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Home , Anthony Caruso (actor), A Life of Her Own, A Lion Is in the Streets, Brad Dexter, Carbine Williams, Dark Command

September 17, 2019 (XXXIX: 4) : (1950, 112m) The version of this Goldenrod Handout sent out in our Monday mailing, and the one online, has hot links. Spelling and Style—use of italics, quotation marks or nothing at all for titles, e.g.—follows the form of the sources.

DIRECTOR John Huston WRITING screenplay adapted by and John Huston from the W.R. Burnett novel PRODUCED BY Arthur Hornblow Jr. and John Huston MUSIC Miklós Rózsa CINEMATOGRAPHY EDITING George Boemler

The was nominated for in 1951 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (), Best Director (John Huston), Best Writing, Screenplay (Ben Maddow and John Huston), and Best Cinematography, Black-and- White (Harold Rosson). It was entered into the by the National Film Preservation Board in 2008.

§ CAST Madre (1948) . He was frequently nominated for Oscars ...Dix Handley for his writing, directing, production, and, even, acting: Best Writing, Original Screenplay for Dr. Ehrlich's Magic ...Alonzo D. Emmerich Bullet (1940)* and Sergeant York (1941);* Best Writing, Jean Hagen...Doll Conovan Screenplay for The Maltese Falcon (1941),* The Asphalt ...Gus Minissi Jungle (1950),***** The African Queen (1951, with James Sam Jaffe...Doc Erwin Riedenschneider Agee);* Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from John McIntire...Police Commissioner Hardy Another Medium for Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)* ...Cobby and for The Man Who Would Be King (1975);* for Best Barry Kelley...Lt. Ditrich Director for The Asphalt Jungle (1950),***** The African ...Louis Ciavelli Queen (1951),* Moulin Rouge (1952),***** and for Prizzi's Teresa Celli...Maria Ciavelli Honor (1985); Best Picture for Moulin Rouge (1952)***** ...Angela Phinlay and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Cardinal William 'Wee Willie' Davis...Timmons (as William Davis) (1963). He was also nominated for the distinguished Palm ...May Emmerich d’Or for Under the Volcano (1984) at Cannes. His frequent Brad Dexter...Bob Brannom recognition for writing may be reflected in his recurring John Maxwell...Dr. Swanson film adaptation of literary classics: Stephen Crane’s The

Red Badge of Courage (1951)§, Herman Melville’s Moby JOHN HUSTON (b. August 5, 1906 in Nevada, Dick (1956),****** Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Missouri—d. August 28, 1987 (age 81) in Middletown, Arms (1957, uncredited), Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood Rhode Island) won two Oscars in 1949 for Best Director (1979, as Jhon Huston),** and, his final film, a haunting and Best Writing, Screenplay for The Treasure of the Sierra adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead (1987). He directed Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—2

47 . These are some of his other films: In This Our W.R. BURNETT (b. November 25, 1899 in Springfield, Life (1942), (1942 Short), Across the Ohio—d. April 25, 1982 (age 82) in Santa Monica, Pacific (1942), Report from the Aleutians (1943 ) was an American novelist and (69 Documentary),* San Pietro (1945Documentary credits). In , Burnett found a job as a night clerk short),***** Let There Be Light (1946 Documentary),* Key in the seedy Northmere Hotel, putting him in the Largo (1948),* ( 1948)§, Beat the Devil esteemed company of marginal characters: prize fighters, (1953),***** The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958), The hoodlums, hustlers and hobos. This milieu inspired his Roots of Heaven (1958), The Unforgiven (1960), The Misfits 1929 novel Little Caesar, which was adapted into a 1931 (1961),**** Freud (1962),** The List of Adrian Messenger film produced by First National Pictures (Warner (1963),** The Night of the Iguana (1964),* The Bible: In Brothers) and starring the unknown Edward G. Robinson. the Beginning... (1966),** Casino Royale (scenes at Sir The novel and film’s unexpected success landed him a job 's house and castle in Scotland scenes) as a film screenwriter. The theme was one he (1967),** Reflections in a Golden Eye returned to in 1932 with Scarface. (1967),*** (1969),*** Burnett worked with many of the A Walk with Love and Death greats in acting and directing, (1969),**** including John Huston, John Ford, (1970),****** Fat City (1972),*** , Michael Cimino, The Life and Times of Judge Roy , Ida Lupino, Paul Bean (1972),** The MacKintosh Muni, Steve McQueen, and Clint Man (1973),*** Phobia (1980), Eastwood. He received an Oscar Victory (1981), and Annie (1982).** nomination for his script for Wake He wrote for 40 films, including Island (1942) and a Writers Guild films he did not direct, including: nomination for his script for The Wuthering Heights (1939 Great Escape (1963). These are some contributing writer - uncredited), of the films he has written for: The The Storm (1930 dialogue), Law Finger Points (1931), Iron Man and Order (1932 adaptation), (1931), The Beast of the City (1932), Jezebel (1938 screen play), Juarez Law and Order (1932), Dark Hazard (1939 screen play), High Sierra (1934), The Whole Town's Talking (1941 screen play), Three Strangers (1935), Dr. Socrates (1935), 36 (1946 original screenplay), The Stranger (1946 Hours to Kill (1936), Wild West Days (1937), Wine, uncredited), and The Killers (1946 uncredited). He acted Women and Horses (1937), Some Blondes Are Dangerous in 54 films, including the films noted above and, among (1937), King of the Underworld (1939), others: The Shakedown (1929), Hell's Heroes (1929), The (1940), The Westerner (1940), Law and Order (1940), List of Adrian Messenger (1963), The Cardinal (1963), High Sierra (1941), The Getaway (1941), Dance Hall Candy (1968), De Sade (1968), Myra Breckinridge (1970), (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), Crash Dive (1943), The Devil's Backbone (1971), The Life and Times of Judge Action in the North Atlantic (1943), Roy Bean (1972), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), (1943), San Antonio (1945), Nobody Lives Forever (1946), Chinatown (1974), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Sherlock The Man I Love (1947), Belle Starr's Daughter (1948), Holmes in (1976 TV Movie), The Rhinemann Yellow Sky (1948), Kraft Theatre (TV Series) (1949), Exchange (1977 TV Mini-Series), The Hobbit (1977 TV Colorado Territory (1949), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Movie), Winter Kills (1979), and Cannery Row (1982). He Danger (TV Series) (1950), Vendetta (1950), Iron Man also produced 15 films, including those noted above. (1951), The Racket (1951), Studio One in (TV *Wrote Series) (1952), Law and Order (1953), Arrowhead (1953), **Acted in Dangerous Mission (1954), Night People (1954), Captain §Wrote and acted in Lightfoot (1955), Illegal (1955), ***Produced (1955), Screen Directors Playhouse (TV Series) (1955), ****Produced and acted in Studio 57 (TV Series) (1956), Accused of Murder (1956), *****Produced and wrote Short Cut to Hell (1957), (1958), The ******Wrote, produced, acted in Hangman (1959), The Untouchables (TV Series) (1959), (1960), Naked City (TV Series) (1960), The Asphalt Jungle (TV Series) (1961), The Lawbreakers Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—3

