February 19, 2019 (XXXVIII:4) (1951, 105 min.)

DIRECTED BY John Huston WRITING C.S. Forester (novel); James Agee and John Huston (adapted for the screen by) PRODUCED BY MUSIC Allan Gray CINEMATOGRAPHY Jack Cardiff (director of photography) FILM EDITING Ralph Kemplen ART DIRECTION Wilfred Shingleton

Academy Awards, USA 1952 The film won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role (). It was also nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (), Best Director (John Huston), and Best Writing, Screenplay (James Agee, John Huston).

CAST Humphrey Bogart...Charlie Allnutt Katharine Hepburn...Rose Sayer may be reflected in his recurring film adaptation of literary Robert Morley ...The Brother / Rev. Samuel Sayer classics: Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1951)§, Peter Bull...Captain of Louisa Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1956),****** Ernest Theodore Bikel...First Officer Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1957, uncredited), Flannery Walter Gotell...Second Officer O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1979, as Jhon Huston),** and, his final Peter Swanwick...First Officer of Shona film, a haunting adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead (1987). Richard Marner...Second Officer of Shona He directed 47 films. These are some of his other films: (1942), (1942 Short), Across the JOHN HUSTON (b. August 5, 1906 in Nevada, Missouri—d. Pacific (1942), Report from the Aleutians (1943 Documentary),* August 28, 1987 (age 81) in Middletown, Rhode Island) won two San Pietro (1945Documentary short),***** Let There Be Light Oscars in 1949 for Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay (1946 Documentary),* Key Largo (1948),* ( for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)§. He was frequently 1948)§, Beat the Devil (1953),***** The Barbarian and the nominated for Oscars for his writing, directing, production, and, Geisha (1958), The Roots of Heaven (1958), The Unforgiven even, acting: Best Writing, Original Screenplay for Dr. Ehrlich's (1960), The Misfits (1961),**** Freud (1962),** The List of Magic Bullet (1940)* and Sergeant York (1941);* Best Writing, Adrian Messenger (1963),** The Night of the Iguana (1964),* Screenplay for The Maltese Falcon (1941),* The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966),** Casino Royale (scenes (1950),***** The African Queen (1951, with James Agee);* at Sir James Bond's house and castle in Scotland scenes) Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another (1967),** Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967),*** Medium for Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)* and for The (1969),*** A Walk with Love and Death (1969),**** The Man Who Would Be King (1975);* for Best Director for (1970),****** Fat City (1972),*** The Life and Asphalt Jungle (1950),***** The African Queen (1951),* Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972),** The MacKintosh Man Moulin Rouge (1952),***** and for Prizzi's Honor (1985); Best (1973),*** Phobia (1980), (1981), and Annie (1982).** Picture for Moulin Rouge (1952)***** and Best Actor in a He wrote for 40 films, including films he did not direct, Supporting Role for The Cardinal (1963). He was also including: Wuthering Heights (1939 contributing writer - nominated for the distinguished Palm d’Or for Under the uncredited), The Storm (1930 dialogue), Law and Order (1932 Volcano (1984) at Cannes. His frequent recognition for writing adaptation), Jezebel (1938 screen play), Juarez (1939 screen John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—2 play), High Sierra (1941 screen play), Three Strangers (1946 the Hunter (1955), made use of his screenplay. After his death, original screenplay), The Stranger (1946 uncredited), and The his novel A Death in the Family was adapted three times for Killers (1946 uncredited). He acted in 54 films, including the television with the title All the Way Home in 1963, 1971, and films noted above and, among others: The Shakedown (1929), 1981. In 2002, the same novel was adapted for television with Hell's Heroes (1929), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), The the original title. Cardinal (1963), Candy (1968), De Sade (1968), Myra Breckinridge (1970), The Devil's Backbone (1971), The Life and SAM SPIEGEL (b. November 11, 1901 in Jaroslau, Galicia, Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Battle for the Planet of the Austria-Hungary [now Jaroslaw, Podkarpackie, ]—d. Apes (1973), Chinatown (1974), The Wind and the Lion (1975), December 31, 1985 (age 84) in St. Martin, Guernsey, Channel Sherlock Holmes in (1976 TV Movie), The Rhinemann Islands, UK), an Austro-Polish-born American independent film Exchange (1977 TV Mini-Series), The Hobbit (1977 TV Movie), producer, once said “I believe in mortality, but not in inflicting it Winter Kills (1979), and Cannery Row (1982). He also produced on myself.” Spiegel worked briefly in Hollywood in 1927 15 films, including those noted above. following a stint serving with Hashomer Hatzair (a Socialist- *Wrote Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in **Acted in Galicia, Austria-Hungary) in Palestine. He then went to Berlin to §Wrote and acted in produce German and French adaptations of Universal films until ***Produced 1933 when he fled Germany. As an independent producer, ****Produced and acted in Spiegel helped produce a number of European films. In 1938, he *****Produced and wrote immigrated to Mexico and subsequently the . ******Wrote, produced, acted in Between 1935 and 1954, Spiegel billed himself as S. P. Eagle; after that he used his real name. He was the first to win the C.S. FORESTER (b. Cecil Louis Troughton Smith on 27 Academy Award for Best Picture three times, and the only one to August 1899 in Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt—d. on 2 April 1966 be the sole producer on all three winning films: On the (aged 66) in Fullerton, ) was an English novelist Waterfront (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and known for writing tales of naval warfare such as the 12-book Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He considered On the Waterfront Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer (1954) director one of his closest friends. His during the Napoleonic wars. Two of the Hornblower books, A relationship with playwright/screenwriter Harold Pinter was Ship of the Line and Flying Colours, were jointly awarded the rooted in a father-son dynamic, according to biographer Natasha James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1938. His other Fraser-Cavassoni. Spiegel was quite taken with Pinter's genius, works include The African Queen (1935; filmed in 1951 by John so much so it hurt the film adaptation of The Last Tycoon (1976), Huston). wrote Tycoon director Elia Kazan in his own autobiography, as Spiegel treated the screenplay as sacrosanct and wouldn't let Kazan change it to create more dramatic tension. He was nominated for Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and he was also honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1964. Compared to other producers of the period, his 23 production credits suggest he was selective in the projects he supported. These are the other films he produced: Wenn zwei sich streiten (1932 Short), Les requins du pétrole (1933), The Invader (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942), The Stranger (1946), We Were Strangers (1949), When I Grow Up (1951), The Prowler (1951), The African Queen (1951), Melba (1953), The Strange One (1957), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), The Chase (1966), The Night of the Generals (1967), The Happening (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), The Last Tycoon (1976), and Betrayal (1983).

