Playboy Interview: John Huston

There's trouble in paradise as John Huston looks up at the sky again and sees no sign of rain. He has been living in Las Caletas, Mexico, which is south of Puerto Vallarta and reachable only by boat, for ten years, and when the rains don't come, the wells dry up and there's no running water. His hacking, recurring cough expresses his displeasure.

The short-wave connection to his secretary in Puerto Vallarta is not coming through, and when it finally does, he's told that Maricela, the young woman who is both companion and caretaker, missed her flight and won't be back until tomorrow. So even here, where pelicans float on the sea and iguanas rest on boulders, it's beyond snafu (situation normal, all fucked up), at tarfu (things are really fucked up) and closing in on fubar (fucked up beyond any recognition)--favorite expressions of Huston's--but that's OK with him.

He would probably scoff at being called a national treasure, but if John Huston doesn't fit the cliché, no one in America does. As writer, director and actor, he has been a force in our culture for more than four decades, from his first hyphenated credit as writer-director of the 1941 remake of "The Maltese Falcon" to his recently released and highly charged Mafia black comedy, "Prizzi's Honor," starring Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner and his daughter Anjelica.

Over his long life, Huston has lived in New York, Arizona, California, France, England, Africa, Ireland and now Mexico, which has always fascinated him. In 1948, he wrote and directed "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" there and received separate Oscars as director and screenwriter. Nearly two decades after that, he decided to film Tennessee Williams' "The Night of the Iguana" in Puerto Vallarta and helped turn a sleepy village of 2500 into a bustling tourist attraction of 80,000.

Huston is one of the last of a breed of rugged individualists who had enough talent and courage to carve out a life that reads a lot like an overblown Kipling story. Born in Nevada, Missouri, in 1906, Huston has been a semipro boxer, painter, writer of fiction and screenplays, big-game hunter, actor, director, horseman, great drinker, womanizer, husband (five times), father (of five children, one adopted), animal lover, architect, storyteller, narrator and, at appropriate times, the voices of Noah and God.

He has dared to adapt such great works of literature as Melville's "Moby Dick," Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King," Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" and Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood" and turned B. Traven's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," C. S. Forester's "The African Queen," Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," W. R. Burnett's "The Asphalt Jungle," Arthur Miller's "The Misfits" and Carson McCullers' "Reflections in a Golden Eye" into some of the most memorable stories ever put onto film.

It was his father, actor Walter Huston, who not only encouraged him to direct but showed him the fundamentals of drama when he took his son to the 1923 Dempsey-Firpo heavyweight-championship fight at the Polo Grounds. Dempsey was, to the 17-year-old Huston, a god. "Nobody in my lifetime has ever had such glory about him. He walked in a nimbus." When the fight started, he dropped the much larger Firpo in the first 15 seconds. Firpo got up, went down, got up, went down again--and the crowd went crazy. Then, incredibly, Firpo threw a mighty punch that sent Dempsey through the ropes. Huston thought it was over, but Dempsey got back in and knocked Firpo down at the bell. In the second round, Dempsey won the fight and young John learned a lesson in courage and drama he would always remember.

As a fighter himself, Huston won his 140-pound division at Lincoln Heights High School in Los Angeles and then boxed in clubs for five dollars a fight, winning 23 of 25 bouts, until he discovered painting and enrolled in the Smith School of Art. Painting has remained a passion, but it was the theater that enthralled him. His mother, a journalist, and his father had divorced, but Walter Huston kept in touch with his son--and passed along a love for the theater.

In 1924, John acted for the first time with the Provincetown Players in Greenwich Village. He married his first sweetheart, Dorothy Harvey, and they lived in Malibu, broke but happy; Huston returned to the ring to pick up some cash. His career lasted one bout, in which he was pummeled so hard that he decided to return to the haven of the arts.

His mother had smuggled a copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" into the country, and it affected Huston in much the same way as Dempsey's flattening Firpo. He tried his hand at writing stories. One, called "Fool," was accepted by American Mercury.

He became a journalist, working for the New York Daily Graphic, then wrote a play for marionettes and acted in a short film called "Two Americans" in 1929. When his friend Herman Shulin (who had directed "Grand Hotel") suggested he go to Hollywood as a contract writer for Sam Goldwyn, Huston gave up journalism and crossed the country once again.

Although he wrote a few scripts ("A House Divided," "Law and Order," "Murders in the Rue Morgue"), his first experience in Hollywood was disappointing. His marriage dissolved when his wife discovered he was having an affair. He had a car accident in which he ran over and killed a girl crossing the street. Shaken, he took an offer to write scripts in London and moved to England.

The job proved to be a bust, and Huston soon found himself sleeping in London parks and singing cowboy songs in the streets. Twenty-eight and penniless, he returned to the States, where he fell in love with an Irish girl named Lesley Black. They married and went to Hollywood, where Huston was asked by his friend William Wyler to doctor a script he had been writing called "Jezebel."

Next, Huston wrote "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse" for Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart, collaborated on "Juarez" for Paul Muni and moved to the San Fernando Valley, where he designed his first house. He wrote "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" in 1940, and his screenplay was nominated for an Oscar. He then wrote "Sergeant York" for Warner Bros., followed by "High Sierra" and then by his directorial debut, "The Maltese Falcon."

Before Bogart's death in 1957, Huston directed him in five other films: "Across the Pacific," "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," "Key Largo," "The African Queen" and "Beat the Devil."

The outbreak of the Second World War coincided with the breakup of Huston's second marriage, coming soon after he and his wife had lost their daughter, born prematurely. He accepted a commission as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and between 1943 and 1946, he made three of the most powerful and controversial war documentaries: "Report from the Aleutians," "The Battle of San Pietro" and "Let There Be Light." The effect of the "San Pietro" documentary was so vivid, its depiction of war so bitter, that it was classified as secret by the War Department; it took a direct order by General George C. Marshall to override the classification. And it wasn't until January 1981 that Waller Mondale, as Vice-President, got "Let There Be Light" released.

By the war's end, Huston had fallen in love with a married woman, Marietta Fitzgerald. While waiting for her to leave her husband, he met actress Evelyn Keyes, who proposed to him at a restaurant. Ever the gentleman, Huston accepted and they flew to Vegas to marry that night.

During the McCarthy era, Huston helped form a group called the Committee for the First Amendment, which was falsely described as a Communist-front organization. Disgusted with the politics of the time, Huston left the country to make "The African Queen," "Moulin Rouge" and "Beat the Devil." He eventually found a haven in Ireland; he bought an estate in Galway and became a fox-hunting gentleman farmer. By then, he was married to his fourth wife, Enrica "Ricki" Soma. In 1964, he became an Irish citizen. Eleven years after that, ever restless, he moved to Mexico.