(1961), Sergeants 3 (1962), Cairo (1963), 4 for Texas nominated for 5 Oscars. These are some of the films he (1963), The Legend of Jesse James (TV Series) (1965), The worked on: David Harum (1915), Oliver Twist (1916), Jackals (1967), Off to See the Wizard (TV Series) (1967), The Victoria Cross (1916), The Cinema Murder (1919), The Virginian (TV Series) (1967), (TV Series) Polly of the Storm Country (1920), Everything for Sale (1968), Ice Station Zebra (1968), Stiletto (1969), and Cool (1921), (1923), (1924), A Man Breeze (1972). Must Live (1925), The Little French Girl (1925), Up in Mabel's Room (1926), Getting Gertie's Garter (1927), Rough MIKLÓS RÓZSA (b. April 18, 1907 in Budapest, House Rosie (1927), Service for Ladies (1927), A Gentleman Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]—d. July 27, 1995 (age of Paris (1927), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), Abie's 88) in , California) was a Hungarian-American Irish Rose (1928), (1928), Trent's composer trained in Germany (1925–1931), and active in Last Case (1929), Madam Satan (1930), Men Call It Love France (1931–1935), the United Kingdom (1935–1940), (1931), Son of India (1931), The Squaw Man (1931), and the (1940–1995), with extensive Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Red-Headed Woman (1932), sojourns in Italy from 1953. Best known for his nearly one Red Dust (1932), The Barbarian (1933), hundred film scores (95 credits), he nevertheless (1933), Treasure Island (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel maintained a steadfast allegiance to absolute concert music (1934), The Ghost Goes West (1935), The Garden of Allah throughout what he called his "double life." He won (1936), Captains Courageous (1937), Too Hot to Handle Oscars for scoring Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1938), I Take This Woman (1940), A Door Will Open (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959). He was also nominated for (1940), Edison, the Man (1940), Dr. Kildare Goes Home 10 other films. These are some other films he composed (1940), Flight Command (1940), The Penalty (1941), for: Thunder in the City (1937), The Four Feathers (1939), Tortilla Flat (1942), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), The Thief of Bagdad (1940), That Hamilton Woman Three Wise Fools (1946), Duel in the Sun (1946), The (1941), The Jungle Book (1942), Sahara (1943), So Proudly Hucksters (1947), Command Decision (1948), The Stratton We Hail! (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Blood on the Story (1949), On the Town (1949), The Asphalt Jungle Sun (1945), Lady on a Train (1945), The Lost Weekend (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951), Lone Star (1945), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The (1952), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Story of Three Loves Killers (1946), Song of Scheherazade (1947), The Macomber (1953), Mambo (1954), Ulysses (1954), Pete Kelly's Blues Affair (1947), Brute Force (1947), The Naked City (1948), (1955), The Bad Seed (1956), The Enemy Below (1957), No Command Decision (1948), Madame Bovary (1949), Time for Sergeants (1958), Decision at Midnight (1963), Adam's Rib (1949), East Side, West Side (1949), The and El Dorado (1967) Asphalt Jungle (1950), Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), The Story of Three Loves (1953), Julius Caesar (1953), Knights of the Round Table (1953), Men of the Fighting Lady (1954), Valley of the Kings (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), Lust for Life (1956), Something of Value (1957), The Seventh Sin (1957), (1957), The World, The Flesh and The Devil (1959), King of Kings (1961), El Cid (1961), Sodom and Gomorrah (1962), The V.I.P.s (1963), The Green Berets (1968), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977), Fedora (1978), Last Embrace (1979), Time After Time (1979), Eye of the Needle (1981), and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982).

HAROLD ROSSON (b. April 6, 1895 in New York STERLING HAYDEN (B. March 26, 1916 in Upper City, New York—d. September 6, 1988 (age 93) in Palm Montclair, New Jersey—d. May 23, 1986 (age 70) in Beach, Florida) was an American cinematographer (154 Sausalito, California) was an American actor (72 credits). A credits) who worked during the early and classical leading man for most of his career, he specialized in Hollywood cinema. His career began in the early days of westerns and throughout the , in films such in the 1910s. He is best known for his as John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Nicholas pioneering use of Technicolor in the visually Ray's (1954), and 's The groundbreaking 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. He was Killing (1956). He became noted for supporting roles in Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—4 the 1960s, perhaps most memorably as the comically Notorious (1946), Arch of Triumph (1948), The Red paranoid General Jack D. Ripper in Kubrick's Dr. Danube (1949), Nancy Goes to Rio (1950), A Life of Her Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Own (1950), Washington Story (1952), The Prisoner of Bomb (1964). These are some of the other films he acted Zenda (1952), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Julius in: Virginia (1941), El Paso (1949), Manhandled (1949), Caesar (1953), Executive Suite (1954), Men of the Fighting Journey Into Light (1951), Flat Top (1952), The Star Lady (1954), The Student Prince (1954), Blackboard Jungle (1952), So Big (1953), Fighter Attack (1953), Prince (1955), and High Society (1956), Valiant (1954), The Last Command (1955), Top Gun (1955), The Iron Sheriff (1957), Valerie (1957), Terror in a JEAN HAGEN (b. August 3, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois— Texas Town (1958), The Godfather (1972), The Long d. August 29, 1977 (age 54) in Los Angeles, California) Goodbye (1973), 1900 (1976), King of the Gypsies (1978), was an American film and television actress (40 credits) Winter Kills (1979), The Outsider (1979), 9 to 5 (1980), best known for her role as Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Venom (1981), and The Blue and the Gray (TV Mini- Rain (1952), for which she was nominated for an Academy Series) (1982). Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her film debut was as a comical femme fatale in the and 1949 classic Adam's Rib, directed by . The Asphalt Jungle (1950) provided Hagen with her first starring role. Hagen received excellent reviews playing Doll Conover, a woman who sticks by criminal Dix's side until the bitter end. These are some of her other film and television appearances: Ambush (1950), Side Street (1950), (1950), Night Into Morning (1951), No Questions Asked (1951), (1952), Arena (1953), Latin Lovers (1953), Half a Hero (1953), The Big Knife (1955), Sunrise at Campobello (1960), Ben Casey (TV Series) (1962), Panic in Year Zero (1952), Starsky and Hutch (TV Series) (1976), and The Streets of (TV Series) (1976).

LOUIS CALHERN (b. February 19, 1895 as Carl Henry JAMES WHITMORE (b. October 1, 1921 in White Vogt in , New York—d. May 12, 1956 (age 61) Plains, New York—d. February 6, 2009 (age 87) in in Tokyo, Japan) was an American stage and screen actor Malibu, California) was an American film and television (73 credits). Among his many memorable screen portrayals actor (159 credits) and theater actor. During his career, were Ambassador Trentino in the Marx Brothers classic Whitmore won three of the four EGOT honors: a Tony, a Duck Soup (1933) and three diverse roles that he appeared Grammy, and an Emmy. Whitmore also won a Golden in at MGM in 1950: a singing role as Buffalo Bill in the Globe and was nominated for two Academy Awards. These film version of the musical Annie Get Your Gun, the are some of his film and television appearances: Repertory double-crossing lawyer and sugar-daddy to Marilyn Theatre (TV Series) (1949), The Undercover Man (1949), Monroe in John Huston's film noir classic The Asphalt Battleground (1949), The Outriders (1950), Please Believe Jungle, and his Oscar-nominated performance as Oliver Me (1950), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Next Voice You Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (re-creating Hear... (1950), Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1950), his role from the Broadway stage). These are some of the Angels in the Outfield (1951), The Red Badge of Courage other films he acted in: What's Worth While? (1921), Too (1951), Across the Wide Missouri (1951), Because You're Wise Wives (1921), The Last Moment (1923), Stolen Mine (1952), The Girl Who Had Everything (1953), Kiss Heaven (1931), The Road to Singapore (1931), Blonde Me Kate (1953), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953), The Crazy (1931), Okay America! (1932), 20,000 Years in Sing Great Diamond Robbery (1954), The Command (1954), Sing (1932), Strictly Personal (1933), The Count of Monte Them! (1954), Battle Cry (1955), The McConnell Story Cristo (1934), The Man with Two Faces (1934), The (1955), Oklahoma! (1955), The Last Frontier (1955), The Arizonian (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), The Eddy Duchin Story (1956), Crime in the Streets (1956), Bus Life of Emile Zola (1937), Juarez (1939), Dr. Ehrlich's Stop (TV Series) (1961), The Twilight Zone (TV Series) Magic Bullet (1940), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Nobody's (1963), Black Like Me (1964), Chuka (1967), Nobody's Darling (1943), The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944), Perfect (1968), Planet of the Apes (1968), Madigan (1968), Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—5