JACK CARDIFF (b. September 18, 1914 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, UK—d. April 22, 2009 (age 94) in Ely, JAMES AGEE (b. November 27, 1909 in Knoxville, Cambridgeshire, England, UK) was a British , Tennessee—d. May 16, 1955 (age 45) in , New director and photographer. His career spanned the development York) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter of cinema, from , through early experiments in and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential to filmmaking more than half-a-century later, film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the amassing 85 credits as cinematographer as well as 15 directing Family (1957), won the author a posthumous 1958 Pulitzer Prize. credits. He was best known for his influential color He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay for cinematography for directors such as , The African Queen (1951). He began his work in film writing Huston and Hitchcock. He won the Oscar for Best and providing commentary for the 1948 documentary The Quiet Cinematography, Color for (1947). He was One. From 1952-1953, he wrote for the television series nominated for War and Peace (1956), Sons and Lovers (1960), Omnibus. And, the year of his early death, the film The Night of and Fanny (1961). In 2001 he was awarded an Honorary Oscar John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—3 as a “Master of light and color.” These are some of the films he Connecticut) was known for her fierce independence and spirited did cinematography for: The Last Days of Pompeii (1938), A personality. Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more Road in India (1938), The Sacred Ganges (1938), Jungle (1939), than 60 years, appearing in 53 films covering a range of genres, The Great Mr. Handel (1942), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), A from screwball comedy to literary drama. She received a record Matter of Life and Death (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), Scott of of four for Best Actress in a Leading Role for the Antarctic (1948), (1949), Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), (1950), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), The Magic The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981). She Box (1951), The African Queen (1951), The Master of Ballantrae won Best Actress at Cannes for Long Day's Journey Into Night (1953), (1954), The Brave One (1956), (1962), for which she was also nominated for another Academy The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), (1957), Award. She was nominated for Academy Awards for Best The Vikings (1958), Ride a Wild Pony (1975), Death on the Nile Actress in a Leading Role for Alice Adams (1935), The (1978), The Awakening (1980), The Dogs of War (1980), Ghost Philadelphia Story (1940), Woman of the Year (1942), The Story (1981), Scandalous (1984), (1984), African Queen (1951), Summertime (1955), The Rainmaker Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Tai-Pan (1986), Vivaldi's (1956), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). In 1999, Hepburn Four Seasons (1991), and The Other Side of the Screen (2007). was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema. These are some of the other films she appeared in: A Bill of Divorcement (1932); Christopher Strong and Little Women in 1933; The Little Minister (1934), Break of Hearts (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), (1937), Bringing Up Baby and Holiday (1938); Keeper of the Flame and Stage Door Canteen in 1943; Song of Love (1947), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), (1955); The Iron Petticoat (1956); Desk Set (1957), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), The Glass Menagerie (1973, TV Movie), Rooster Cogburn (1975), The Man Upstairs (1992, TV Movie), and The Roots of Roe (1993, TV Movie); This Can't Be Love (TV Movie), Love Affair, and One Christmas (TV Movie) in 1994.

