John Huston

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

John Huston0:08

I was born in the in the Middle West in uh uh Missouri, a little town.

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Tiny little town called Nevada.

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And um and then I went to St. Louis and and my family was a wandering

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um, family. I went to Texas and Saint Louis and Indianapolis and Cincinnati and Saint Louis again. And uh I can't tell you when the first when it was the first time I heard the Saint Louis Blues, but it left an indelible impression on me.

Presenter0:38

Now, mister Houston, you are, of course, the the son of the celebrated actor Walter Houston. We know that your early years were adventurous. And your later years as well come to that. You quit high school to become a boxer, and you did pretty well, didn't you? Well, I boxed while I was in high school.

John Huston0:54

did quite well.

John Huston0:55

Dreamt very briefly of becoming well-away champion. What was your weight? When I started boxing I weighed one hundred and thirty eight pounds and uh when I finished I was a hundred and forty-five.

John Huston1:06

Uh

Presenter1:06

Do you ever regret not having had a a a longer scholastic background going on to college in in the usual way? I do that with mixed feelings.

Presenter1:14

Uh

John Huston1:14

I didn't stop studying when I left school. In fact, I I went to an art school.

John Huston1:19

And um uh

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encountered various important influences that

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serve to to shape my life.

Presenter1:28

And do well. What has become?

Presenter1:29

You became an actor briefly while you were nineteen. You joined the Mexican cavalry. That love of horses has always stayed with you.

John Huston1:36

Yeah.

Presenter1:36

My mother was a fine horseman.

John Huston1:37

Two.

Presenter1:38

Yes.

John Huston1:39

and among my first recollections is the sound I she used to put me in front of her on the saddle before I could walk.

John Huston1:46

And I remember the sound of the horses' hooves on the cobbles at night. She used to take me for rides at night. You still keep

Presenter1:53

Mm-hmm.

John Huston1:54

Yeah.

Presenter1:54

You're a dialogue writer in Hollywood.

Presenter1:56

In the early 1930s you had a spell as a writer here in London for for Go Mon British. What scripts did you work on? I I worked on a couple of scripts that came to abstract. Nothing.

John Huston2:06

Uh

Presenter2:06

Never made. Never paid.

John Huston2:07

Uh

Presenter2:08

It said that you uh had a little bit of a bun in the studios and uh that you had to sleep rough for a while.

John Huston2:13

That's right. I ran out of money here.

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And I found myself up against it.

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We even sang cowboy songs in the street. A friend of mine and I did. Of course we weren't allowed to work, of course. And we slept on the embankment and we used to elude the police and stay overnight in Hyde Park. It was summer, fortunately. Were your cowboy songs appreciated? Well, they gave us enough money to to go into pubs and get hard-boiled eggs. Great.

Presenter2:43

Uh

John Huston2:44

Uh

Presenter2:44

Then he went to Paris to paint. How long did that last? About a year.

Presenter2:48

Um some directing in the Broadway Theatre, Back to Hollywood, some successful scripts, and your first assignment as a director, the Maltese Falcon. Was that subject given to you, or did you choose it? No, I chose it.

Presenter3:00

It had been made

John Huston3:00

A couple of times, um but I'd never thought real justice had been done.

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And I took the book.

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a book written by a friend of mine.

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A great writer, I think, to this day, Deichel Hamlet, and simply edited the book.

John Huston3:17

It was hardly a job of script writing, but rather one of editing.

John Huston3:21

Uh

Presenter3:21

Made it into a picture.

Presenter3:22

Now, your first picture was a a runaway success. Did that present problems?

Presenter3:28

Oh, no, it it uh cleared the way of difficulties. Great.

Presenter3:32

They would have a couple more, then went into the United States Army and shot some documentaries.

Presenter3:37

Back in civilian clothes you directed your father in the treasure of the Sierra Madre. That must have been rewarding.

John Huston3:43

Uh Uh

John Huston3:44

Yes, the the director has a uh has a way of becoming the father figure on the set, so our roles were rather reversed. You never settled down along with one studio.

John Huston3:53

Um, not for well, I d I did more fi films with uh with the Warner Brothers than any other. Uh I I suppose any other one single.

Presenter4:01

The um early Humphrey Bogard films were with Warner Brothers, were they not?

John Huston4:05

African Queen, Treasure the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, Beat the Devil.

John Huston4:13

Those were the

Presenter4:15

The best, I think. My favorite, my personal favourite among your films is is Moulin Rouge, the story of Toulouse's Little Trek. How did you get those period location shots of Paris?

Presenter4:26

They didn't look as if they were shot very early in the morning, but you had those long vistas of empty streets with just a few horse-drawn carriages.

John Huston4:26

They didn't look

John Huston4:32

Well, it is true they were shot early in the morning.

John Huston4:35

And um we used uh a special Ozzie Morris, the uh cameraman. Uh

John Huston4:42

We devised special techniques for the film, in keeping with the spirit of that time, I hope. Yes. It was the intention.

John Huston4:50

Um

John Huston4:52

I don't think it's one of my best films.

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Um

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From the only from the standpoint of Toulouse Lautrec himself.

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You couldn't tell the real story of Deleuze-Lo Trek at that time.

Presenter5:04

Uh

John Huston5:05

And with the new views censorship.

John Huston5:09

Why, uh you could do a much better, much truer picture of that.

Presenter5:14

What an extraordinary little man. Pictorially it was a gorgeous film. You you worked, of course, to to predetermined colour values, colour scheme. That's right. As you did on on Moby Dick.