Bonanza (TV Series) (1968), The Split (1968), Guns of the television series he appeared in: The Ramparts We Watch Magnificent Seven (1969), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), (1940), (1947), (1948), Chato's Land (1972), The Harrad Experiment (1973), High Black Bart (1948), River Lady (1948), The Street with No Crime (1973), I Will Fight No More Forever (TV Movie) Name (1948), Command Decision (1948), Down to the Sea (1975), The First Deadly Sin (1980), Nuts (1987), The in Ships (1949), Red Canyon (1949), Johnny Stool Pigeon Shawshank Redemption (1994), Fun with Dick and Jane (1949), Ambush (1950), Francis (1950), No Sad Songs for (2005), and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (TV Series) Me (1950), Shadow on the Wall (1950), Winchester '73 (2007). (1950), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Saddle Tramp (1950), Walk Softly, Stranger (1950), You're in the Navy Now (1951), Horizons West (1952), (1953), Apache (1954), (1954), Stranger on Horseback (1955), The Phenix City Story (1955), The Kentuckian (1955), To Hell and Back (1955), I've Lived Before (1956), Away All Boats (1956), (1957), The Light in the Forest (1958), Naked City (TV Series) (1958-1959), The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959), Who Was That Lady? (1960), (1960), Elmer Gantry (1960), Seven Ways from Sundown (1960), The Untouchables (TV Series) (1960), Two Rode Together (1961), Summer and Smoke (1961), The Fugitive (TV Series) (1966), Dallas (TV Series) (1979), The Incredible Hulk (TV Series) (1980), Honkytonk Man (1982), Cloak & Dagger (1984), St. Elsewhere (TV Series) (1986), and Turner & Hooch (1989). SAM JAFFE (b. March 10, 1891 in , New York—d. March 24, 1984 (age 93) in Beverly Hills, Los MARC LAWRENCE (b. February 17, 1910 in New York Angeles, California) was an American film and television City, New York—d. November 27, 2005 (age 95) in Palm actor (74 credits). In 1951, he was nominated for the Springs, California) was an American character actor in Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his film and television (221 credits) who specialized in performance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and appeared in portraying underworld types. These are some films and other classic films such as Ben-Hur (1959) and The Day the television series he appeared in: If I Had a Million (1932), Earth Stood Still (1951). These are some his other film and Gambling Ship (1933), White Woman (1933), Straight Is television appearances: A Cheap Vacation (Short) (1916), the Way (1934), Strangers All (1935), Dr. Socrates (1935), The Scarlet Empress (1934), We Live Again (1934), Lost Robin Hood of El Dorado (1936), Under Two Flags (1936), Horizon (1937), Gunga Din (1939), Stage Door Canteen Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936), San Quentin (1937), (1943), 13 Rue Madeleine (1946), Gentleman's Agreement Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937), Penitentiary (1938), (1947), The Accused (1949), Rope of Sand (1949), I Can Convicted (1938), I Am the Law (1938), While New York Get It for You Wholesale (1951), Under the Gun (1951), Sleeps (1938), Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938), Homicide The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958), The Untouchables Bureau (1939), Blind Alley (1939), Johnny Apollo (1940), (TV Series) (1961), Naked City (TV Series) (1961), Brigham Young (1940), The Great Profile (1940), Charlie Bonanza (TV Series) (1966), Batman (TV Series) (1966), Chan at the Wax Museum (1940), Lady Scarface (1941), Guns for San Sebastian (1968), The Great Bank Robbery Public Enemies (1941), Nazi Agent (1942), This Gun for (1969), The Streets of San Francisco (TV Series) (1974), Hire (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), Submarine Alert Columbo (TV Series) (1975), The Bionic Woman (TV (1943), Tampico (1944), The Princess and the Pirate Series) (1976), Kojak (TV Series) (1977), Gideon's (1944), Dillinger (1945), Don't Fence Me In (1945), Life Trumpet (TV Movie) (1980), Nothing Lasts Forever with Blondie (1945), Blonde Alibi (1946), The Virginian (1984), and On the Line (1984). (1946), Cloak and Dagger (1946), Joe Palooka in the Knockout (1947), Unconquered (1947), Captain from JOHN MCINTIRE (b. June 27, 1907 in Spokane, Castile (1947), I Walk Alone (1947), Key Largo (1948), Washington—d. January 30, 1991 (age 83) in Pasadena, Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949), Tough Assignment California) was an American character actor (142 credits) (1949), Black Hand (1950), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The in film and television. These are some of the films and Desert Hawk (1950), Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—6

Legion (1950), My Favorite Spy (1951), Funniest Show on Earth (1953), Helen of Troy (1956), The Rifleman (TV Series) (1958-60), The Untouchables (TV Series) (1960- 63), King of Kong Island (1968), The Kremlin Letter (1970), Bonanza (TV Series) (1970), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Marathon Man (1976), Baretta (TV Series) (1976), Wonder Woman (TV Series) (1979), Cataclysm (1980), The Big Easy (1986), Ruby (1992), Four Rooms (1995), Gotti (TV Movie) (1996), End of Days (1999), and The Shipping News (2001).

MARILYN MONROE (b. Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California—d. August 5, 1962 (age 36) in Los Angeles, California) was an American film actress (33 credits), model, and singer. The critic “John Huston”: from World Film Directors, Vol I. Edited Jacqueline Rose recently recounted how cinematographer by John Wakeman. H. W. Wilson Co., NY, 1987, entry by once said that Monroe glowed. In Rose’s Philip Kemp essay, she asks what did this glow both illuminate and John (Marcellus) Huston, American director, scenarist, actor, obscure. Rose asks “What does she allow us to see and not and producer, was born in the town of Nevada, Missouri, to see?” Citing Monroe’s own words, Rose suggests one where the Water and Power Company—or, according to some thing Monroe’s male admirers did not see was her: “Men accounts, the entire town—had been won by his maternal do not see me,” she said, “they just lay their eyes on me.” grandfather, John Gore, in a poker game. Huston’s father, Rose, in particular, is interested in Monroe’s obscured Walter, was at that time a small-time actor whose itinerant troupe had just gone bust in Arizona; John Gore therefore intellectual qualities, qualities that drew journalist Bill installed him as head of Nevada’s public utilities. Totally Weatherby to her as her confidant and discussion partner without engineering training, he proved spectacularly unsuited in the last years of her life. In her last interview, Monroe for this post, and when a fire broke out he mishandled a valve, reflected on the human condition: “We human beings are cutting off the water supply. Half of Nevada burned to the strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ground, and Walter, with his wife and infant son John, went ourselves” (London Review of Books). 1950, Monroe had bit back on the road. parts in Love Happy, A Ticket to Tomahawk, Right Cross Huston’s parents’ marriage—contracted at the St. Louis World’s Fair was never a great success, and in 1909 and The Fireball, but also appeared in minor supporting they separated, divorcing four years later. Huston spent his roles in two critically acclaimed films: Joseph Mankiewicz's boyhood shuttling between them, spending most of the time drama and John Huston's The with his mother, who became a journalist under her own name Asphalt Jungle. Despite only appearing on screen for a few of Rhea Gore. With her he traveled the Midwest, picking up minutes in the latter, she gained a mention in Photoplay, an her taste for literature, horses, plush hotels, and gambling. He early film fan magazine, and according to Monroe remained somewhat in awe of her, though, feeling that she biographer Donald Spoto “moved effectively from movie despised him as a romantic fantasist. “Nothing I ever did pleased my mother,” he later remarked. model to serious actress.” These are some of her other film He was far more at ease with his father, who when appearances: Dangerous Years (1947), You Were Meant for not acting in New York would take him on the vaudeville Me (1948), Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948), Green Grass circuit, staying in hotels that were anything but plush. Huston of Wyoming (1948), Ladies of the Chorus (1948), Home thoroughly relished the contrast, and was enthralled by the Town Story (1951), As Young as You Feel (1951), Love Nest theatrical low-life he encountered. But at twelve he was found (1951), Let's Make It Legal (1951), Clash by Night (1952), to be suffering from Bright’s disease and an “enlarged heart.” We're Not Married! (1952), Don't Bother to Knock (1952), The boy was placed in a sanatorium in Phoenix, Arizona, and told he must henceforth live as a cautious invalid. Rebelling, O. Henry's Full House (1952), Monkey Business (1952), The he took up secret midnight swimming in a nearby river. After Jack Benny Program (TV Series) (1952), Niagara (1953), some months, this pastime was discovered, and it was decided Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a that he must have made a fortunate recovery. Millionaire (1953), River of No Return (1954), There's No His mother, who had remarried, moved to Los Business Like Show Business (1954), The Seven Year Itch Angeles, where Huston attended Lincoln High School. As if (1955), Bus Stop (1956), The Prince and the Showgirl making up for list time, he plunged into a multitude of interests: abstract painting, ballet, English and French (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), Let's Make Love (1960), literature, opera, horseback riding, and boxing. At fifteen he and The Misfits (1961). dropped out of high school, becoming one of the state’s top-

Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—7 ranking amateur lightweights (with a permanently flattened followed by The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), and two of nose) while studying at the Art Students League in Los Warner’s prestigious biopics, Juarez (1939) and Dr. Ehrlich’s Angeles. He was also “infatuated” with the cinema, though as Magic Bullet (1940). Dr. Ehrlich won Huston an Academy yet only as a spectator. “ was a god, and Award nomination, as did his next script, for Howard Hawks’ William S. Hart. I remember the enormous impact the UFA Sergeant York (1941). He was now successful enough to films had on me, those of Emil Jannings and The Cabinet of persuade the studio that, if his next script was a hit, he should Dr. Caligari. I saw this many be allowed a chance to direct. times.” “They indulged me rather. They had liked my work as a writer and moved over from vaudeville to the they wanted to keep me on. If I legitimate theatre, and in 1924 wanted to direct, why, they’d achieved fame on Broadway with give me a shot at it, and if it the lead in O’Neill’s Desire didn’t come off all that well, Under the Elms. Watching his they wouldn’t be too father’s rehearsals, Huston was disappointed as it was to be a deeply impressed by O’Neill’s very small picture.” work and fascinated by the Huston’s next script was mechanism of acting: “What I for High Sierra (1941). Directed learned there, during those weeks by , it gave of rehearsal, would serve me for Humphrey Bogart, as a gunman the rest of my life.” He himself on the run, his breakthrough to acted briefly with the stardom, and provided Huston Provincetown Players in 1924. with the hit he wanted. Warners The following year, recovering from a mastoid operation, he kept their word and offered him his choice of subject. He took a long vacation in Mexico, where among other chose Dashiell Hammett’s thriller, The Maltese Falcon, which adventures he rode as an honorary member of the Mexican had already been adapted twice by Warners, both times badly. cavalry. On his return, Huston married a friend from high Wisely, Huston stuck closely to the original, taking over much school, Dorothy Harvey. The marriage lasted barely a year. of Hammett’s dialogue unchanged, and filming with a clean, He had begun to write short stories, one of which was uncluttered style that provided a cinematic equivalent to the published by H.L. Mencken in the American Mercury. Further novel’s fast, laconic narrative. He also benefited from a superb pieces, clearly influence by Hemingway, appeared in Esquire, cast. George Raft was offered the role of the private eye Sam the New York Times, and other journals He also wrote Spade but turned it down (as he had previously with the lead Frankie and Johnny, “ a puppet play with music (the music in High Sierra). Bogart, who liked Huston, was happy to take being by Sam Jaffe). This was produced in over, supported by , , Sydney by Ruth Squires and published in book form. Through his Greenstreet (in his first film role), Elisha Cook, Jr. and—in a mother, Huston was given a job on the New York Graphic. “I walk-on part “for luck”—Walter Huston. had no talent as a journalist whatever and I was fired oftener The Maltese Falcon (1941) was made on a small, B- than any reporter ever has been within such a limited time. picture budget, and put out by Warners with minimal There was a kind-hearted city editor who kept hiring me publicity. They were taken aback by the enthusiastic response back.” When even that man’s patience ran out, Huston headed of public and critics. The latter immediately hailed the film as for Hollywood, where his father had moved with the coming a classic, and it has since been claimed as the best detective of talkies. melodrama ever made. “It is hard to say,” wrote Harold Huston was hired as a scenarist by Goldwyn Studios, Barnes in the Herald Tribune, “whether Huston the adapter or spent six months there with no assignments, and then moved Huston the fledgling director, is more responsible for this to his father’s studio, Universal, where he collaborated on four triumph.” Already, in his directorial debut, many of Huston’s scripts, two of them for films starring his father: A House characteristic preoccupations appear. The plot is a web of Divided and Law and Order. His colleagues had no doubt of deceptive appearances; characters and even objects (including his talent, but one of them described him at this time as “just a the coveted falcon itself) are duplicitous and untrustworthy, drunken boy, hopelessly immature.” After a lethal automobile and the hero himself is not what he seems. Spade, outwardly a accident in which he was the driver, he “wanted nothing so cynical opportunist, proves to be driven by a scrupulous much as to get away” and left Universal for a job at Gaumont- personal code. “When a man’s partner is killed,” he says, British in London. Unhappy there, he quit again and lived turning the woman he wants over to justice, “he’s supposed to rough for a while, before bumming his way to Paris and do something about it.” eventually back to New York. After a brief stint as a journalist …A few days before shooting was complete on there and a few months with the WPA Theatre in Chicago, he , Huston received his army induction returned to Hollywood in 1937 and went to work as a writer papers….Appositely, his first assignment as a documentary for Warner Brothers. filmmaker for the Signal Corps was across the Pacific—in the Newly married to Leslie Black, Huston now seemed Aleutian islands off Alaska. The resulting film, Report From ready to settle to a serious career as a screenwriter. His first the Aleutians (1943) was described in the New York Times as credit was for William Wyler’s Jezebel (1937); this was “one of the war’s outstanding records of what our men are Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—8 doing. It is furthermore an honest record.” Promoted to …Warners were less circumspect over Huston’s next film, his captain, Huston was sent to Italy to make The Battle of San fourth with Bogart. Key Largo (1948) was adapted from a Pietro (1944) regarded as one of the finest combat prewar play by Maxwell Anderson, originally written in blank documentaries ever filmed. “No I have seen,” wrote verse. Huston and his co-scriptwriter Richard Brooks, junked James Agee in The Nation, “has been quite so attentive to the the verse and updated the plot….To Huston’s annoyance, the heaviness of casualties, and to the number of yards gained or studio cut several scenes from the final release. Not long lost, in such an action.”…Huston’s ironic realism disconcerted before this, Huston had been refused permission, under the the War Department. One general accused him of having terms of his contract, to direct a play by his idol Eugene made “a film against war,” eliciting the response: “Well, sir, O’Neill for the Broadway stage, Angered by these incidents, when I make a picture that’s for war—why I hope you take me Huston left Warners when his contract expired. out and shoot me.” Despite this, he was promoted to major and Together with Sam Spiegel and Jules Buck, Huston awarded the Legion of Merit. founded Horizon Films. The His last film for the army new company’s first feature was Let There Be Light (1945), on was a courageous failure. the rehabilitation of soldiers Huston had been among the suffering from combat neuroses. strongest opponents of HUAC The overtly optimistic message was and the , constantly undercut by the and when came compassionate objectivity of the under pressure, Huston offered filming, which for Huston was him the lead on We Were “practically a religious experience.” Strangers (1949) as a The War Department shelved the deliberate gesture of picture, but it was finally given defiance—the more so since general release in 1980. Noting “its the prophetic plot concerned a voice-over narration [provided by Walter Huston], its use of revolution in Cuba against a corrupt dictatorship. It was wipes and dissolves, and its full-orchestra soundtrack music,” attacked on release by both left and right. It was also a box- Vincent Canby called it “an amazingly elegant movie.” office disaster, and Huston admitted that “it didn’t turn out to Discharged from the Army in 1945, Huston returned be a very good picture.” Needing funds, he signed a short-term to Hollywood, where he was divorced from his second wife. contract with MGM. After a brief, spectacular affair with , he Having refused Quo Vadis—despite an amazing married Evelyn Keyes in 1946…. episode when Louis B. Mayer (according to Huston) “crawled At this period Huston had a reputation—which he did across the floor and took my hands and kissed them” in order little to discourage—as one of the wild men of Hollywood. to persuade him to reconsider—Huston took on a far more Along with such friends as Bogart and William Wyler, he congenial subject in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Based on a indulged in frequent and well-publicized bouts of drinking, novel by W.R. Burnett (author of Little Caesar and High gambling, and general horseplay. …Jack Warner, though Sierra), this was the progenitor of a long cycle of “caper autocratic, was ready to tolerate a lot in return for talent and movies,” in which a crime (here a million-dollar jewel theft) is box-office success. He even let himself be persuaded—though successfully carried out by sympathetically depicted criminals, with considerable misgivings—to allow Huston to shoot his only to fail through subsequent ill-chance or internal next film almost entirely on location, and in Mexico. At the dissension. Huston was breaking new ground in presenting time, this was a radical move. crime as an occupation like any other, “a left-handed form of The results justified it. The Treasure of the Sierra human endeavor” carried out by ordinary people motivated Madre (1948) is generally agreed to be one of Huston’s finest not by the megalomanic will to power of the 1930s movie films. …Treasure has often been cited as the archetypal gangsters, but simply by the desire to feed their families or Huston movie, though the director himself denies the presence realize some small private ambition….That same year, 1950, of any authorial unity in his films.” I fail to see any continuity Huston was amicably divorced from Evelyn Keyes; one day in my work from picture to picture—what’s remarkable is how later he married Enrica Soma. In August, while Asphalt Jungle different the pictures are, one from another. In fact, though was still filming, his father died of a heart attack. Huston’s Huston’s cinematic style varies according to the nature of his second picture for MGM was…The Red Badge of Courage subject matter, clear thematic preoccupations can be seen to (1951), taken from Stephen Crane’s novel of the Civil recur throughout his work. The classic “Huston movie” War….Huston left for Africa to make a film for Sam Spiegel, concerns a quest, often a parody of one of society’s sanctioned his partner in Horizon Films. forms of endeavor—the pursuit of wealth, power, religious The script of The African Queen (1951) was taken knowledge, imperial sovereignty—which is destined, after from C.S. Forester’s novel and written by Huston in initial success, to end in failure and futility. (This kind of collaboration with his greatest critical supporter, James denouement became known in the trade as “the Huston Agee….Filming, on location in the Congo and Uganda, took ending.”)