To find out more about this legendary man, Playboy sent Contributing Editor Lawrence Grobel (who has conducted "Playboy Interviews" with two actors who have worked for Huston, Marlon Brando and George C. Scott) to Las Caletas for a week of intensive conversations. Grobel's report:

"It shouldn't be easy getting to see John Huston and, by God, it isn't. After the flight to Puerto Vallarta, it's a 20-kilometer drive along a narrow road between the mountains and the sea to an unpaved, rocky turnoff at a place called Boca de Tomatlán. José, Huston's boatman, was waiting by his ponga. A washing machine was already in the boat, being transported to Huston's coastal hideaway, and Jose suggested that I sit behind it as we made our way through choppy seas.

"When I realized that it wasn't secured, the trip became, a ride of terror; the machine slid from side to side as we plowed through the waves, and I feared being crushed to death by an errant washing machine.

"The sun was bright, the weather warm, the sky blue and unpolluted. The huge boulders that make up the shore line of the Mexican Pacific are scarred as if sliced by the ax of some angry Mexican god, and the jungle glowers behind the shore.

"The house Huston lives in is a simple one: An arched trellis provides shade over the path to the house, which consists of living room, bedroom and bathroom. A satellite dish and a short-wave radio provide him with all the contact with the outside world he needs. In his bedroom, books and scripts cover his large bed; vials of pills line the lop of the bookcase.

"Although racked by emphysema and worn down by heart surgery, he is still a vigorous, unvanquished man whose life force is strong. He takes a daily morning swim in the sea, works a full day and reads long into the night. He was a gracious host, conscientious, thoughtful, insightful. I liked him enormously."

[Q] Playboy: Coming to Puerto Vallarta to interview you is an adventure in itself.

[A] Huston: Well, this is the most primitive home I have ever had, with the jungle at my back and the ocean a few steps from my house. No running water, either. It hasn't rained in more than three months, so the spring has run dry. You get used to it. It's a hell of a lot better than living in Bel Air, which is the kind of life I can least imagine myself living--where if your neighbor has a Colonial mansion, you have a Swiss chalet and, depending on how rich you are, you live north or south of Sunset Boulevard. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: At least in Bel Air, you could get help in an emergency. You're 79 years old and an hour's boat ride away from a hospital. Doesn't that concern you?

[A] Huston: Not an hour; it's a day from anywhere, because the hospital in Puerto Vallarta is not what I would call space-age outfitted. But what the hell. If you think like that, you can have a heart attack in the Beverly Hills Hotel and be dead before you get to the ambulance--which is how my father died.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of shape are you in?

[A] Huston: I'm in terrible shape. I've got emphysema as bad as you can have it. A flight of steps is a short climb up Mount Everest for me. I went to Mexico City, where the smog is ten times as bad as in Los Angeles, and, Christ, I didn't think I could make it to the curb.

[Q] Playboy: Do you miss Ireland?

[A] Huston: Yes. It was wonderful; I loved it.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you leave?

[A] Huston: Two reasons. When I went to Ireland, it was one of the cheaper places in Europe to live. But prices kept going up, salaries kept rising, until today it's one of the most expensive countries. The other big consideration was the hunting, which was a strenuous sport. I was joint master of the Galway Blazers for ten years. But when I couldn't hunt any longer, those two things just decided it for me. But it was one of the best periods of my life.

[Q] Playboy: Are you still an Irish citizen?

[A] Huston: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any other locations for which you feel nostalgia?

[A] Huston: I liked Africa, but a lot of the places that I've been to are quite impossible today. When I was in Africa to shoot The African Queen, for instance, there was no conflict, the people were friendly and hospitable, and you felt perfectly safe in places that now no one dares mention, such as the backwaters of Uganda, where you can get killed. It's hard to imagine those gentle, delightful people, who were very well governed, by the way.... I was, and theoretically still am, against colonialism, but, my God, they were a lot better off under the English.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't that when your expatriate life began--with The African Queen?

[A] Huston: Well, I didn't exactly pack my bags and leave America. It's just that I had one son, my wife was going to have another baby, and since I had to cut that movie in England, I took them all over. Then came the idea of doing Moulin Rouge, so I went to France, and after that came Beat the Devil. During that time, I would go over to Ireland for hunting weekends. It was something I had never experienced before, the best hunting in the world. That led me to rent a house in Ireland.

[Q] Playboy: There's lots to talk about--writing, directing, acting, your rich personal life--but since you mentioned it, The African Queen seems as good a place as any to begin. What memories do you have of that location--of Katharine Hepburn and your friend Humphrey Bogart?

[A] Huston: We had some funny encounters in Africa. To start out with, we had talked with a local king who said that his people would be villagers for us, but when the time came, no one showed up. So we drove a considerable distance to this king's native village. I said, "Why aren't the people coming?" He said, "They are afraid you are going to eat them." I said, "Oh, no, we wouldn't dream of doing anything like that." By that time, there was quite an audience of villagers around us, and he asked for volunteers. Two of the bravest men I have encountered held up their hands. Just two. So we took them back with us, wined and dined them and drove them back to their village. The next morning, they all came. They call it the Third World, but, my God, Africa was the 97th world! It was so far removed from our awareness, there was no basis for comparison.

[Q] Playboy: The stories about that film are that Hepburn was very much put off by you and Bogart and the project in general. Just how skeptical was she at first?

[A] Huston: Extremely. Katie was born suspicious, and she had great reservations regarding me that she was in no pains to conceal. She knew that both Bogart and I were wastrels, but Katie has a weakness for wastrels. Spencer Tracy was also one. But we put it on for her. We pretended to be even bigger wastrels than we were.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Huston: By writing dirty things on her mirror in soap--childish things that shocked her. She always rose to the bait. She was suspicious of my advice as a director and wasn't sure how she was going to play her character in the film. I advised her to play her as a lady rather than a shrew. She said, "What lady?" I said, "Eleanor Roosevelt." That made sense to her, and her performance thereafter was everything I had ever hoped for.

[Q] Playboy: Did you become close?

[A] Huston: I don't think I was ever closer to anybody than I was to Katie out there. Not in a romantic way; there was only one man in her life, and there was no room for anybody but Spence.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't there a story about the two of you getting caught in the middle of a herd of elephants?