ROBERT MORLEY (b. May 26, 1908 in Semley, Wiltshire, HUMPHREY BOGART (b. December 25, 1899 in New York England, UK—d. June 3, 1992 (age 84) in Wargrave, Berkshire, City, New York—d. January 14, 1957 (age 57) in , England, UK) was an English actor who was usually cast as a California) was an American film and stage actor. His pompous English gentleman suggesting establishment figures, performances in numerous films from the Classical Hollywood often in supporting roles. In his autobiography, Responsible era made him a cultural icon. He won the Oscar for Best Actor in Gentleman, Morley said his stage career started with a Leading Role for The African Queen (1951). He was nominated managements valuing his appearance for playing "substantial for Oscars for Casablanca (1942) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). gentleman" roles — as a doctor, lawyer, accountant or other In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him as the greatest professional member of society. He was nominated for an Oscar male star of American cinema. He acted in 84 films, including: for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Marie Antoinette (1938). Up the River (1930), Body and Soul (1931), The Bad Sister Some of his other 113 acting credits include: Scrooge (1935), (1931), A Holy Terror (1931), Love Affair (1932), Two Against Major Barbara (1941), The Big Blockade (1942), The Foreman the World (1936), The Petrified Forest (1936), Bullets or Ballots Went to France (1942), Hour of Glory (1949), Edward, My Son (1936), Isle of Fury (1936), San Quentin (1937), Kid Galahad (1949), Outcast of the Islands (1951), The African Queen (1951), (1937), Crime School (1938), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse Curtain Up (1952), Gilbert and Sullivan (1953), Beat the Devil (1938), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), King of the Underworld (1953), Beau Brummell (1954), Loser Takes All (1956), Around (1939), Dark Victory (1939), The Roaring Twenties (1939), the World in 80 Days (1956), Law and Disorder (1958), The Virginia City (1940), They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra Doctor's Dilemma (1958), The Battle of the Sexes (1960), Oscar (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), (1942), Wilde (1960), The Road to Hong Kong (1962), Take Her, She's Action in the North Atlantic (1943), Sahara (1943), Passage to Mine (1963), Of Human Bondage (1964), Topkapi (1964), Marseille (1944), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep Genghis Khan (1965), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying (1946), Dark Passage (1947), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 (1948), Key Largo (1948), Knock on Any Door (1949), Tokyo minutes (1965), The Loved One (1965), Life at the Top (1965), Joe (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), Sirocco (1951), Deadline - The Alphabet Murders (1965), Hotel Paradiso (1966), Woman U.S.A. (1952), Beat the Devil (1953), Sabrina (1954), The Times Seven (1967), Cromwell (1970), Song of Norway (1970), Barefoot Contessa (1954), We're No Angels (1955), The Left Theater of Blood (1973), The Blue Bird (1976), The Great Hand of God (1955), The Desperate Hours (1955), and The Muppet Caper (1981), High Road to China (1983), Alice in Harder They Fall (1956). Wonderland (1985 TV Movie), Little Dorrit (1987), War and Remembrance (1988 TV Mini-Series), and Istanbul (1989). He KATHARINE HEPBURN (b. May 12, 1907, Hartford, also earned 16 writing credits. Connecticut—d. June 29, 2003 (age 96) in Old Saybrook, John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—4

THEODORE BIKEL (b. May 2, 1924 in , Austria—d. a small-time actor whose itinerant troupe had just gone bust in July 21, 2015 (age 91) in Los Angeles, California) was an Arizona; John Gore therefore installed him as head of Nevada’s Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, public utilities. Totally without engineering training, he proved unionist and political activist. He appeared in films including The spectacularly unsuited for this post, and when a fire broke out he African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), mishandled a valve, cutting off the water supply. Half of Nevada (1957), I Want to Live! (1958), My Fair Lady (1964) and The burned to the ground, and Walter, with his wife and infant son Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966). For his John, went back on the road. portrayal of Sheriff Max Muller in (1958), he Huston’s parents’ marriage—contracted at the St. Louis was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting World’s Fair was never a great success, and in 1909 they Actor. He made his stage debut in the Milkman in Tel separated, divorcing four years later. Huston spent his boyhood Aviv, , when he was in his teens. He later studied acting at shuttling between them, spending most of the time with his Britain's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his London mother, who became a journalist under her own name of Rhea stage debut in 1948 and in New York in 1955. He was also a Gore. With her he traveled the Midwest, picking up her taste for widely recognized and recorded folk singer and guitarist. In literature, horses, plush hotels, and gambling. He remained 1959, he co-founded the and created the somewhat in awe of her, though, feeling that she despised him as role of Captain von Trapp opposite as Maria in the a romantic fantasist. “Nothing I ever did pleased my mother,” he original Broadway production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The later remarked. Sound of Music. In 1969, Bikel began acting and singing on stage He was far more at ease with his father, who when not as Tevye in the musical , a role he performed acting in New York would take him on the vaudeville circuit, more often than any other actor to date. Throughout his career, staying in hotels that were anything but plush. Huston thoroughly he garnered 156 acting credits in film and television. These are relished the contrast, and was enthralled by the theatrical low-life some of his appearances: Island Rescue (1951), A Day to he encountered. But at twelve he was found to be suffering from Remember (1953), Forbidden Cargo (1954), Meeting Bright’s disease and an “enlarged heart.” The boy was placed in (1954), Betrayed (1954), The Colditz Story (1955), Escape from a sanatorium in Phoenix, Arizona, and told he must henceforth the Iron Curtain (1956), The Pride and the Passion (1957), The live as a cautious invalid. Rebelling, he took up secret midnight Twilight Zone (1962 TV Series), (1965 TV Series), swimming in a nearby river. After some months, this pastime Sands of the Kalahari (1965), The Diary of Anne Frank (1967 was discovered, and it was decided that he must have made a TV Movie), Victory at Entebbe (1976 TV Movie), Charlie's fortunate recovery. Angels (1977 TV Series), The Amazing Spider-Man (1978 TV His mother, who had remarried, moved to Los Angeles, Series), The Paper