… place under appalling conditions: not only extreme heat and The art, technique, and moral implications of The humidity, but dysentery, malaria, mosquitoes, crocodiles and Treasure of the Sierra Madre (as of The Maltese Falcon) have safari ants beset actors and crew. Everybody became ill except since been discussed in great detail by many critics. Bogart, (who came to keep Bogart company) Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—9 and Huston, who all ascribed their immunity to copious in others, the psychosexual source of the guilt which torments quantities of Scotch….The film was a huge popular success, them….By way of relaxation, Huston turned to a spoof murder and won Bogart the only Oscar of his career. mystery, The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), in which the Through some financial sleight-of-hand, little of the villain, played by , appears in numerous profits from The African Queen ever reached Huston, who elaborate disguises. As an additional gimmick, the film consequently pulled out of Horizon Films. For his next three features various guest stars, also heavily disguised. Response films he acted as his own producer….Meanwhile, disgusted by was mainly puzzled…. the HUAC “witch-hunt” and the “The Huston ending” “moral rot” it had induced in the wherein all human activities entertainment industry, Huston culminate in ironic futility and had moved to Ireland. He had disaster was notably absent bought a house in Galway, St. from The Night of the Iguana Clerans, and moved there in 1952 (1964). Huston and his co- with his wife Enrica and their scriptwriter, Anthony Veiller, children Anthony and Angelica. took a characteristically Twelve years later he took Irish overheated and doom-laden citizenship…. play by Tennessee Williams After two financially and transformed it into a unsuccessful pictures [Beat the melodramatic farce with a Devil and Moby Dick]…deep in happy ending. Amazingly, debt…he accepted a three-picture Williams went along with contract with 20th Century- their changes and even helped Fox…Heaven Knows, Mr Allison with the script…. (1957), teaming Robert Mitchum While Iguana was doing and as a marine and well at the box office, Huston a nun stranded on a Japanese-held island during World War II, was visited in Ireland by , who planned to struck many reviewers as an attempt to repeat The African film The Bible. He envisaged a multiplicity of episodes, each Queen. Huston coscripted, and enjoyed working with with its own eminent director. Eventually, the producer Mitchum, whom he considers “one of the really fine actors of modestly limited himself to half the Book of Genesis, with my time.” Huston as sole director. Huston also played Noah and the …A retrospective atmosphere of doom hangs over voice of God….The film finally cost eighteen million—by far the Misfits (1961). died shortly after shooting was the most expensive of Huston’s career—and received finished. Marilyn Monroe never completed another film. atrocious notices…. Montgomery Clift and Thelma Ritter were dead within a few years. While the film was being made, the marriage between In Fat City (1972) Huston drew on the boxing world Monroe and (who had written the script) broke of his youth. Unlike most fight movies, though, the film up, virtually on set. The story, about down-and-out modern offered its characters no moment of glory in the big time; cowboys who round up wild horses to be made into dog food, these were the small-time losers on the lower fringes of the carries strong allegorical overtones as a metaphor for the sport, failures and derelicts never more than a step away from trashing of the American dream of innocence and freedom, the defeat. Filmed in muted, smoky tones in the bars, tenements, closing of the frontier. Despite problems with Monroe, who by and pool-halls of dead-end Stockton, California, Fat City this stage in her career was in a desperate condition, Huston offers the clearest statement of Huston’s fascination with was pleased with the finished picture. “I had obtained the defeat, and the small vestiges of dignity that can be salvaged qualities I wanted.” Critical and public reception was from it. As a washed-up fighter, Stacy Keach gave the lukewarm, but the film’s reputation has grown steadily ever performance of a lifetime. Critics hailed the film as a return to since. form, and John Russell Taylor described it as “one of those late films by old masters that look effortless because they are Huston had conceived the idea of making a film about Freud effortless.”… while working on Let There Be Light. He now invited Jean- Paul Sartre to prepare a script. Sartre did so—four hundred Huston had long cherished an ambition to film pages of it. Huston tactfully suggested that cuts might be Kipling’s story The Man Who Would Be King. Originally he necessary, and he and Sartre went over the script together. planned it with Gable and Bogart; then with Peter O’Toole Sartre returned to Paris, and in due course submitted his and . It finally reached the screen with Sean revised script—of six hundred pages. With the help of Charles Connery and Michael Caine in the leading roles as the two Kaufman, who had coscripted Let There Be Light, the scenario British soldiers who set up a private kingdom in the wild was pruned to a manageable hundred and fifty pages, although mountains of Afghanistan. For once, delay proved beneficial. Sartre disowned it. As Huston remarked, his modern actors brought “a reality to it Freud: The Secret Passion (1962) is not a that the old stars could not do. Today they would seem conventional biopic, but rather an intellectual detective story, synthetic, so in a way I’m glad I didn’t make the picture with in which Freud is shown tracking down, in himself as much as them.” Certainly it would be hard to imagine the film done Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—10 better. There is a sweep and grandeur, a legendary resonance personal, and most provocative films, not only of his oeuvre to the narrative for which the misused term “epic” is for once but also of the Sixties and Seventies at large.” wholly appropriate.…For the first time in a decade, Huston In his last years, Huston a parallel career as a achieved success at the box office as well as with the critics, film actor. In 1963 he was invited by Otto Preminger to and he and Gladys Hill were nominated for an Academy portray a Boston prelate in The Cardinal and virtually stole Award for their screenplay. After The Man Who Would Be the picture. Then, besides taking key roles in several of his King, Huston underwent heart surgery and as a result own films, he appeared in a wide variety of works directed by produced no feature films for four years. Any speculation, others: most notably as the sinister patriarch Noah Cross in though, that his career as a director might be over was Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), and as Teddy Roosevelt’s answered by Wise Blood (1979). … adviser John Hay in Milius’s The Wind and the Lion (1975). An unmixed success was Prizzi’s Honor (1985), Huston evidently enjoyed acting and invariably denied that he based on the book by Richard Condon, starring Jack took it at all seriously. “It’s a cinch,” he maintained, “and they Nicholson, Katherine Turner, William Hickey and Huston’s pay you damn near as much as you make directing.” daughter Anjelica (who won an Oscar for best supporting Suffering from emphysema, Huston spent some time actress), and featuring a witty opera-spouting score by Alex in hospitals at the end of his life. When in Mexico, he lived at North. Huston’s gift for eliciting definitive performances from his home in Las Calletas, near Puerta Vallarta, in a clearing his actors and his delight in labyrinthine plots were evident in between the jungle and the Pacific Ocean, accessible only by this dark satire on the Mafia, American business, family boat, together with various friends and a wide variety of honor, and romantic love. Nicolson, as Charley Partanna, a animals. Living by the sea, he said, quoting an Irish saying, faithful enforcer for the Prizzi family, falls in love with a “lends tranquility to the soul. I’m content to have arrived at glamorous mystery woman (Turner), who turns out to be a this moment in eternity, but for the life of me I don’t know professional killer as well. After a convoluted series of how I got here.” double-crosses and unexpected revelations, Charley is forced to make the ultimate choice between personal happiness and family obligation. The film, wrote Vincent Canby, “does to The Godfather what Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews did to Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. It locates the deliriously comic center within all sentimentality.” Many critics thought it a perfect Huston vehicle and the director’s most fully realized film since The Man who Would be King. After this success, Huston set to work on an adaptation of James Joyce’s story” The Dead,” which he completed shortly before his death. Robin Wood wrote of Huston in Richard Roud’s Cinema that “the problem lies in tracing any significant unifying or developing pattern through his career as a whole….This is but one of several signs—though a crucial one—that Huston is not a major artist, though he has at different stages of his career been mistaken for one.” This is the view that has dominated serious discussion of Huston’s work since the rise of auteurist criticism in the 1960s. But from John Huston’s Filmmaking. Lesley Brill. Cambridge U Andrew Sarris, once one of the director’s most dismissive Press NY 1997 critics, wrote in 1980 that “what I have always tended to Why has Huston’s artistic personality gone more or less underestimate in Huston was how deep in his guts he could unremarked for so long? Briefly, his neglect seems to be a feel the universal experience of pointlessness and failure. And consequence partly of the history of taste and fashion among there are other signs that Huston’s films are being critics and academics in film studies, and partly of a stylistic reassessed—notably the thirty-page essay by Richard T. finish so smooth and self-effacing that it conceals its Jameson in Film Comment (May-June, 1980). remarkable art as straightforward. Generic story-telling (if Although all of Huston’s pictures are adaptations, in such a thing exists). Huston’s art looks to us, I suspect, as which he has sought “to find the particular style or look best Shakespeare’s did to his contemporaries: like nature itself. suited to render a script into a persuasive and distinctive cinematic reality,” Jameson maintains that “we do encounter a James Agee, in his enormously influential 1950 Life magazine cohesive world-view, not only thematically, but also portrait established this understanding: “Each of Huston’s stylistically; there is a Huston look,” though one extremely pictures has a visual tone and style of its own, dictated to his difficult to define. Jameson might agree with James Agee that camera by the story’s essential content and spirit.” this “look” proceeds from Huston’s “sense of what is natural to the eye and his delicate, simple feeling for space James Naremore characterizes Huston’s method by relationships.” It is, moreover, Jameson’s “considered opinion contrasting it with Dashiell Hammett’s: “Hammett’s art is that with The Misfits Huston entered upon virtually a second minimalist and deadpan, but Huston, contrary to his career (after a few years of wandering in the contract reputation. Is a highly energetic and expressive storyteller who wilderness) that includes some of the most mature, most like to make comments through his images. Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—11