Presenter5:24

I believe you processed black and white on top of colour, didn't you? That's right, that's right.

John Huston5:26

That's right.

John Huston5:28

Yeah.

Presenter5:28

Kind of wedding.

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And of wedding of

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Black.

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Uh

Presenter5:29

And what

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Item color to give it

Presenter5:31

Uh

John Huston5:31

uh to fortify it, as it were.

Presenter5:33

Yeah.

John Huston5:33

Yeah.

Presenter5:33

Oh shit.

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Uh

Presenter5:33

Uh

John Huston5:33

Caught that the hard way in i in real storms. We did indeed.

John Huston5:37

And three times I thought we were on our way to the bottom. So did everyone else. How long did that film take in production?

Presenter5:40

Yeah.

John Huston5:44

Oh, uh we were shooting for more than six months. Um

John Huston5:50

It was the worst winter in maritime history. Lifeboats were capsized off Fish Guard. I mean, the the boats that

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go to go to do rescue work. And um then we went down to Canary Islands and shot. It was a quite an adventurous undertaking and

John Huston6:11

We were lucky that we lost no hands.

Presenter6:14

The Atlantic was littered with escaped electronic whales afterwards. It was indeed.

John Huston6:16

Failure of goods was indeed

Presenter6:19

You went harpooning whales yourself. Yes. Uh this was off Madeira, where they still hunt from the longboat. Yes.

John Huston6:25

Yeah.

Presenter6:25

Yeah.

John Huston6:27

Yeah.

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part of the fat time.

John Huston6:28

Uh

Presenter6:28

Hmm.

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You're a great hunter. Do you think this can nowadays be defended for sport to go after whales or or tiger vanishing species? No longer. No, they must only be protected. That's in the past. Of course.

Presenter6:42

Now you gave her first speaking part to Marilyn Munro, and you directed her last film, The Misfits.

Presenter6:48

Since her death there's been something of a of a smear campaign about how difficult she was, she couldn't learn lines. How did you find her?

Presenter6:56

Oh, not at all difficult.

John Huston6:58

Uh

Presenter6:58

Uh

Presenter6:59

Uh

John Huston6:59

The poor child had

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great difficulties within herself.

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The pressures of of her life were simply too much for one as frail as she was emotionally.

John Huston7:13

Well certainly you got the performances. Oh yes, yes. There was never any question about about that.

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Up to her.

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limits of her ability while she did everything in her power.

Presenter7:25

Yes.

John Huston7:26

Do you think film actors is

Presenter7:27

Still paid too much money.

John Huston7:29

Uh

Presenter7:29

I don't think anybody can be paid too much money. I like that answer.

Presenter7:33

Let's talk about some of the more recent films of yours. The Bible, that was a real epic. Only the first twenty chapters of Genesis, that's twenty verses.

Presenter7:43

First twenty verses, yes. Is that as far as you're going?

Presenter7:47

I wouldn't go a

Presenter7:49

A verse further, much less a book or chapter.

John Huston7:51

Much less important.

Presenter7:54

Uh then after that three costume pictures in a row. Fat City back with boxing and a very successful picture. Did you enjoy that? Uh yes, I I liked making it very much and I liked the film.

Presenter8:06

And your latest one, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, tell us about that. What's that about?

Presenter8:11

Uh it's a real character.

Presenter8:15

Uh

John Huston8:15

uh has very little to do with the facts of the case.

John Huston8:19

The the judge uh is

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portrayed as a hanging, shooting

John Huston8:25

Judge? He was a real character. He was a real character. He never he never hanged or never shot anybody.

John Huston8:31

Um in fact he um he made his um

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his fortune, his very small fortune, by short changing um train passengers who would stop at this little watering place where the train got a drink.

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and uh have a glass of beer, and they would give him five dollar bills and he'd shortchange them. And that was he was uh it was cupidity rather than uh violence that

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Judgment is.

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Livelihood. Uh it is true that he he worshipped at the shrine of Lily Langtree.

John Huston9:04

And she did, in fact,

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uh visit that town after the judge died, the town that he had renamed Langdry in in her honor. Yes.

John Huston9:15

What's going to be your next film is the way

Presenter9:17

One on the pipeline.

John Huston9:18

Yeah.

Presenter9:18

of The Macintosh Man, again with Paul Newman.

Presenter9:20

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:21

Some years ago you directed an opera at the Scala Milan. Is opera a great interest?

Presenter9:27

As a young man I used to

John Huston9:28

Uh Go to the opera, uh, quite a lot. My

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uh aunt my father's sister was a

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concert contralto and um and ha she had a great deal to do with the opera and

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In America, uh

Presenter9:43

Yeah.

John Huston9:44

So I was

Presenter9:45

It's raised on

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Uh

Presenter9:46

The opera, really. You were given a choice of half a dozen to choose from. You chose the premiere of a new one, The Mines of Sulphur, by Richard Rodney Bennett. Uh

John Huston9:55

Yes, it it uh seemed to be a little more of an adventure than uh than undertaking uh and and maybe maybe I was a bit a wi a bit wary uh as it was being done in Milan at the La Scala, why uh I was uh a little a little timid about doing uh an Italian opera.

Presenter10:13

Yes, that's wise. Do you have any further uh theatrical or or musical ambitions or are you staying with with Sally Lloyd?

John Huston10:21

Uh

John Huston10:22

Getting to the age where I'd better stick behind the camera.