Chase (1986 TV Series), Beauty and the where Huston attended Lincoln High School. As if making up for Beast (1988 TV Series), The Equalizer (1988 TV Series), Dark list time, he plunged into a multitude of interests: abstract Tower (1989), Benefit of the Doubt (1993), Murder, She Wrote painting, ballet, English and French literature, opera, horseback (1987-1994 TV Series), Crime and Punishment (2002), and The riding, and boxing. At fifteen he dropped out of high school, Little Traitor (2007). becoming one of the state’s top-ranking amateur lightweights (with a permanently flattened nose) while studying at the Art Students League in Los Angeles. He was also “infatuated” with the cinema, though as yet only as a spectator. “ was a god, and William S. Hart. I remember the enormous impact the UFA films had on me, those of Emil Jannings and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I saw this many times.” Walter Huston had moved over from vaudeville to the legitimate theatre, and in 1924 achieved fame on Broadway with the lead in O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms. Watching his father’s rehearsals, Huston was deeply impressed by O’Neill’s work and fascinated by the mechanism of acting: “What I learned there, during those weeks of rehearsal, would serve me for the rest of my life.” He himself acted briefly with the Provincetown Players in 1924. The following year, recovering from a mastoid operation, he took a long vacation in Mexico, where among other adventures he rode as an honorary member of the Mexican cavalry. On his return, Huston married a friend from high school, “John Huston”: from World Film Directors, Vol I. Edited by Dorothy Harvey. The marriage lasted barely a year. John Wakeman. H. W. Wilson Co., NY, 1987, entry by Philip He had begun to write short stories, one of which was Kemp published by H.L. Mencken in the American Mercury. Further pieces, clearly influence by Hemingway, appeared in Esquire, John (Marcellus) Huston, American director, scenarist, actor, and , and other journals He also wrote Frankie producer, was born in the town of Nevada, Missouri, where the and Johnny, “ a puppet play with music (the music being by Sam Water and Power Company—or, according to some accounts, the Jaffe). This was produced in Greenwich Village by Ruth Squires entire town—had been won by his maternal grandfather, John and published in book form. Through his mother, Huston was Gore, in a poker game. Huston’s father, Walter, was at that time given a job on the New York Graphic. “I had no talent as a John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—5 journalist whatever and I was fired oftener than any reporter ever has since been claimed as the best detective melodrama ever has been within such a limited time. There was a kind-hearted made. “It is hard to say,” wrote Harold Barnes in the Herald city editor who kept hiring me back.” When even that man’s Tribune, “whether Huston the adapter or Huston the fledgling patience ran out, Huston headed for Hollywood, where his father director, is more responsible for this triumph.” Already, in his had moved with the coming of talkies. directorial debut, many of Huston’s characteristic preoccupations Huston was hired as a scenarist by Goldwyn Studios, appear. The plot is a web of deceptive appearances; characters spent six months there with no assignments, and then moved to and even objects (including the coveted falcon itself) are his father’s studio, Universal, where he collaborated on four duplicitous and untrustworthy, and the hero himself is not what scripts, two of them for films starring his father: A House he seems. Spade, outwardly a cynical opportunist, proves to be Divided and Law and Order. His colleagues had no doubt of his driven by a scrupulous personal code. “When a man’s partner is talent, but one of them described him at this time as “just a killed,” he says, turning the woman he wants over to justice, drunken boy, hopelessly immature.” After a lethal automobile “he’s supposed to do something about it.” accident in which he was the driver, he “wanted nothing so much …A few days before shooting was complete on Across as to get away” and left Universal for a job at Gaumont-British in the Pacific, Huston received his army induction London. Unhappy there, he quit again and lived rough for a papers….Appositely, his first assignment as a documentary while, before bumming his way to Paris and eventually back to filmmaker for the Signal Corps was across the Pacific—in the New York. After a brief stint as a Aleutian islands off Alaska. journalist there and a few months The resulting film, Report with the WPA Theatre in Chicago, From the Aleutians (1943) he returned to Hollywood in 1937 was described in the New and went to work as a writer for York Times as “one of the Warner Brothers. war’s outstanding records of Newly married to Leslie what our men are doing. It is Black, Huston now seemed ready furthermore an honest to settle to a serious career as a record.” Promoted to captain, screenwriter. His first credit was Huston was sent to Italy to for ’s Jezebel make The Battle of San (1937); this was followed by The Pietro (1944) regarded as Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), one of the finest combat and two of Warner’s prestigious documentaries ever filmed. biopics, Juarez (1939) and Dr. “No I have seen,” Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940). Dr. Ehrlich won Huston an wrote James Agee in The Nation, “has been quite so attentive to Academy Award nomination, as did his next script, for Howard the heaviness of casualties, and to the number of yards gained or Hawks’ Sergeant York (1941). He was now successful enough to lost, in such an action.”…Huston’s ironic realism disconcerted persuade the studio that, if his next script was a hit, he should be the War Department. One general accused him of having made allowed a chance to direct. “They indulged me rather. They liked “a film against war,” eliciting the response: “Well, sir, when I my work as a writer and they wanted to keep me on. If I wanted make a picture that’s for war—why I hope you take me out and to direct, why, they’d give me a shot at it, and if it didn’t come shoot me.” Despite this, he was promoted to major and awarded off all that well, they wouldn’t be too disappointed as it was to be the Legion of Merit. a very small picture.” His last film for the army was Let There Be Light Huston’s next script was for High Sierra (1941). (1945), on the rehabilitation of soldiers suffering from combat Directed by Raoul Walsh, it gave Humphrey Bogart, as a neuroses. The overtly optimistic message was constantly gunman on the run, his breakthrough to stardom, and provided undercut by the compassionate objectivity of the filming, which Huston with the hit he wanted. Warners kept their word and for Huston was “practically a religious experience.” The War offered him his choice of subject. He chose Dashiell Hammett’s Department shelved the picture, but it was