[A] Huston: Well, that was a bad moment. I used to go out shooting in the morning to get game for the pot. It was always in my mind to get a really impressive trophy, a big tusk. There was a book written about my quest for a big elephant, but I never shot one. I wouldn't commit the sin--not the crime but the sin--of shooting an elephant unless the reward were sufficiently handsome. I wanted nothing less than 100 kilos in the way of a trophy. Anyway, Katie took a very dim view of my shooting. She said, "John, this just doesn't go with the rest of your character. You're not a murderer, and yet you shoot these beautiful animals." I said, "Katie, you can't really understand unless you come with me and experience it." So she did, and from that day on, Katie was a veritable Diana of the hunt. We shot antelope, waterbuck. You couldn't restrain her. She would come into my cabin and wake me before dawn to get in an hour of shooting before we started work on the picture. One of those mornings, there were elephant signs. It was a very heavy forest in Uganda, and we worked very carefully down wind. All of a sudden, there was a very loud growl, which was the elephant's insides digesting, about five feet away. We froze, of course, and the elephant didn't know we were there. But then the breeze changed and our scent drifted and hell broke loose. There were elephants going by like train engines. You must not run under those circumstances, because that only confuses the elephants, which are trying to get away from you. But if they're confused, they're likely to pick you up and throw you away for good. I turned and looked at Katie, who had my light rifle up to her shoulder. She was going to go down like the heroine she is. Fortunately, those locomotives all went by us, and I breathed very deeply and wiped the sweat off my brow. Katie wasn't shaken by the experience. I was profoundly shaken. It was a hell of a note, my taking my star out, submitting her to that sort of thing.

[Q] Playboy: You once nearly did away with the picture's other star, too, didn't you?

[A] Huston: Yes, in Italy, just before we began shooting Beat the Devil. There was an element of absurdity about that whole experience. I found myself in Rome with the company, the crew--everything but a script. It was no spot to be in. I said to Bogey, "Let's forget the whole thing." He surprised me very much, saying, "John, it's only money." Then he and I got a chauffeur-driven car to go to Naples, and at a fork in the road, the driver couldn't make up his mind and went straight ahead through a stone wall. I was sitting in the front seat and braced myself, but Bogey was asleep in the back seat. His teeth had been knocked out; he had bitten through his tongue. We got him to a hospital and had to wait ten days for his bridge to be duplicated and sent over.

[Q] Playboy: You say you were stuck without a script. How did you come up with one?

[A] Huston: I met a young man named Truman Capote on the street in Rome and asked him if he could help us out. He said sure. He was an extraordinary little man who had the courage and the determination of a lion. We worked on the script together. We had been writing feverishly for a few days when his face got swollen to half again its size. He had an impacted wisdom tooth. So I called an ambulance and we took him to the hospital; and that night, pages came back to me from the hospital. That was typical of Truman.

[Q] Playboy: When you have your writer's hat on, how do you work with a collaborator?

[A] Huston: As a rule, I write a scene and the other person writes a scene; then he takes mine and I take his and we rewrite.

[Q] Playboy: How good a screenwriter do you think you are?

[A] Huston: I think I am one of the best.

[Q] Playboy: Are there many others?

[A] Huston: There aren't many. Ingmar Bergman. Robert Bolt writes beautifully for the screen. Screenwriting is such a very special branch of literature. In some ways, it's closer to the poetic form than it is to the dramatic. A lot of book writers think that they write down to an audience if they do a motion-picture script.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of writing up or down to your audience, it seems as if some of your latest films, such as Under the Volcano and Wise Blood, have been smaller, more personal than the adventure films for which you're famous--The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Man Who Would Be King. Why have you gone in this direction?

[A] Huston: Nothing conscious about it. I don't think of those films as art films, nor do I think of adventure as something that simply implies action or exploit. The consul in Volcano, played by Albert Finney, is an adventurer. Volcano is an adventure of the mind, of the soul.

[Q] Playboy: Nonetheless, these films are different in appeal. Is that what interests you more now?

[A] Huston: No, there's no design in any of this. My new movie, Prizzi's Honor, is not a small film. But, yes, I am less concerned with having to make a buck.

[Q] Playboy: In writing about Under the Volcano, The New York Times called you a "bold visionary." Are you?

[A] Huston: I'm a bold visionary with other people's work. I haven't originated my films in any true sense. As for the acting, that is largely the work of the artists themselves. Just as I had done with many other actors, I often said to Albert Finney and the others, "Work something out; I'll leave you alone." I'd leave them for an hour or two and they'd come up with something.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't that a favorite expression of yours--"Work something out"?

[A] Huston: Yes. And if they are the right people playing the part, what they choose to do is right, as a rule, and that's a great help. It's a practice of mine to get as much out of the actor as I can, rather than to impose myself upon his performance.

[Q] Playboy: But what happens when you ask your actors to come up with something and they can't--or when a scene isn't working, no matter what you do?

[A] Huston: You go back to the sources, to the writing. You may even discover that the scene isn't needed and can be dropped; that's happened a time or two. I'll give you a very good example: I had such a scene in The Night of the Iguana. The dialog and the situation were good, but for some reason, the scene wasn't coming off. It was between Richard Burton and the young girl, Sue Lyon. He's in his room at that hotel in Puerto Barrio, and she comes to see him surreptitiously. She wants him to make love to her and he resists. He's6 shaving, there is a whiskey bottle on a shelf, and they have this dialog that doesn't work.

Well, Tennessee Williams was down there on the set, and I said to him, "I'm having trouble with this; see if you can do anything about it." He had it for me the next morning. What he had done with it made it perhaps the best scene in the picture: When she comes in, instead of dialog, her very appearance startles him and he bumps against the shelf and the whiskey bottle falls off and breaks on the floor. He's barefoot. He begins to tell her why they must not make love and, in talking, he walks up and down, the broken glass cutting his feet. She watches him become a kind of martyr with fascination; then she takes off her shoes and joins him in his martyrdom, cutting her own feet as their dialog is played over that. I think that's a striking example of the answer to your question.

[Q] Playboy: Yet Williams wasn't happy with the way you ended Iguana, was he?

[A] Huston: We talked a lot about the finish of the picture and disagreed on it. The most amusing character in the play was the one played by Ava Gardner, who had the most penetrating remarks. Yet, in the end, he wanted her to be a female spider. But he himself had written her sympathetically, and it seemed to me he was pulling back his sympathy at the end. He resisted the finish as we had written it for the screen but couldn't come up with anything as good. He just wanted to make the Ava Gardner character consuming and destructive. Finally, I said, "Tennessee, I think you've got it in for women; you don't want to see a man and a woman in a love relationship, and that's at the bottom of it." He didn't contest that; he just thought about it and stopped arguing. Yet years later, in London at a luncheon party, the last thing he ever said to me, just before he left, was, "John, I still don't agree with you about the finish. I think that finish was a mistake."

[Q] Playboy: Was Williams a genius?

[A] Huston: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: What is a genius?

[A] Huston: Someone who see things in a way that illuminates them and enables you to see things in a different way.

[Q] Playboy: How many have you known?

[A] Huston: Well, one knows men of genius only through their work. I'd say Williams; Eugene O'Neill; Manzù, the sculptor; Henry Moore, the sculptor; Mark Rothko, the painter; Henri Cartier-Bresson; in a funny way, Robert Capa, the photographer; Ernest Hemingway; William Faulkner; Dashiell Hammett; Marlon Brando. I've seen flashes of it in others: Bergman; Vittorio De Sica; Akiro Kurosawa.

