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John Huston

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Statue of John Huston, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906August 28, 1987) was an American film director and actor.

He was born in Nevada, Missouri, the son of the Canadian-born actor Walter Huston. He began his film career as a screenwriter and made films mainly from proven books or plays. He acted in a number of films, with distinction in Otto Preminger's The Cardinal and in Roman Polanski's Chinatown.

In 1941, Huston was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for The Maltese Falcon and again in 1948 for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He was also an accomplished painter who created the 1982 label for Château Mouton Rothschild, the French winery with whose chatelaine, Pauline de Rothschild, he reportedly had a brief affair in the 1940s.

Huston was married to (1) Dorothy Harvey, (2) Lesley Black, (3) Evelyn Keyes, (4) Enrica Soma, and (5) Celeste Shane. All but the marriage to Soma, who died, ended in divorce. Among his children is the director Danny Huston and actress Anjelica Huston. In addition to Rothschild, his lovers included the actress Nora Eddington and Susan Tyrrell and socialite Marietta Peabody Tree.

John Huston has the unique distinction of directing both his father Walter and his daughter Anjelica in Oscar-winning performances (in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Prizzi's Honor, respectively).

Although diagnosed with emphysema in 1978, Huston continued to smoke cigarettes until the end of his life. He died on August 28, 1987 following a severe attack of the lung disease and pneumonia, at the age of 81. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

Filmography