finally given general thriller, The Maltese Falcon, which had already been adapted release in 1980. Noting “its voice-over narration [provided by twice by Warners, both times badly. Wisely, Huston stuck Walter Huston], its use of wipes and dissolves, and its full- closely to the original, taking over much of Hammett’s dialogue orchestra soundtrack music,” Vincent Canby called it “an unchanged, and filming with a clean, uncluttered style that amazingly elegant movie.” provided a cinematic equivalent to the novel’s fast, laconic Discharged from the Army in 1945, Huston returned to narrative. He also benefited from a superb cast. George Raft was Hollywood, where he was divorced from his second wife. After a offered the role of the private eye Sam Spade but turned it down brief, spectacular affair with Olivia de Havilland, he married the (as he had previously with the lead in High Sierra). Bogart, who actress Evelyn Keyes in 1946…. liked Huston, was happy to take over, supported by , At this period Huston had a reputation—which he did Peter Lorre, (in his first film role), Elisha little to discourage—as one of the wild men of Hollywood. Cook, Jr. and—in a walk-on part “for luck”—Walter Huston. Along with such friends as Bogart and William Wyler, he The Maltese Falcon (1941) was made on a small, B- indulged in frequent and well-publicized bouts of drinking, picture budget, and put out by Warners with minimal publicity. gambling, and general horseplay. …Jack Warner, though They were taken aback by the enthusiastic response of public and autocratic, was ready to tolerate a lot in return for talent and box- critics. The latter immediately hailed the film as a classic, and it office success. He even let himself be persuaded—though with John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—6 considerable misgivings—to allow Huston to shoot his next film subsequent ill-chance or internal dissension. Huston was almost entirely on location, and in Mexico. At the time, this was breaking new ground in presenting crime as an occupation like a radical move. any other, “a left-handed form of human endeavor” carried out The results justified it. The Treasure of the Sierra by ordinary people motivated not by the megalomanic will to Madre (1948) is generally agreed to be one of Huston’s finest power of the 1930s movie gangsters, but simply by the desire to films. …Treasure has often been cited as the archetypal Huston feed their families or realize some small private ambition….That movie, though the director himself denies the presence of any same year, 1950, Huston was amicably divorced from Evelyn authorial unity in his films.” I fail to see any continuity in my Keyes; one day later he married Enrica Soma. In August, while work from picture to picture—what’s remarkable is how Asphalt Jungle was still filming, his father died of a heart attack. different the pictures are, one from another. In fact, though Huston’s second picture for MGM was…The Red Badge of Huston’s cinematic style varies according to the nature of his Courage (1951), taken from Stephen Crane’s novel of the Civil subject matter, clear thematic preoccupations can be seen to recur War….Huston left for Africa to make a film for Sam Spiegel, his throughout his work. The classic “Huston movie” concerns a partner in Horizon Films. quest, often a parody of one of The script of The African society’s sanctioned forms of Queen (1951) was taken from endeavor—the pursuit of wealth, C.S. Forester’s novel and power, religious knowledge, written by Huston in imperial sovereignty—which is collaboration with his greatest destined, after initial success, to critical supporter, James end in failure and futility. (This Agee….Filming, on location kind of denouement became in the Congo and Uganda, known in the trade as “the Huston took place under appalling ending.”)… conditions: not only extreme The art, technique, and heat and humidity, but moral implications of The dysentery, malaria, Treasure of the Sierra Madre (as mosquitoes, crocodiles and of The Maltese Falcon) have since safari ants beset actors and been discussed in great detail by crew. Everybody became ill many critics. …Warners were less except Bogart, circumspect over Huston’s next film, his fourth with Bogart. Key (who came to keep Bogart company) and Huston, who all Largo (1948) was adapted from a prewar play by Maxwell ascribed their immunity to copious quantities of Scotch….The Anderson, originally written in blank verse. Huston and his co- film was a huge popular success, and won Bogart the only Oscar scriptwriter , junked the verse and updated the of his career. plot….To Huston’s annoyance, the studio cut several scenes Through some financial sleight-of-hand, little of the from the final release. Not long before this, Huston had been profits from The African Queen ever reached Huston, who refused permission, under the terms of his contract, to direct a consequently pulled out of Horizon Films. For his next three play by his idol Eugene O’Neill for the Broadway stage, Angered films he acted as his own producer….Meanwhile, disgusted by by these incidents, Huston left Warners when his contract the HUAC “witch-hunt” and the “moral rot” it had induced in the expired. entertainment industry, Huston had moved to Ireland. He had Together with Sam Spiegel and Jules Buck, Huston bought a house in Galway, St. Clerans, and moved there in 1952 founded Horizon Films. The new company’s first feature was a with his wife Enrica and their children Anthony and Angelica. courageous failure. Huston had been among the strongest Twelve years later he took Irish citizenship…. opponents of HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist, and when After two financially unsuccessful pictures [Beat the John Garfield came under pressure, Huston offered him the lead Devil and Moby Dick]…deep in debt…he accepted a three- on We Were Strangers (1949) as a deliberate gesture of picture contract with 20th Century-Fox…Heaven Knows, Mr defiance—the more so since the prophetic plot concerned a Allison (1957), teaming Robert Mitchum and as a revolution in Cuba against a corrupt dictatorship. It was attacked marine and a nun stranded on a Japanese-held island during on release by both left and right. It was also a box-office disaster, World War II, struck many reviewers as an attempt to repeat The and Huston admitted that “it didn’t turn out to be a very good African Queen. Huston coscripted, and enjoyed working with picture.” Needing funds, he signed a short-term contract with Mitchum, whom he considers “one of the really fine actors of my MGM. time.” Having refused Quo Vadis—despite an amazing episode …A retrospective atmosphere of doom hangs over the when Louis B. Mayer (according to Huston) “crawled across the Misfits (1961). Clark Gable died shortly after shooting was floor and took my hands and kissed them” in order to persuade finished. never completed another film. him to reconsider—Huston took on a far more congenial subject Montgomery Clift and Thelma Ritter were dead within a few in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Based on a novel by W.R. Burnett years. While the film was being made, the marriage between (author of Little Caesar and High Sierra), this was the progenitor Monroe and Arthur Miller (who had written the script) broke up, of a long cycle of “caper movies,” in which a crime (here a virtually on set. The story, about down-and-out modern cowboys million-dollar jewel theft) is successfully carried out by who round up wild horses to be made into dog food, carries sympathetically depicted criminals, only to fail through strong allegorical overtones as a metaphor for the trashing of the John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—7