[Q] Playboy: Brando is the only actor you include. What about some of his peers from the old days, such as Montgomery Clift and James Dean?

[A] Huston: Clift and Dean were in the same league, but Brando was something else entirely. Brando had an explosive thing; you felt something smoldering, dangerous, about to ignite at times. Did you see Julius Caesar? Christ! I will never forget that; it was like a furnace door opening--the heat came off the screen. I don't know another actor who could do that.

[Q] Playboy: You directed him in Reflections in a Golden Eye. What comes to mind?

[A] Huston: An extraordinary, amazing actor. If you remember the scene where he talks about the Army, standing at the mantelpiece, it's a long speech and he fiddles with a candle. Well, he did it, and after the first time, I could have said, "That's it," as I often do; but knowing Marlon and the way he works, I said, "Let's do it again." We did it three times, and each time was different; any of them could have been used!

In another scene, he gives a lecture on leadership to a class as his wife is in the background, on horseback, with the man she was having an affair with. He did that completely differently two or three times. I've never seen any other actor do that.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think Brando's disdain for his profession is real?

[A] Huston: Yes, I think it's real, though he takes his acting very seriously. He is not a dilettante in that sense. I'm not sure that he felt about acting the way Laurence Olivier does, or John Gielgud, or those who are dedicated to the art of acting. His doing a season at Stratford is beyond one's imagination. But, God knows, he is a fine actor and a very intelligent man. I don't know whether Brando has done some of the things he has simply because of the money, but I can't imagine him being bad in anything, though I think the worst thing I ever saw Brando do was Apocalypse Now, which was just dreadful--the finish of that picture. The model for it, Heart of Darkness, has no finish, either, and the moviemakers just didn't find one. It's very good for a picture to have an ending before you start shooting. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Of your several careers, when did you start thinking of yourself as a writer?

[A] Huston: H. L. Mencken, the legendary editor of American Mercury, accepted a short story I'd written called Fool in 1929. It was the first time anybody had ever published anything of mine. I can't begin to describe the importance Mencken had in my young manhood. He was the most prestigious figure in this country, as far as I was concerned; the arbiter of taste and judgment as the editor of the finest magazine. When his letter came saying he wished to publish my story, why, that was a high moment in my life.

[Q] Playboy: Soon after that, you became a reporter for the New York Daily Graphic. Did you like being a journalist?

[A] Huston: No, I was the world's worst reporter. There was a night city editor who hated my guts. He would fire me and the day city editor would hire me back. I was hired and fired three or four times. All my sympathies, by the way, are with the night city editor. He was quite correct. The thing that finally brought about my separation from the paper forever happened when I was sent to cover a murder in a tobacco factory in New Jersey. One of the workers had killed another one, and I got my notes mixed up and had the owner of the factory down as the murderer. That ended my career as a newspaperman.

[Q] Playboy: And when did your career as a director begin?

[A] Huston: Let's see: I was a boxer while I was in high school, and I was also going to the Art Students League in California; I had a half notion that I'd be a painter and a half notion I might have the makings of a welterweight champion. Then I went to New York on a visit to my father, whom I wasn't living with. I had only seen him in vaudeville, not in the New York theater. He was in Desire Under the Elms. That's when I met O'Neill. I was about 17, and it influenced me enormously, seeing one of the great American plays come together.

Anyway, some years later, when I had had some success as a writer in Hollywood, my father asked me to direct him in a play, A Passenger to Bali. I'd never directed, of course. I'm trying to remember whether I had ever expressed the desire to direct.... No, it was his idea, as I recall. The play had a modest success, but it confirmed my desire to become a director.

[Q] Playboy: So the credit goes to your father?

[A] Huston: Yes, yes.

[Q] Playboy: But how did you get your chance to direct--getting as your first movie a small property called The Maltese Falcon?

[A] Huston: It came from my being a writer first. My standing as a writer was quite high at Warner's; and after I had adapted High Sierra, my agent had it written into my contract that if they took up my option, they'd let me direct a picture. When it came time, Henry Blanke, who was a producer at Warner Bros. and a man of great taste and discrimination, became something of a champion of mine, and he backed me up. When I said I wanted to direct The Maltese Falcon, the studio heads were astonished and delighted, because they owned it. It had been a bad picture twice before, but it makes sense to remake a bad picture.

[Q] Playboy: George Raft was Warner's first choice to star, not Bogart. Had he made it, would it have been--

[A] Huston: Not nearly as good. I couldn't have been more pleased when Raft turned it down.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any idea that you were making a film classic?

[A] Huston: I knew it was a marvelous book. Hammett is one of the great American writers, a great stylist.

[Q] Playboy: Did you cast the picture yourself?

[A] Huston: Yes. Just think of a completely inexperienced director's bringing Sydney Greenstreet out from New York. They gave me the actors I wanted. Being in charge of my own casting has allowed me not to have to do as much directing through the years. If the actors aren't right, then you have to direct and conceal that fact.

[Q] Playboy: Casting your father in another picture, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, was apparently a right decision.

[A] Huston: Yes. [Laughs] He got the Academy Award for it; I regard that film with great sentiment. And since I learned a lot about direction from seeing my father work, it was very gratifying.

[Q] Playboy: Were you close to your father?

[A] Huston: I didn't see a great deal of him until I was about 15 years old. I had merely been told by my mother that he was an actor, which meant he was away. Then I remember my mother's saying they were getting a divorce. I stayed with my mother and my grandmother. But every month, he would write a letter and send money. Every year or two, they would send me to see him; and because I saw him so infrequently, he would put himself out, so it was always a very pleasant relationship. And since he had never played a father, he never assumed that role with me. We were more like brothers or good friends. He was a great companion; he loved great humor. I've never laughed with anyone else as much as I did with him.

[Q] Playboy: What was your mother like?

[A] Huston: Nervous ... very active ... smoked. When I say nervous, I mean tending toward the neurotic. She was better with animals than with people. She liked excitement. Still, I was closer to her than to my father, closer to the women in my family.

[Q] Playboy: That reminds us of a story we read about your mother's leaving you with your nursemaid when you were a boy....

[A] Huston: Oh, yes, I know what you're talking about. I was very young, maybe five or six, and my mother was working and left me alone with this nursemaid. I lay on the bed with her, and somehow her dresses got up and her behind was bare, and I fiddled with her behind and thought it was marvelous. I thoroughly approved of it. I remember my mother coming to the front door, but I didn't tell her what had happened. There was some sense that I should keep this very strictly to myself, looking forward to further exploration.

[Q] Playboy: And?

[A] Huston: Unfortunately, the nursemaid disappeared from our lives almost immediately. [Laughs] But from that time on, I was trying to get little girls to show me their genitals.

[Q] Playboy: So you were advanced sexually?

