in Los
Angeles that covered 20,000 acres, and hired a Wild West
show for his westerns.
Within two years, Ince was so busy that he finally began
to supervise other directors, rarely directing films himself.
He prepared scripts in great detail for his subordinate direc-
tors and made sure that they followed his orders explicitly.
When he did produce and direct his own films, the results
were often thrilling, as was the case with his version of
Custer’s Last Fight (1912) and Civilization (1915), an epic that
won more plaudits and more patrons than Griffith’s Intoler-
ance (1916).
In one of the more ironic twists of fate in early Hollywood,
three great filmmakers of the era, Thomas Ince, D. W. Grif-
fith, and
MACK SENNETT
found themselves working for the
same company, Triangle Film Corporation, in 1915. Ince’s
production methods were put into effect, with all three heavy-
weights largely supervising the busy output of the studio. Tri-
angle failed due to the hiring of high-priced Broadway stars
who were unknown outside of New York. Even Ince’s produc-
tion methods could not save the company from insolvency.
Ince left Triangle and continued producing movies with
excellent critical and commercial results throughout the rest of
the 1910s and early 1920s. Among his most notable achieve-
ments as a producer/director during this later era were Human
Wreckage (1923), Anna Christie (1923), and Idle Tongues (1924).
The idle tongues of gossipmongers certainly had occa-
sion to wag after the events of November 19, 1924. Thomas
Ince, then just 42 years old, died on William Randolph
Hearst’s yacht under extremely suspicious circumstances.
The official cause of death was listed as a heart attack induced
by acute indigestion, but rumor had it that Hearst shot Ince
because the producer was having an affair with his lover,
actress Marion Davies. An official investigation was launched
into the death, but no new evidence was uncovered; many
believed that Hearst’s power quashed any hope of the truth
being revealed.
It Happened One Night
FRANK CAPRA
’s 1934 sleeper
became the year’s biggest hit, swept the
ACADEMY AWARDS
216
I
(winning all five major Oscars, including Best Picture, Best
Director [Frank Capra], Best Screenplay [
ROBERT RISKIN
],
Best Actor [
CLARK GABLE
], and Best Actress [
CLAUDETTE
COLBERT
]), and changed Hollywood history.
The film was produced by Columbia, and therefore
HARRY COHN
accepted the film’s Best Picture Academy
Award. It was the only film ever to win all five top awards until
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was equally honored in 1975.
The movie, for all its impact, was a modest romantic
comedy about a spoiled, runaway heiress (Colbert) who falls
in love with a wisecracking, down-on-his luck reporter
(Gable) while traveling together with him on a long bus ride.
The film’s natural, idiosyncratic dialogue, the genuine sparks
between the macho Gable and the headstrong Colbert, and
location shooting that gave the natural feel of the open road
added immeasurably to the movie’s appeal. Capra’s uncanny
knack for telling a story with visual flair was very much in evi-
dence from the famous “Walls of Jericho” scene to the
equally famous hitchhiking sequence.
In his splendid autobiography, Frank Capra: The Name
Above the Title, the director explained how the movie came
into being. The film was based on a short story called “Night
Bus” by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which Capra read in Cos-
mopolitan while sitting in a barber shop. He had Columbia
buy the film rights to the story for $5,000.
As it happened, two previous bus-trip films had been
made by other studios, and both had been flops. Columbia
studio boss Harry Cohn ordered that the word Bus be
stricken from the title, and so the name of the film was
changed to It Happened One Night.
After repeated failures in signing up a female lead for the
film, Capra decided to go after the male lead in the hope of
getting a star whose presence in the cast would help attract a
formidable leading lady. MGM owed Columbia the use of
one of its stars, and though Capra asked for Robert Mont-
gomery, Montgomery refused. MGM’s L. B. Mayer forced
Columbia to take one of his up-and-coming actors, Clark
Gable, who was known to be demanding more money from
Mayer. The mogul tried to show Gable who was boss by
humiliating him and sending him to lowly Columbia on loan.
With Gable set for the film, Capra went after Claudette
Colbert for the female role because she was on vacation from
Paramount and could make her own deals without studio
interference. She won double her salary, receiving $50,000.
The film’s entire budget was a mere $325,000, with a
shooting schedule of four weeks. When the film opened, it
received only mildly positive reviews. But the word of mouth
on the film was stupendous. Every week, the crowds at the-
aters all over the country grew larger. Before long the film was
the talk of the industry, and critics went back to see the film
to find out what it was that they missed the first time around.
The film’s overwhelming success wrought great changes
in Hollywood. Columbia was catapulted into the ranks of
the major studios. Clark Gable’s supposed punishment
ended up turning him into MGM’s major male star, and
Louis B. Mayer had to triple the actor’s salary. From a film-
making perspective, the movie was significant because, in
script doctor Myles Connolly’s words, as reported by Capra,
“You [Capra] took the old classic four of show business—
hero, heroine, villain, comedian—and cut it down to three,
by combining hero and comedian into one person.” This
immensely important change in story and character struc-
ture has continued to this day.
Proving that lightning rarely ever strikes twice in the same
place, the film was remade in 1956 as You Can’t Run Away from
It with June Allyson and
JACK LEMMON
. It was not a hit.
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
217