To my knowledge, at least thirty-four of Huston’s better than someone else. So I really just drifted into thirty-seven features films derive directly from novels, stories, directing…. or plays. DB: What about the writing itself? Is there anything about the screenplay form which makes it appeal to you? Huston began in the movies as a writer of screenplays.... He JH: The ideal screenplay has a kind of discipline. You has spoken of the intimate connection between writing and must make your points with a certain clarity and decisiveness directing: “There’s really no which makes the ideal difference between them, it’s an screenplay closer to poetry extension, one from the other. than to the novel. I find the Ideally I think the writer should go form itself attracts me. on and direct the picture. I think of DB: Yet poetry is such the director as an extension of the a pure form whereas film writer.” seems to be much more of a composite, so much less pure. Implicit in early works like The JH:I think of pictures as being Maltese Falcon, , quite pure when they are truly and Key Largo (’48), themes of realized. And closer, perhaps, identity continue to dominate at the to the thought processes than end of Huston’s career in Prizzi’s any other form. The ideal Honor and The Dead. picture is almost as though the reel were behind your own In a 1981 interview, Huston spoke of eyes and you were projecting his first film as “a dramatization of your own thoughts. Its only myself, how I felt about things.” when the picture falters that your thoughts stumble as a result of the picture’s faltering. from John Huston: An Open Book. Knopf, NY 1980 Something “wrong” appears on the screen and the dream is I came well to my very first directorial assignment. The broken…. Maltese Falcon was a very carefully tailored screenplay, not I don’t make drawings anymore, but there’s a logic to only scene by scene, but set-up by set-up. I made a sketch of shooting a scene. After your first shot, everything else falls each set-up. If it was to be a pan or dolly shot, I’d indicate it. I into place. And shooting on location as I do and not in the didn’t want ever to be at a loss before the actors or the camera studio, the circumstances usually tell you what the first shot is crew. I went over the sketches with Willy Wyler. He had a going to be. few suggestions to make, but on the whole, approved what he By the way, I’d like to make an observation here. saw. I also showed the sketches to my producer, Henry Very seldom does an audience realize what you’re doing with Blanke. All Blanke said was, “John, just remember that each the camera. When the camera is performing at its best, the scene as you shoot it, is the most important scene in the audience isn’t aware of it. It’s so close to the thought process picture.” That’s the best advice a young director could have. that you’re watching the scene, not the movement of the camera—no matter what kind of ballet it might be doing. from John Huston Interviews. Edited by Robert Emmet As a rule, I think of the camera as part of the scene. Long. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2001. “An It’s the camera as protagonist. You enter the scene through the Interview with John Huston” David Brandes, 1977 camera’s eyes. It has a physiological function. Like the DB: Mr. Huston, you’re a writer, you’re a director, and physiology of the cut. Try this little trick yourself. Look at you’re an actor. And you’re famous in all three areas. Which something directly in front of you. Then look at something to do you prefer? the direct right of you. You’ve made a complete right angle. JH: I don’t make a distinction between writing and But notice that in doing it you blink your eyes. In other words, directing. But to write and direct one’s own material is because you’re familiar with the whole area in between, you certainly the best approach. The directing is kind of an blank it out and go directly from point A to point B. That is a extension of the writing. So far as the acting is concerned, cut. that’s just a sort of lark—a well-paid lark, I might add—to Only when the intervening space—the relationship relieve the responsibilities of being a director. between those two objects—is important do you pan. If it isn't DB: Why would a creative person like yourself become a important, you cut…. filmmaker rather than, say, a novel writer? Making a film is like every other undertaking in life. JH: I was raised in the tradition of films—that is, like so Its success depends on whether or not you’re equipped for it. many children of my generation, we looked to the screen for And I’m not referring to learning. I don’t know that I’ve our heroes; we imitated and emulated William S. Hart; people learned a hell of a lot. I think I was probably as good a director like Hart and Chaplin were gods. The films were every bit as at the beginning as I am now. Oh I’ve probably learned a few much alive as literature, and I was always fascinated by films. small technical things. But I’m not sure my understanding has So I started out to become a writer but I wasn’t aware I wanted deepened since I was nine years old…. to become a director until after I had written for films for DV: Do you feel a film like Jaws will have the same several years. Then I decided I could do my own material appeal over time? Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—12