[A] Huston: I don't know about that. I was comparatively late in having any coitus. I was about 15 or 16; it was with a girl I met in the park. My mother was away, and I took her to my bedroom and pulled the shade down. My mother later noticed that the shade was down and asked me if I had been home during the afternoon. I confessed ignorance of that mystery.

[Q] Playboy: You must have made up for your ignorance by the time you got through school. There's another story we seem to remember involving you, a lady and a commission in the Mexican army--all before you were 20.

[A] Huston: Oh ... that was when I first came down to Mexico. I loved horses and there was a well-known teacher of dressage in Mexico, and I thought if I could get down here, maybe I could get lessons from him. I had jumped horses, but I had never done dressage. I found the man, who was a colonel in the Mexican army, and he gave me lessons at a stable in Mexico City. We became friends. I didn't have much money, and one day, the colonel said, "Look, you don't have to pay me for the dressage lessons anymore; why don't I just give you an honorary commission so you can ride horses and go to the officers' mess and not have to pay the expenses?" Well, that sounded good, and that's what I did.

The whole scene in Mexico and the army around that time was pretty abandoned. I became a kind of a Mexican-army pet, a mascot. It was a crazy country, much more so than now. I had never seen an outdoor swimming pool owned by an individual, and one night, a powerful bureaucrat named José Avelleneda, who later became secretary of the treasury, invited a group of us to his house in the country, and he had an outdoor swimming pool--and he had it full of whores, without any clothes on. He had brought them out for our visit. We dived right in. Life was a constant revel.

[Q] Playboy: And what happened with the woman--and a supposed duel?

[A] Huston: That was just an absurd thing. There was a count from South Africa whose main claim to glory was that he had lured Mata Hari, the German spy, over the Spanish border into France to be shot. That was his demonstration of patriotism. He was in hot pursuit of the wife of an American I got to know. She was afraid to tell her husband about the count, but she wanted him warned off. So I undertook to do it. There was a quarrel, we scuffled, were separated and he said, "I will meet you in an hour, where I will kill you."

I hurried downtown, where guns could be bought without a license. I wasn't an expert with handguns at all, so I bought the one with the longest barrel and took up my position, behind a tree, well before the stroke of the hour. I was going to shoot him as he turned the corner, aim the gun like a rifle and just shoot him [Laughs]--so there would be no question of the outcome. Well, the count didn't turn the corner; my mother did! She had come down a few weeks earlier, had heard about the duel and had come to disarm me. And that was the end of that.

[Q] Playboy: That's not the only time you've been involved with guns and a ladyfriend. We're thinking of the filming of Moulin Rouge in Paris, in 1952, and the actress Suzanne Flon.

[A] Huston: That happened on Bastille Day. I had been with Aly Khan, Zsa Zsa Gabor, José Ferrer and Suzanne Flon. Afterward, I took Suzanne home in a taxi, and when the taxi door opened, somebody came in and belted me--hit me two or three times before I knew what was happening. I got out of the cab and the man disappeared through an archway. I followed and he came down some steps with a pistol, which he pointed at me. I went toward him and he pulled the trigger, and I heard the pistol click and decided it wasn't loaded. The taxi driver and a bystander got between us, and Suzanne kept begging me to leave, so I did. But he had bruised me around the eyes and I had to put on some dark glasses. He was in love with her; he was jealous and he had been waiting to see who was taking her home.

Well, I found out where he lived, and I had a kind of goon in the company who I asked to come with me, since I knew he had a gun. I knocked on his door and he opened it, and I hit the door hard enough to knock him back, then proceeded to kick the shit out of him. He couldn't fight; he tried to kick me in the balls, so I gave him a little extra punishment for that. [Laughs] I was still angry at this son of a bitch. Then he began to beg, saying he had loved her for so many years and so on, and there was a knock at the door--the gendarmes. We answered, said it was just a friendly scuffle--he was bleeding from his nose and mouth. [Laughs] I said, "Let me see your gun," and he brought it; it was only a .22, but you can kill somebody with a .22. I took the clip out of the gun and, son of a bitch, the round had misfired.

[Q] Playboy: Was Suzanne worth getting killed over?

[A] Huston: She was the most extraordinary woman I have ever known.

[Q] Playboy: Another, more publicized altercation was an hourlong fistfight you had with Errol Flynn. How serious was that?

[A] Huston: He went to one hospital and I went to another. [Laughs] To reduce the publicity.

[Q] Playboy: You didn't say in your memoirs why you had that fight, but other sources say it was over a remark Flynn had made about Olivia de Havilland.

[A] Huston: I've never said that.

[Q] Playboy: Still, it seems as if you feel a man needs to test his courage with an occasional fight. True?

[A] Huston: It depends on how severe the test. I think it's of primary importance in the make-up of a man, the part that courage plays in his character. It's happened to me frequently. Let's say that I've been able to conceal from others the anxiety that I felt at the time. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: That's straight out of Hemingway--whom you sparred with, correct?

[A] Huston: I had been told by someone that Hemingway had his doubts about me as a boxer. I'd been on the boat with Papa in Cuba--I think I began calling him Papa at that time--and instead of swimming directly to shore, he took a long walk instead. That evening, we had some cocktails and we were at his house and I said, "Have you got some gloves here, Papa?" And he said yes, and I said, "Let's put them on; I just want to see what your style is." He said, "You have longer arms and you're supposed to be a good boxer; you wouldn't stay out there and jab my face, jab my nose, would you?" And I said, "No, no, I wouldn't do anything like that." I meant it.

Well, Papa went into the other room with [writer] Peter Viertel, saying, "I'm gonna cool the son of a bitch." But Mary, his wife, said to me, "John, don't box with him, please; he has been having trouble with his heart; that's why he walked in today and didn't swim. No one is supposed to know that, but, please, don't box him." When he came out, I said, "Let's forget it," and that was the end of that.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever consider working with him in any way?

[A] Huston: I was going to do a picture of Hemingway's at one time and the idea was for him to do a voice-over, a foreword to it, but it was impossible. His voice had a funny lack of expression in it.

[Q] Playboy: Does anyone today remind you of Hemingway?

[A] Huston: I'll tell you the actor who looks more like him than anybody else but doesn't resemble him in any other way: Burt Reynolds. He could be his brother.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Hemingway's choice of death?

[A] Huston: I approve completely. He knew he was on the way out; his mind was gone. Papa had been having persecution complexes, phobias, and life was dreadful for him. He had a moment or two of sanity and killed himself in one of those moments.

[Q] Playboy: You've been married five times. You're obviously a good judge of actors and actresses; how good a judge of women are you in your personal life?

[A] Huston: Quite good. I've delighted in the women I have known, been married to and been in love with. It's really gone to make a very good life. I regret that I wasn't constituted, as some men are, to stay with one woman, though I believed implicitly each time that I would.