American dream of innocence and freedom, the closing of the described it as “one of those late films by old masters that look frontier. Despite problems with Monroe, who by this stage in her effortless because they are effortless.”… career was in a desperate condition, Huston was pleased with the finished picture. “I had obtained the qualities I wanted.” Critical Huston had long cherished an ambition to film Kipling’s and public reception was lukewarm, but the film’s reputation has story The Man Who Would Be King. Originally he planned it grown steadily ever since. with Gable and Bogart; then with Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton. It finally reached the screen with and Huston had conceived the idea of making a film about Freud in the leading roles as the two British soldiers while working on Let There Be Light. He now invited Jean-Paul who set up a private kingdom in the wild mountains of Sartre to prepare a script. Sartre did so—four hundred pages of it. Afghanistan. For once, delay proved beneficial. As Huston Huston tactfully suggested that cuts might be necessary, and he remarked, his modern actors brought “a reality to it that the old and Sartre went over the script together. Sartre returned to Paris, stars could not do. Today they would seem synthetic, so in a way and in due course submitted his revised script—of six hundred I’m glad I didn’t make the picture with them.” Certainly it would pages. With the help of Charles Kaufman, who had coscripted be hard to imagine the film done better. There is a sweep and Let There Be Light, the scenario was pruned to a manageable grandeur, a legendary resonance to the narrative for which the hundred and fifty pages, although Sartre disowned it. misused term “epic” is for once wholly appropriate.…For the Freud: The Secret Passion (1962) is not a conventional first time in a decade, Huston achieved success at the box office biopic, but rather an intellectual as well as with the critics, and detective story, in which Freud is he and Gladys Hill were shown tracking down, in himself nominated for an Academy as much as in others, the Award for their screenplay. psychosexual source of the guilt After The Man Who Would Be which torments them….By way King, Huston underwent heart of relaxation, Huston turned to a surgery and as a result spoof murder mystery, The List produced no feature films for of Adrian Messenger (1963), in four years. Any speculation, which the villain, played by Kirk though, that his career as a Douglas, appears in numerous director might be over was elaborate disguises. As an answered by Wise Blood additional gimmick, the film (1979). … features various guest stars, also An unmixed success was heavily disguised. Response was Prizzi’s Honor (1985), based mainly puzzled…. on the book by Richard “The Huston ending” wherein all human activities Condon, starring Jack Nicholson, Katherine Turner, William culminate in ironic futility and disaster was notably absent from Hickey and Huston’s daughter Anjelica (who won an Oscar for The Night of the Iguana (1964). Huston and his co-scriptwriter, best supporting actress), and featuring a witty opera-spouting Anthony Veiller, took a characteristically overheated and doom- score by . Huston’s gift for eliciting definitive laden play by and transformed it into a performances from his actors and his delight in labyrinthine plots melodramatic farce with a happy ending. Amazingly, Williams were evident in this dark satire on the Mafia, American business, went along with their changes and even helped with the script…. family honor, and romantic love. Nicolson, as Charley Partanna, While Iguana was doing well at the box office, Huston a faithful enforcer for the Prizzi family, falls in love with a was visited in Ireland by Dino de Laurentiis, who planned to film glamorous mystery woman (Turner), who turns out to be a The Bible. He envisaged a multiplicity of episodes, each with its professional killer as well. After a convoluted series of double- own eminent director. Eventually, the producer modestly limited crosses and unexpected revelations, Charley is forced to make himself to half the Book of Genesis, with Huston as sole director. the ultimate choice between personal happiness and family Huston also played Noah and the voice of God….The film obligation. The film, wrote Vincent Canby, “does to The finally cost eighteen million—by far the most expensive of Godfather what Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews did to Samuel Huston’s career—and received atrocious notices…. Richardson’s Pamela. It locates the deliriously comic center within all sentimentality.” Many critics thought it a perfect In Fat City (1972) Huston drew on the boxing world of Huston vehicle and the director’s most fully realized film since his youth. Unlike most fight movies, though, the film offered its The Man who Would be King. After this success, Huston set to characters no moment of glory in the big time; these were the work on an adaptation of James Joyce’s story” The Dead,” which small-time losers on the lower fringes of the sport, failures and he completed shortly before his death. derelicts never more than a step away from defeat. Filmed in Robin Wood wrote of Huston in Richard Roud’s muted, smoky tones in the bars, tenements, and pool-halls of Cinema that “the problem lies in tracing any significant unifying dead-end Stockton, California, Fat City offers the clearest or developing pattern through his career as a whole….This is but statement of Huston’s fascination with defeat, and the small one of several signs—though a crucial one—that Huston is not a vestiges of dignity that can be salvaged from it. As a washed-up major artist, though he has at different stages of his career been fighter, Stacy Keach gave the performance of a lifetime. Critics mistaken for one.” This is the view that has dominated serious hailed the film as a return to form, and John Russell Taylor discussion of Huston’s work since the rise of auteurist criticism John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—8 in the 1960s. But Andrew Sarris, once one of the director’s most dismissive critics, wrote in 1980 that “what I have always tended James Agee, in his enormously influential 1950 Life to