JH: I haven’t seen Jaws so I can’t comment on it. But Badlanders (1958), Wolf Rilla’s Cairo (1963), and Barry good films—truly good films—will endure. Granted the Pollack’s Cool Breeze (1972). The celebrated eleven-minute camera used to turn at a different speed and the acting style jewelry store robbery, with its blueprinted maneuvers, deft was one of exaggerated delivery. Today we’re closer to reality. Figures on the screen move at the same pace we do in evasions of electronic surveillance, and carefully controlled life. And the style has changed, of course. But a Chaplin film explosions, created a model that , The Killing, Seven is as good today as it was then. Thieves, and a thousand others would ever more DB: What is your opinion of the state of the art today? elaborately follow. JH: One of the ill effects of the modern set up of the Every heist movie, every tale of downbeat industry is that if a picture isn’t immediately successful, they criminals coming together in a foredoomed conspiracy won’t risk any more money publicizing it. I’ve seen a number under the guidance of a professorial mastermind, carries of fine films that the public was barely able to see. Like The Traveling Executioner with Stacy Keach, or Walkabout from echoes of Huston’s film, whose originality is perhaps now Australia. I think Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller was a harder to discern because its elements have been so widely kind of masterpiece. Midnight Cowboy was a wonderful film. appropriated. It firmed up the template for one of cinema’s Beautiful pictures—and our loss, as a result of the present most familiar dramatic arcs: the assembling of the team, economic set up. the high-precision execution of the caper, the chaotic and On the other hand, Earthquake, Towering Inferno, generally bloody aftermath. Yet even if The Asphalt etc. I haven’t seen them and I’m not drawn to them because Jungle was seen in its own day as a model of nail-biting they seem to contain a formula. What I hear about them doesn’t sufficiently attract me. I’d rather read a book. suspense, it comes across now as a most Chekhovian film noir, steeped in a mood of regret even before the action For more on Houston, see Bruce Jackson: “John begins and proceeding almost gently on its inevitable Huston,” downward course. http://sensesofcinema.com/2019/great-directors/huston- Everybody is more or less washed up from the john/ start: the nervous bookie Cobby (Marc Lawrence), with his admission that “money makes me sweat, that’s the way I am”; the -born hooligan Dix (Sterling Hayden), nursing memories of his family’s lost days of horse- breeding glory, and shrugging off the helplessly adoring Doll (Jean Hagen); the cat-loving, hunchbacked diner owner Gus (James Whitmore); the corrupt, philandering lawyer Alonzo D. Emmerich (Louis Calhern), whose bedridden wife (Dorothy Tree) is lost in probably delusory memories while his young girlfriend, Angela (Marilyn Monroe), dreams of a beach holiday in Cuba and his henchman (Brad Dexter) stores up grudges for eventual payback. The emergence from prison of the brilliant Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) with a master plan for a high- yield robbery brings these people together, but there is never any doubt about the outcome. Every fatal character trait, every incipient double cross is laid out so plainly that even the participants seem quite aware of the odds against Geoffrey O’Brien: “The Asphalt Jungle: ‘A Left-Handed them. Form of Human Endeavor’” (Criterion Notes) The film is remarkably faithful to its source, W. R. Jean-Pierre Melville once declared that, by his Burnett’s 1949 novel. Huston was generally conscientious reckoning, there were precisely nineteen possible dramatic in his literary adaptations, and he admired Burnett’s book variants on the relations between cops and crooks, and that greatly. The script retains long stretches of dialogue from all nineteen were to be found in “that masterpiece of John the novel, and some of the movie’s most indelible grace Huston” The Asphalt Jungle (1950). From Bob le notes are pure Burnett, like Gus’s violent rage at the flambeur (1956) on, Melville’s own work often pays direct trucker who mouths off about deliberately running over homage to the film he so admired, and he was certainly not cats, or Mrs. Emmerich’s pitiful plea for a game of casino alone in his emulation. The cinematic descendants of The with her distracted husband. All the main points of plot Asphalt Jungle are by now almost beyond counting, and motivation are set out explicitly and at length in the including three direct remakes: ’s The novel. Yet the film has a spare beauty that Burnett’s book Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—13 only partly suggests. Mostly this has to do with what Huston’s is always an art of characterization. Plot Huston and screenwriter Ben Maddow leave out. for him is never more than the anecdotal circumstance that For one thing, they give little time to the police. allows individuals to become fully visible. This applies as In the novel, the police chief is a central figure, but in the much to his first movie, 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, as to film, the character (played by John McIntire) seems almost his last, 1987’s The Dead. Whatever their literary origins, perfunctory. The whole apparatus of the law becomes movies as different as The Night of the Iguana, Reflections in something like an arbitrary external constraint that the a Golden Eye, The Kremlin Letter, Fat City, and Wise characters, in their various degrees and Blood are driven not by the suspense varieties of criminality, must work of their stories but by the palpable around in order to go about their presence of the people caught up, business. (As Doc dispassionately often stumblingly, in those stories. observes: “Experience has taught me Huston said once that his notion of never to trust a policeman. Just when what directing was about came from you think one’s all right, he turns observing his father, the actor Walter legit.”) The casualness with which this Huston, developing a role in parallel universe of thieves and rehearsals. The visual power of his operators is established, the absence of films comes in general not from both melodramatic portentousness and effects of architecture or landscape— sociological explanation, sets the film master though he was of such apart from most of its genre predecessors. Brilliantly effects—but from the way he watches humans making distilling a wordier passage in Burnett’s novel, the their way, or failing to make their way, through those screenplay achieves its most memorable line as the doomed surroundings. People are never silhouettes. We are aware of Emmerich remarks with philosophical resignation: “After how much space they occupy—whether it is the somewhat all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.” diminutive Sam Jaffe and Marc Lawrence or the loomingly The elliptical matter-of-factness with which the tall Sterling Hayden—and how they occupy it, how they movie brings us into situations is achieved in part by make their presence known, how they maneuver their way skipping over much of Burnett’s parsing of his characters’ among their allies and adversaries. moods and motives. The novelist ventures at length inside In an interview with the writer Patrick their minds, as in this passage (quoted here only in part) in McGilligan, Maddow suggested that much of The Asphalt which Emmerich begins to plot his betrayal: “God! He’d Jungle’s power is “due to the fact that these were New York have to compose himself. He mustn’t let these men realize actors who all knew one another and were trying to outdo how desperate he was—how willing to clutch at straws. one another—and who were stimulants to one another.” And come to think of it, what the hell had been in his (Maddow also felt that “most of Huston’s talent came in mind when he’d suggested that he act as fence?” An the choice of casting.”) Nowhere is the tension between expressive close-up of Louis Calhern’s face—a portrait of actors more acutely perceptible than in the scene in which evasion and tortured