[Q] Playboy: Do you really regret that? After all, you seem to be in the mold of Hemingway, Norman Mailer, adventurous men who apparently outgrow their women.

[A] Huston: No, I think they grew just as fast as I did ... and for the most part, they were extraordinary women, except the last, who was a crocodile. [Laughs] And even she was extraordinary, in a sense. Let me put it this way: I regret that lack within myself that enables a man to pour all his affection into one individual.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you call your last wife a crocodile?

[A] Huston: It's just the best description I have of her. [Laughs] I've been friends with all of my wives except the last. We were never good friends, from the word go.

[Q] Playboy: Were you surprised at your lack of perception about her?

[A] Huston: I was, indeed. I was shocked by it.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever known a woman who you felt was your equal?

[A] Huston: Oh, many. A few, even superior. [Laughs] For sheer strength of character, I wouldn't have dared to cross swords with [Maria] Callas. I would rather have gone six rounds with Jack Dempsey! I had an aunt Margaret who was a very strong and intelligent woman. I didn't like her or have great regard for her, though. A woman we've talked about, for whom I have enormous respect and regard for her intelligence and humanity, is Suzanne Flon. Another is Iris Tree.

[Q] Playboy: You have five children, including an adopted son. Do you feel differently about each of them?

[A] Huston: Yes, I have different emotions toward each.

[Q] Playboy: Is it tough for them, being the children of John Huston?

[A] Huston: One of my sons has a little difficulty being a son of mine and the other one none at all, and neither of my daughters has any problem. Anjelica has a role in my new movie and is wonderful in it.

[Q] Playboy: Anjelica has been living with Jack Nicholson for some time; that makes him a kind of son-in-law. Is he a good one?

[A] Huston: As far as I'm concerned, he is.

[Q] Playboy: Do the rumors linking Nicholson to alleged cocaine use bother you?

[A] Huston: I don't think there is any truth to the stories. I have seen a good deal of Jack and never once have I seen him under the influence of drugs.

[Q] Playboy: You acted with Nicholson in Chinatown; now you've directed him in Prizzi's Honor. How do you assess him from both sides of the camera?

[A] Huston: Oh, he's a wonderful actor, one of the best. He just illuminates the book. He impressed me in one scene after another; the new movie is composed largely of first takes with him.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about some of the themes of your movies. There seems to be an element of despair in some of the recent ones. Does that reflect your own philosophy?

[A] Huston: I certainly don't know what the point of life is ... but I don't indulge in depression. I think I see the world very clearly, though.

[Q] Playboy: Has life always seemed futile?

[A] Huston: Not always. In World War Two, I think I had as high hopes as anybody. It looked to me as if we were on our way to some kind of understanding of life.

[Q] Playboy: What changed that vision?

[A] Huston: The McCarthy era, the whole Red-baiting thing. The idea of America, the America of our founding fathers, was lost. It stopped being that America and became something else. And then one wondered whether it ever had been America except for the founding fathers and a few rare souls. Was it all an illusion? I know that what Roosevelt was doing with the New Deal seemed to hold the promise of a return to those original values. He was the only President in my time I thoroughly approved of. Red baiting did nothing to me and my career, because my nose was completely clean; I had no Communist inclination; but I had a few friends who were Communists, though they never told me they were. The thing is, I saw nothing reprehensible; if they chose to become Communists, that was their business. In America, there is supposed to be political and religious freedom!

[Q] Playboy: Your Committee of the First Amendment was described as a Communist front.

[A] Huston: Only afterward, you see.

[Q] Playboy: Why weren't you subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee?

[A] Huston: Because the members all knew I wasn't a Communist.

[Q] Playboy: Still, many Hollywood writers and directors were brought before HUAC.

[A] Huston: I think many of them were Communists. I know of one who was not, but he was never called to the stand. That was Howard Koch; he was subpoenaed but not called. HUAC had a pretty good idea of who was a Communist and who wasn't. The people who did get caught up in it were, for the most part, well-intentioned boobs from a poor background. A number of them had come from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and out in Hollywood, they sort of felt guilty for living the good life. Their (continued on page 178)John Huston(continued from page 72) social conscience was more acute than the next fellow's.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't the head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, want you to do a documentary tribute to Joe McCarthy?

[A] Huston: Yes. I just laughed. L.B. was a great patriot.

[Q] Playboy: Did he actually crawl on his knees and kiss your hand, as reported, begging you to make Quo Vadis for him?

[A] Huston: Yes, he was the kind of man who would do such a thing. [Laughs] He wanted that picture to be warm and emotional, and he described to me the way he had once hired Jeanette MacDonald against everyone's advice. Everyone said MacDonald pissed ice water--I'm quoting L.B.--but he knew that she had heart, and he said he sang her a Jewish song and was able to bring tears to her eyes. She went on and did Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life in that picture, and it was an experience that no one ever forgot. Now he wanted me to make Quo Vadis that kind of picture, and if I were able to, he would get down on his knees and kiss my hand, and then he proceeded to do exactly that. Needless to say, I didn't make the film.

[Q] Playboy: Another example of your outlook was Fat City, a bleak look at one of your favorite pastimes--boxing--which contrasts, for example, with the upbeat tone of such movies as Rocky.

[A] Huston: Yes, one asks the question, Why is a prize-fighting film such as Rocky a great success and a picture such as Fat City not successful at all? Rocky isn't the true world of boxing. Rocky is a world of boxing that's in people's minds. But the first Rocky was very good; there were some extraordinary moments in it--his seduction of the girl, getting her to take off her hat, standing there mute ... it was memorable.

[Q] Playboy: Coming from an old boxer, that's at least some praise. You have a fondness for tough guys, don't you? Robert Mitchum, for instance.

[A] Huston: Yes, I like Mitchum enormously.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Huston: It's just his viewpoint, his attitude toward life. He doesn't dramatize anything; he's--I don't even like the word, but he's cool, he underplays everything and he has a wonderful humor. He's extremely intelligent, has marvelous powers of observation, can re-create a scene with all the funny aspects that it originally had. Mitchum is, essentially, a gent. I like his easy attitude. God, I've seen some funny things happen with Mitchum.

One night in Tobago, I went into the hotel where we were staying and Mitchum had a sailor over a balcony, holding him by the throat, slapping him around. Dorothy, his wife, was crying and begging him to let go, which Mitchum did. Then he laughed and strolled back to the bar. I said, "What in hell happened?" Turned out these two sailors had bothered him and he put up with them as long as he could and finally they jumped him; he knocked them both down. Mitchum could fight. It ended with them, so one sailor said, trying to be friends, "Give me a free one." Bob said all right, and the sailor hit him once for all he was worth. Bob said, "OK, you've had your free one," and turned away. Then the son of a bitch hit him again! Bob turned loose. That's when I came in, as Bob was throttling the guy, about to throw him over the balcony 80 feet down. [Laughs] But there is no element of the bully in Bob, no strutting his stuff. He's quite the opposite.