underestimate in Huston was how deep in his guts he could magazine portrait established this understanding: “Each of feel the universal experience of Huston’s pictures has a visual pointlessness and failure. And tone and style of its own, there are other signs that Huston’s dictated to his camera by the films are being reassessed— story’s essential content and notably the thirty-page essay by spirit.” Richard T. Jameson in Film Comment (May-June, 1980). James Naremore Although all of Huston’s characterizes Huston’s pictures are adaptations, in which method by contrasting it with he has sought “to find the Dashiell Hammett’s: particular style or look best suited “Hammett’s art is minimalist to render a script into a persuasive and deadpan, but Huston, and distinctive cinematic reality,” contrary to his reputation. Is a Jameson maintains that “we do highly energetic and encounter a cohesive world-view, expressive storyteller who like not only thematically, but also to make comments through stylistically; there is a Huston his images. look,” though one extremely To my knowledge, at least difficult to define. Jameson might agree with James Agee that thirty-four of Huston’s thirty-seven features films derive directly this “look” proceeds from Huston’s “sense of what is natural to from novels, stories, or plays. the eye and his delicate, simple feeling for space relationships.” It is, moreover, Jameson’s “considered opinion that with The Huston began in the movies as a writer of screenplays.... Misfits Huston entered upon virtually a second career (after a few He has spoken of the intimate connection between writing and years of wandering in the contract wilderness) that includes some directing: “There’s really no difference between them, it’s an of the most mature, most personal, and most provocative films, extension, one from the other. Ideally I think the writer should go not only of his oeuvre but also of the Sixties and Seventies at on and direct the picture. I think of the director as an extension of large.” the writer.” In his last years, Huston pursued a parallel career as a film actor. In 1963 he was invited by Otto Preminger to portray a Implicit in early works like The Maltese Falcon, In This Boston prelate in The Cardinal and virtually stole the picture. Our Life, and Key Largo (’48), themes of identity continue to Then, besides taking key roles in several of his own films, he dominate at the end of Huston’s career in Prizzi’s Honor and The appeared in a wide variety of works directed by others: most Dead. notably as the sinister patriarch Noah Cross in Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), and as Teddy Roosevelt’s adviser In a 1981 interview, Huston spoke of his first film as “a in Milius’s The Wind and the Lion (1975). Huston evidently dramatization of myself, how I felt about things.” enjoyed acting and invariably denied that he took it at all from John Huston: An Open Book. Knopf, NY 1980 seriously. “It’s a cinch,” he maintained, “and they pay you damn I came well to my very first directorial assignment. The Maltese near as much as you make directing.” Falcon was a very carefully tailored screenplay, not only scene Suffering from emphysema, Huston spent some time in by scene, but set-up by set-up. I made a sketch of each set-up. If hospitals at the end of his life. When in Mexico, he lived at his it was to be a pan or dolly shot, I’d indicate it. I didn’t want ever home in Las Calletas, near Puerta Vallarta, in a clearing between to be at a loss before the actors or the camera crew. I went over the jungle and the Pacific Ocean, accessible only by boat, the sketches with Willy Wyler. He had a few suggestions to together with various friends and a wide variety of animals. make, but on the whole, approved what he saw. I also showed the Living by the sea, he said, quoting an Irish saying, “lends sketches to my producer, Henry Blanke. All Blanke said was, tranquility to the soul. I’m content to have arrived at this moment “John, just remember that each scene as you shoot it, is the most in eternity, but for the life of me I don’t know how I got here.” important scene in the picture.” That’s the best advice a young director could have. from John Huston’s Filmmaking. Lesley Brill. Cambridge U Press NY 1997 from John Huston Interviews. Edited by Robert Emmet Long. Why has Huston’s artistic personality gone more or less University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2001. “An Interview unremarked for so long? Briefly, his neglect seems to be a with John Huston” David Brandes, 1977 consequence partly of the history of taste and fashion among DB: Mr. Huston, you’re a writer, you’re a director, and critics and academics in film studies, and partly of a stylistic you’re an actor. And you’re famous in all three areas. Which do finish so smooth and self-effacing that it conceals its remarkable you prefer? art as straightforward. Generic story-telling (if such a thing exists). Huston’s art looks to us, I suspect, as Shakespeare’s did to his contemporaries: like nature itself. John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—9

JH: I don’t make a distinction between writing and Only when the intervening space—the relationship directing. But to write and direct one’s own material is certainly between those two objects—is important do you pan. If it isn't the best approach. The directing is kind of an extension of the important, you cut…. writing. So far as the acting is Making a film is like every concerned, that’s just a sort of lark— other undertaking in life. Its a well-paid lark, I might add—to success depends on whether or relieve the responsibilities of being a not you’re equipped for it. And director. I’m not referring to learning. I DB: Why would a creative don’t know that I’ve learned a person like yourself become a hell of a lot. I think I was filmmaker rather than, say, a novel probably as good a director at the writer? beginning as I am now. Oh I’ve JH: I was raised in the tradition probably learned a few small of films—that is, like so many technical things. But I’m not sure children of my generation, we my understanding has deepened looked to the screen for our heroes; since I was nine years old…. we imitated and emulated William S. DV: Do you feel a film like Jaws Hart; people like Hart and Chaplin will have the same appeal over were gods. The films were every bit time? as much alive as literature, and I was JH: I haven’t seen Jaws so I can’t always fascinated by films. So I started out to become a writer comment on it. But good films—truly good films—will endure. but I wasn’t aware I wanted to become a director until after I had Granted the camera used to turn at a different speed and the written for films for several years. Then I decided I could do my acting style was one of exaggerated delivery. Today we’re closer own material better than someone else. So I really just drifted to reality. Figures on the screen move at the same pace we do in into directing…. life. And the