self-knowledge—obviates the need Sam Jaffe’s Doc has his first meeting with Louis Calhern’s for such leaden explanatory soliloquies. Emmerich. The false pleasantries and penetrating glances In place of verbiage, Huston gives us moments of and visible calculations of self-interest as they size each being, conveyed above all through those close-ups of faces: other up are as savage in their implications as any of the the tearful Doll awkwardly removing a false eyelash while actual violence that ensues. Doc, the master crook in need her love object, Dix, looks on with an impassivity beyond of financing, stares with polite skepticism at the indifference; Doc, just released from a seven-year stretch, moneyman offering a deal seemingly too good to be true, flipping with weary compulsion through the pinups of a while Emmerich returns the stare with an unyielding mask wall calendar; or Emmerich gazing down at his sleeping of sophisticated geniality, as if daring the other man to call girlfriend, a picture of middle-aged lust gone terminally his bluff. Later, when Emmerich’s double cross falls sour. Huston orchestrates an exciting and intricate clumsily and bloodily apart, Doc addresses him with not narrative while sustaining at every moment a meditative rage or resentment but rather baffled incredulity: “What sense of personalities in isolation. The plot moves forward ever possessed you to pull such a stunt?” Jaffe delivers the like a machine lurching out of control, but we are more line like a somewhat irascible professor responding to a aware of the undertow of each character caught up in his graduate student’s unaccountable error. or her particular trap. The Asphalt Jungle’s setting is urban, but its scenes are mostly interiors, airless rooms accessed by Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—14 way of airless corridors and stairways. The little we see of don’t run out. He stays a minute too long and gets nabbed the unnamed Midwestern city where the film takes place outside the diner. As for the wounded Dix, he manages to was filmed in , but after the opening sequence, make his way with Doll back to the horse farm his family where we follow Dix as he evades a prowl car in the early- was dispossessed of, just in time to collapse dead in the morning hours, the sense of field, an object of apparent the city here has little to do indifference to the horses with public vistas. The browsing around him. Another nocturnal comings and earthly paradise, this one with no goings and midnight need for people at all. telephone calls serve to By way of historical connect a series of footnote, it should be stated overcrowded spaces— that The Asphalt Jungle’s aura of Cobby’s bookie headquarters, loss and regret merges Dix’s and Doll’s cramped, unavoidably with the shadow of featureless walk-up the blacklist that in retrospect apartments, Gus’s hamburger looms over the picture. In short joint, the smoky police order, Sam Jaffe would be precinct where Dix is hauled smeared by zealots of the right in for a lineup—spaces alike and kept from screen work for a in their sense of temporariness and discomfort. In contrast, decade; Dorothy Tree would likewise be blacklisted; Emmerich’s homes—the official residence where he keeps Sterling Hayden and Marc Lawrence would both up the facade of his illusory prosperity, and the hideaway reluctantly name names, with Hayden nursing a lifelong reserved for Angela—offer a comforting suggestion of sense of guilt and Lawrence forced to find film work luxury straight out of a glossy magazine, a suggestion that abroad; and Ben Maddow would work without credit on a evaporates as Emmerich’s way of life falls apart as we remarkable succession of screenplays, including Johnny watch, if we had not already seen it falling apart in the Guitar, Men in War, and , until he too immeasurable tiredness in his eyes. finally gave in to the pressure to name names and was able None of these people is settled anywhere; each is to reemerge under his own byline in 1960, with another in transit to a place almost by definition unreachable, Huston collaboration, The Unforgiven. As for Huston, who whether the Mexican haven where Doc dreams of in the first days of the Hollywood anti-Communist indulging his passion for underage girls, or the beach hearings had been one of the founders of the oppositional where Angela hopes to dazzle men with her new bathing Committee for the First Amendment, he found it suit, or the Kentucky horse country where the wounded expedient in 1952 to move to Ireland, where he established Dix drives in search of the lost paradise of his childhood. citizenship. For Emmerich, the place is simply death itself, as he wistfully asks the men he has betrayed: “Why don’t you “Film noir” (Wikipedia) kill me?” Aside from some incidental brutes—the corrupt Film noir (/nwɑːr/; French: [film nwaʁ]) is a cinematic cop Ditrich (Barry Kelley) and Emmerich’s ill-fated term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime henchman—all the characters are afforded a measure of dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes compassion, even the weaseling Cobby and the fraudulent and sexual motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally Emmerich. regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film For Doc and Dix, the film devises a marvelous noir of this era is associated with a low-key, black-and- pair of parallel endings, each tracking a nearly achieved white visual style that has roots in German escape from the coils of the city. Doc makes it to the edge Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical of town, but at a roadside diner where he has stopped for stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from only a moment, he catches sight of a teenage girl (the the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the uncredited ) dancing to the jukebox. He United States during the Great Depression. gives her a pile of nickels so she can keep playing the The term film noir, French for "black film" music, and for a few moments the screen is given over to a (literal) or "dark film" (closer meaning),[1] was first applied vision of her dancing alone and obliviously, lost in her own to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, pleasure, a vision of such compelling delight that he can’t but was unrecognized by most American film industry take his eyes off her: earthly paradise, as long as the nickels professionals of that era.[2] Cinema historians and critics Huston—THE ASPHALT JUNGLE—15 defined the category retrospectively. Before the notion was abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (), or widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film simply a victim of circumstance (D.O.A.). Although film noir[a] were referred to as "melodramas". Whether film noir noir was originally associated with American productions, qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate the term has been used to describe films from around the among scholars. world. Many films released from the 1960s onward share Film noir encompasses a range of plots: the central attributes with film noirs of the classical period, and often figure may be a private investigator (The Big Sleep), treat its conventions self-referentially. Some refer to such a plainclothes policeman (The Big Heat), an aging boxer latter-day works as neo-noir. The clichés of film noir have (The Set-Up), a hapless grifter (Night and the City), a law- inspired parody since the mid-1940s.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2019 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS (SERIES 39) Sept 24 Vittorio De Sica Umberto D. 1952 Oct 1 Charles Laughton The Night of the Hunter 1955 Oct 8 Masaki Kobayashi Harakiri 1962 Oct 15 Nicholas Roeg Don’t Look Now 1973 Oct 22 Mel Brooks Blazing Saddles 1974 Oct 29 Larisa Shepitko The Ascent 1977 Nov 5 Louis Malle Au revoir les enfants 1987 Nov 12 Charles Burnett To Sleep With Anger 1990 Nov 19 Steve James, Frederick Marks & Peter Gilbert Hoop Dreams 1994 Nov 26 Alfonso Cuarón Roma 2018 Dec 3 Baz Luhrmann Moulin Rouge 2001

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