[Q] Playboy: A tough guy for whom you don't have much affection is George C. Scott. You once called him a shitheel in Rolling Stone. When you filmed The Bible, who was more difficult, the animals or Scott?

[A] Huston: Scott was more difficult, because he got drunk.

[Q] Playboy: How much abuse did he give Ava Gardner on that film?

[A] Huston: Considerable.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever see him slap her?

[A] Huston: No. I saw him try to, but I was on his back and stopped him--with six others.

[Q] Playboy: Has your opinion of him changed?

[A] Huston: No, not in the slightest.

[Q] Playboy: Would you ever consider him for another role?

[A] Huston: No.

[Q] Playboy: Any other actors with whom you wouldn't nave done a second film?

[A] Huston: Paul Muni. He was certainly an amazingly good actor, but he had a huge ego. He ruined a picture that I depended a great deal on--Juarez. He really ruined it. I can say this without bragging, because two other men worked with me on the script for almost a year; it was a very fine script and was written so Juarez would just come into the story at vital, special moments and when he spoke, every word counted. This was in contrast to the grace and eloquence of Maximilian. Well, the first thing Muni wanted was more dialog. A humorless man, vastly impressed with himself.

[Q] Playboy: Montgomery Clift was supposedly a difficult actor to work with, yet you starred him in two of your pictures--The Misfits and Freud.

[A] Huston: Emotionally, Clift was very fragile. He was a mess; he was gone. I remember that on The Misfits, Clark Gable had a bad back, a slipped disk; Monty would slap him on purpose. Gable didn't have much use for him, I must say. But it wasn't Clift who made filming The Misfits an ordeal; it was Marilyn Monroe. She was always trying to wake up or go to sleep.

Marilyn and her husband, Arthur Miller, were at odds. I hadn't realized that until we were well into the picture. I was impertinent enough to say to Arthur that to allow her to take drugs of any kind was criminal and utterly irresponsible on the part of anyone who had any feeling for her. It was only shortly after that that I realized that she wouldn't listen to Arthur at all; he had no say over her actions.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe her death was a suicide?

[A] Huston: No, no, I think it was an accident. You know, when I cast her in her first big picture [The Asphalt Jungle], I didn't have any idea that she was going to become America's sex queen. There was something very touching about her; one felt protective about Marilyn--and this is not simply after the fact, either. You felt that she was vulnerable and might get hurt, and she damn well did. The phrase sex queen may be a misapplication; that was no more than half of her attraction. She moved women as much as she did men.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to Clift, is it true that he would cry when you excluded him from discussions during Freud?

[A] Huston: Tears came very easily to Monty. I was amazed how good the end result was, because it was really an ordeal.

[Q] Playboy: Was your reputation for being cruel to him unjust?

[A] Huston: Completely so. I was never kinder to anybody than I was to Clift. Sometimes I spoke harshly to him, but it was an attempt to awaken something in him. The combination of drugs, drink and being homosexual was a soup that was just too much.

[Q] Playboy: There was talk of brain damage. Do you think that was true?

[A] Huston: Undoubtedly. He was never the same after his automobile accident. He lost the ability to memorize. In The Misfits, his lines were easy to learn, short, colloquial. Freud called for something entirely different, another language, as it were, the easy deployment of scientific terms--and he couldn't memorize anything.

[Q] Playboy:Freud didn't get the kind of reception you had hoped it would, did it?

[A] Huston: Well, I didn't like the beginning, but I did like the rest of the picture. I was surprised it didn't have an audience--and it certainly didn't. I'd thought that there would be more people curious about Freud's work. At one point, the studio changed the title to get a wider audience--The Hidden Passion or some goddamn thing--but that didn't fool anybody.

[Q] Playboy: Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the first draft of Freud, didn't he?

[A] Huston: Yes. I had promised him that we wouldn't be censored, and he understood that to mean we could have an eight-hour picture, so he wrote a script of that length. I then took his material and tried to organize it, and it was a hell of an undertaking. I have never had a worse time writing.

[Q] Playboy: What was your impression of Sartre?

[A] Huston: I don't think I knew Sartre at his best. He was on drugs--not hard drugs, drugs to stimulate him; he couldn't stop talking. He stayed with me in Ireland for three weeks, during which he talked. He had no English; my French isn't good; there were a couple of interpreters, who just added to the babble. He wore a cheap, ill-fitting three-piece suit with the same necktie, and although his shirts looked laundered, it was always as though he had the same clothes on. He was without egotism and was probably the ugliest man I have ever laid eyes on--one eye going in one direction, and the eye itself wasn't very beautiful, like an omelet. And this pitted face.

[Q] Playboy: After Freud, you tackled another huge subject. What made you decide to film Moby Dick?

[A] Huston: I had read Moby Dick 20 years before I made it. I hadn't read it as a child. Most people say they read it when they were children--well, they're liars. Nobody in his early teens ever read Moby Dick. They've read abridged versions. Ray Bradbury and I wrote the script; we simplified it into picture terms. The fact that multitudes didn't clamor to see Moby Dick was a great disappointment. The greatest criticism leveled against the picture was the casting--Gregory Peck as Ahab. Well, I'm a pretty good judge of actors. I saw Moby Dick recently on TV, and Peck is good. But the image the audience of that time had of him was different; they wouldn't accept him.

[Q] Playboy: That was the only film on which you ever went over budget, wasn't it?

[A] Huston: Yes, because we encountered the worst seas in maritime history for that part of the Atlantic. We lost two quite expensive whales, and the picture had to stop while they built a new one. The cable holding it broke three times, and it was a question of rescuing either the men in the boats or the whales. Each time, we allowed sentiment to overcome our better judgment--we saved the men. [Laughs] When we were down to our last whale, I knew that if I got inside it, they weren't going to let it go, so I grabbed a bottle of Scotch and got inside the whale.

[Q] Playboy: How do you rank Moby Dick among your films?

[A] Huston: I like particular things about it. I like things about The Red Badge of Courage and about Freud, too.

[Q] Playboy: You're naming three of your least appreciated films. How do you feel about your body of work?

[A] Huston: I am delightfully surprised every now and then at something that I see is good. I am not unduly impressed with my oeuvre, as some call it, but every now and then I see something of which I approve.

[Q] Playboy: Which of your films made you the most money?

[A] Huston: For me, Moulin Rouge. The producers were unscrupulously honest; instead of trying to conceal profits, they took pleasure in giving me my dues.

[Q] Playboy: What about The African Queen?

[A] Huston: Just a salary. I wanted to get out of my partnership with Sam Spiegel, and giving up my profits got me out of it.

[Q] Playboy: What about The Man Who Would Be King? Didn't Michael Caine and Sean Connery have to sue to get their money?