style has changed, of course. But a Chaplin film is DB: What about the writing itself? Is there anything about as good today as it was then. the screenplay form which makes it appeal to you? DB: What is your opinion of the state of the art today? JH: The ideal screenplay has a kind of discipline. You must JH: One of the ill effects of the modern set up of the make your points with a certain clarity and decisiveness which industry is that if a picture isn’t immediately successful, they makes the ideal screenplay closer to poetry than to the novel. I won’t risk any more money publicizing it. I’ve seen a number of find the form itself attracts me. fine films that the public was barely able to see. Like The DB: Yet poetry is such a pure form whereas film seems to be Traveling Executioner with Stacy Keach, or Walkabout from much more of a composite, so much less pure. Australia. I think Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller was a kind JH: I think of pictures as being quite pure when they are of masterpiece. Midnight Cowboy was a wonderful film. truly realized. And closer, perhaps, to the thought processes than Beautiful pictures—and our loss, as a result of the present any other form. The ideal picture is almost as though the reel economic set up. were behind your own eyes and you were projecting your own On the other hand, Earthquake, Towering Inferno, etc. I thoughts. Its only when the picture falters that your thoughts haven’t seen them and I’m not drawn to them because they seem stumble as a result of the picture’s faltering. Something “wrong” to contain a formula. What I hear about them doesn’t sufficiently appears on the screen and the dream is broken…. attract me. I’d rather read a book. I don’t make drawings anymore, but there’s a logic to shooting a scene. After your first shot, everything else falls into Peter S. Greenberg: “Saints and Stinkers”: The Rolling Stone place. And shooting on location as I do and not in the studio, the Interview, 1981 circumstances usually tell you what the first shot is going to be. By the way, I’d like to make an observation here. Very “At first I didn’t know what was going on with the man,” says seldom does an audience realize what you’re doing with the Caine, who last worked with Huston on The Man Who Would Be camera. When the camera is performing at its best, the audience King. We were on location in , and I’d do a scene with isn’t aware of it. It’s so close to the thought process that you’re Sean [Connery], and we’d finish it and John would say ‘cut,’ and watching the scene, not the movement of the camera—no matter then we’d do the next scene on the first take as well. I never what kind of ballet it might be doing. thought the movie would work. And then I saw the movie. It was As a rule, I think of the camera as part of the scene. It’s wonderful. Most directors today don’t know what they want-so the camera as protagonist. You enter the scene through the they shoot everything they can think of. They use the camera like camera’s eyes. It has a physiological function. Like the a machine gun. John uses it like a sniper.”… physiology of the cut. Try this little trick yourself. Look at something directly in front of you. Then look at something to the Almost every movie you make is filmed on location. Any movies direct right of you. You’ve made a complete right angle. But you would rather have done on a back lot? notice that in doing it you blink your eyes. In other words, Heavens, no. If I have a trademark at all, it’s that I prefer to make because you’re familiar with the whole area in between, you my movies where they happen. I was on one of the first location blank it out and go directly from point A to point B. That is a cut. pictures, Treasure of the Sierra Madre. And African Queen would have been very difficult to do on the back lot of some John Huston: THE AFRICAN QUEEN—10 studio. The point is that in a sense it’s easier to just do it than to about it, some unbelievable things, but I thought it was a poor fabricate it. picture. It didn’t know what to do with itself. Was Moby Dick the most wretched location experience you’ve There is no plot to . It's an ever had? atmosphere, and it’s a wonderful evocation, but it isn’t a story No, it was in Africa making The Roots of Heaven. That was the with a beginning, a middle, and an end. most physically difficult. Temperatures were quite unbelievable. And there were absurdities in the film. I mean, why do One didn’t eat, myself included. But Moby Dick was difficult. It they all go up the river in a boat, when they can take a helicopter was the worst winter in maritime history. Three of our lifeboats and go up the river? And so on. The nonsense of that American capsized. We just had one storm after another, wretched storms. placement of light and so on and the bombing area….And Certainly once we were on our way to the bottom. And showing a bridge all lit up at night. It's absurd. Coppola took three times I thought were. We had started out with three refuge. He escaped into the metaphysical at the finish. And,, you mechanical whales, and we lost two of them. And I knew that if know, shithouse writers have been doing that since time we lost the third one, we were shit out of luck. This was our last immemorial. hope. So I just got in the whale, and I stayed there. I knew they’d The problem is that the concept of story can very easily have to rescue it if I was in it. If that whale had gone, the picture be misunderstood. I mean, a story is not necessarily something would have died. Every day we would go out to sea. That didn’t that’s as wooden as a first, second, and third act, or that comes take long, but as soon as we got out, the storms would just out with a moral and a message or something that’s all surround us—longboats would be separated, and everything underscored and in italics and capitalized. would become disordered and chaotic. That’s not what I mean. Peer Gynt has a dramatic I guess by today’s standards, if you were that far behind, they structure. And even Tennessee Williams has a dramatic structure. might have stopped the picture. When we were doing African Queen—and we were just about to By today’s standards, it’s nothing to be a few weeks behind. film it—I discovered myself without a story. That’s why I say I Think of . I thought there were wonderful things can put myself in Coppola’s boat. Luckily I found the ending well before starting the cameras.

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2019 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS (SERIES 38)

Feb 26 Jean-Luc Godard Breathless 1960 Mar 5 Luis Buñuel The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 1972 Mar 12 Dr. Zhivago 1965 Mar 26 Arturo Ripstein Time to Die 1966 Apr 2 Blow-Up 1966 Apr 9 The Deer Hunter 1978 Apr 16 Terry Jones Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life 1983 Apr 23 Eyes Wide Shut 1999 Apr 30 Monrovia, Indiana 2018 May 7 Alfonso Cuarón Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.