Got the D.W. Griffith Career Achievement Award in 1985.
Grandfather of Laura Huston and Jack Huston.
Has said that The MacKintosh Man (1973) (1973) is the worst movie he ever directed.
He and Orson Welles were good friends from the 1940s to Welles' death in 1985. Both men coincidentally made their spectacular debut as directors in 1941 (Welles with Citizen Kane (1941) and Huston with The Maltese Falcon (1941)). Both would eventually be directed by the other: Welles' had a cameo in Huston's adaptation of Moby Dick (1956) and Huston played the lead in Welles' unfinished The Other Side of the Wind (1972).
He and his father Walter Huston are the first Oscar-winning father-son couple. They are also the first father-son couple to be Oscar-nominated the same year (1941) and the first to win the same year (1949).
He is the only person to have ever directed a parent (Walter Huston) and a child (Anjelica Huston) to Academy Award wins.
He was first considered to star as the blind monk Jorge De Burgos in The Name of the Rose (1986). He accepted the part but had to leave due to his bad health.
His character "Noah Cross" in Chinatown (1974) was ranked the #16 greatest screen villain of all time on the American Film Institute's 100 Heroes and Villains list.
His WW II documentary Let There Be Light (1946) was one of the first, if not the first, films to deal with the issue of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of soldiers returning from the war. Huston actually said that, "If I ever do a movie that glorifies war, somebody shoot me." This documentary was based on his front-line experiences covering the European war and what he saw soldiers go through during and returning from the war.
Huston was a licenced pilot...and a prankster. He once flew over a golf course and dropped 5,000 ping-pong balls while a celebrity golf tournament was in progress.
In February 1933, his car collided with one being driven by Zita Johann, and was fined $30.
In his 2008 memoir. "I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History," producer Walter Mirisch says that he vetoed Huston's desire to use his daughter Anjelica Huston as his leading lady opposite John Hurt in Sinful Davey (1969), the story of a Scottish rakehell. Mirisch was worried that the inexperienced Angelica, who had appeared in only one other film at the time, A Walk with Love and Death (1969), also directed by her father, would have to adopt a Scottish accent for the role. In addition, Mirisch felt that "...her appearance was rather more Italian than Scottish, and in stature she towered over John Hurt. John [Huston] and I then had a serious falling out about casting Angelica." (For the record, Angelica is officially listed as 5' 10" tall and Hurt at 5' 9".) The producer and his director butted heads over Huston's insistence that his daughter play the female lead, but Huston finally capitulated, and Pamela Franklin was cast instead. (Angelica Huston appears in the finished film in an uncredited bit part.) The picture flopped, but Mirisch believe
In the 5th edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (edited by Steven Jay Schneider), 9 of Huston's films are listed: The Maltese Falcon (1941), San Pietro (1945), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Beat the Devil (1953), Fat City (1972), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987).
Interred at Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now called Hollywood Forever), Hollywood, California, USA.
Is one of the few people to receive at least one Oscar nomination in five consecutive decades (1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s).
Maternal great-grandfather was Col. William P. Richardson who led the 25th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.
Mother was newspaper reporter.
Once described Charles Bronson as "a grenade with the pin pulled".
Producer Walter Mirisch complains that Huston acted unprofessionally in the post-production period after the shooting of Sinful Davey (1969). The initial preview of Huston's cut of the film in New York was disastrous, and Huston refused to cut the film after attending another preview, informing Mirisch via his agent that "he liked it just the way it is." Huston's agent informed Mirisch that his client "didn't see any reason to be present at previews." United Artists, which financed the film, was upset over the previews and demanded a re-edit. Huston refused to re-cut the picture, and the re-editing process was overseen by Mirisch. "Sinful Davey" was a failure at the box office after it was released. In his 2008 memoir, "I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History," Walter Mirisch writes that, "John Huston, in his autobiography, said that he was aghast when he saw what I had done in the re-editing of his picture. Responding to preview criticism, I had tried to make it less draggy and more accessible to American audiences.... I saw John Huston again on a couple of occasions, many years after the release of "Sinful Davey," and he was very cold, as I was to him. I thought his behavior in abandoning the picture was u
Son Tony Huston appeared with him in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963).