05/08/2022
John Huston, accepting the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1983: "An avuncular figure in my youth passed on a piece of advice his father had given him: 'Don't work at anything simply for the money. Choose your profession as you would choose a wife, for love AND for money.' I have faithfully abided by the first half of that dictum. Indeed, I have a confession to make: I have been so enamored with my work that I have always had a feeling of guilt about taking money for it. Maybe that's why I always got rid of it so quickly. It was like money you win at the races, not the rewards of honest toil."
In 1925, Huston married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Harvey, and also took his first professional stage bow with a leading role off-Broadway entitled "The Triumph of the Egg." He made his Broadway debut that same year with "Ruint" and followed that with another Broadway show, "Adam Solitaire," the following November. John soon grew restless with the confines of both his marriage and acting and abandoned both, taking a sojourn to Mexico where he became an officer in the cavalry and expert horseman while writing plays on the sly. Trying to control his wanderlust urges, he subsequently returned to America and attempted newspaper and magazine reporting work in New York by submitting short stories. He was even hired at one point by mogul Samuel Goldwyn Jr. as a screenwriter, but again he grew restless. During this time he also appeared unbilled in a few obligatory films.
By 1932 John was on the move again and left for London and Paris where he studied painting and sketching. The promising artist became a homeless beggar during one harrowing point. Returning again to America in 1933, he played the title role in a production of "Abraham Lincoln," only a few years after father Walter portrayed the part on film for D.W. Griffith. John made a new resolve to hone in on his obvious writing skills and began collaborating on a few scripts for Warner Brothers. He also married again. Warners was so impressed with his talents that he was signed on as both screenwriter and director for the Dashiell Hammett mystery yarn "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). The movie classic made a superstar out of Humphrey Bogart and is considered by critics and audiences alike--- so many years after the fact--- to be the greatest detective film ever made.
"I've lived a number of lives. I'm inclined to envy the man who leads one life, with one job, and one wife, in one country, under one God. It may not be a very exciting existence, but at least by the time he's seventy-three he knows how old he is." (IMDb)
Happy Birthday, John Huston!