[A] Huston: Caine and Connery eventually got their money. I never got my full salary.

[Q] Playboy: Which of your pictures would you like to either forget or remake?

[A] Huston: I'd like to forget The Barbarian and the Geisha [with John Wayne], which was a good picture at one point. I went away to Africa for several months, and during that time, they changed it and released it, and it was really a fucked-up proposition, terrible, awful. I would have had my name taken off the picture, but the producer, the head of the studio, was a friend of mine; he was dying of a brain tumor and I didn't want to have a further complication. I would remake Moulin Rouge more realistically. At that time, censorship didn't permit the telling of the real Toulouse-Lautrec story.

[Q] Playboy: Given your interest in art, do you think there are other painters' lives that might make good pictures?

[A] Huston: Yes. I don't think justice was done to either Van Gogh or Michelangelo in Lust for Life and The Agony and the Ecstasy. Pictures could still be made about them, more serious, deeper pictures. But I've been influenced by painting in my own pictures. One of the things I look for in a color film is the palette: What palette do I use? Just as a painter, when he approaches a subject, decides what colors and tonalities. Moulin Rouge was in part an attempt to re-create something of the effect of the Lautrec posters.

[Q] Playboy: Which films by other people do you most admire?

[A] Huston: I find it easier to talk about the work of the director than about individual films. I like, of course, William Wyler enormously, the whole body of his work. John Ford, George Stevens--not unexpected names. Pictures from my youth--Covered Wagon; I was enormously moved by the profundity of Four Horsemen. [Laughs] Among the French, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Wages of Fear. De Sica's Bicycle Thief. The original Mutiny on the Bounty.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about remakes?

[A] Huston: Awful. They ought to remake the ones they did badly, but to remake a great picture is the ultimate in absurdity. Even if the remake is good, it can never be as good as the original. By Christ, you would think they would begin to realize that!

[Q] Playboy: What contemporary films have impressed you?

[A] Huston: The last picture that I saw that I liked without reservation was Gallipoli. It was a marvelous picture, unrecognized for how good it was, simply a great picture from every standpoint. Another that impressed me not as a great picture but as interesting was the one about the three old men who robbed a bank, Going in Style. Ordinary People was well written, not inspired but excellent. That other Australian film, Breaker Morant. Godfather II was a hell of a picture, beautifully acted. Who played in Taxi Driver?

[Q] Playboy: Robert De Niro.

[A] Huston: Jesus, that was good. I didn't know it was De Niro when I began watching. I just knew it was marvelous. Christ, what a performance! I've seen a few pictures on TV that I would have missed otherwise. One was kind of awful but more interesting than people realized--De Niro in The King of Comedy. I found it distasteful and boring at first; then, about the third time I saw it on TV, I was fascinated. It was realism taken to the point of excruciating, sickening truth. It's a rather important document, I think, but mine is the first voice I've heard in praise of it.

[Q] Playboy: What about the blockbusters--the Star Wars and Raiders pictures, E.T.?

[A] Huston: Yes, fine ... they've been done now. It's fascinating that such a large segment of mankind fell in love with the E.T. creature. It shows a good impulse.

[Q] Playboy: And what do you think of Steven Spielberg as a director?

[A] Huston: My God, I think he is as inventive as hell; I take my hat off to him. He's an ordinary man with an extraordinary expression.

[Q] Playboy: And George Lucas?

[A] Huston: I would lump them together.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of actors, such as Warren Beatty and Barbra Streisand, who turn to directing?

[A] Huston: Beatty did an extraordinary job with Reds. What I most admired was his taking that subject. He is someone to contend with; his choices of material indicate quite a well-furnished apartment upstairs. I think, by the way, Bonnie and Clyde was one of the important pictures of our time.

[Q] Playboy: And Streisand?

[A] Huston: I'm impressed with her choosing Yentl; it was extraordinary. But for some reason, Hollywood turned against her.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Huston: I don't know; perhaps because she had some romantic hookup with this guy who was her hairdresser and she was calling the shots and they were out of their depth ... there was a lack of sympathy toward her, I felt. I always felt Streisand was capable of far more than playing the Pussycat or the little Brooklyn Jewish girl. Christ, she could have played Cleopatra better than Liz Taylor, with her enormous power and the subtlety of her singing. I said to my friend Ray Stark [the producer of Funny Girl], "You are not doing the best thing you could with this girl."

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to direct her?

[A] Huston: I certainly would, because she is one of the great actresses and she hasn't been well used.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Meryl Streep, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda?

[A] Huston: Meryl Streep and Faye Dunaway are quite extraordinary. I like Jane Fonda for what she does, but it hasn't that scope to it. I think Jessica Lange has something that's very fine.

[Q] Playboy: How about Kathleen Turner, who's in your new film?

[A] Huston: Superb. I don't think there's any question she's a major actress. She's got it all. It's the kind of acting that you're born with; it's not learned. It's channeled and, my God, it flows.

[Q] Playboy: Does she remind you of anyone?

[A] Huston: No, and that's why she's wonderful: The good ones don't remind you of anybody else.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about your own acting?

[A] Huston: I don't put any great store in my acting; I don't take it seriously. I liked myself in Chinatown. And when I saw the picture about the Kennedys, Winter Kills, I thought that was amusing. But not much else. I just spoke my lines. But do you know who the best reader of lines is--at least on cue cards? The master?

[Q] Playboy: Who?

[A] Huston: Ronald Reagan. I saw him give a speech when he was in South Korea, and it was a damn good one. He spoke to the audience and he didn't look at the camera, you didn't see him reading his lines. It was the only thing about Ronald Reagan that ever impressed me.

[Q] Playboy: You and Reagan go back a long way, don't you?

[A] Huston: Yes, I have known him for a long time, since he was working with Warner Bros. I knew his wife, Nancy, who is the daughter of great friends of my father's, Dr. Loyal and Edith Davis. When Nancy went out to Hollywood, she was sort of under my wing for a while, and then she married Ronnie. I'd see them occasionally.

[Q] Playboy: Did your opinion of Nancy lower any when she married Reagan?

[A] Huston: Oh, no. I love Nancy--and I don't dislike Ronnie, I just disagree with his politics. But I submit one thing: The idea that Nancy is archconservative and reactionary and that she is the influence on Ronnie that has guided his political thinking is absurd, absolute nonsense.

[Q] Playboy: Do you miss the old Hollywood?

[A] Huston: Yes, I miss the order that the old Hollywood had. It was much easier then to get a picture made than it is today. It's become a cliché that the studio people were picture makers then, but there is a large element of truth in it. They were people who wanted to make pictures, and they knew how to make them. They weren't accountants and bookkeepers, tax consultants and efficiency experts who don't know how to make pictures, or wheeler-dealers; that element just seems to have taken over today--promoters who just want to get a part of the action rather than people who want to make good pictures. They'll get a picture, get an actor, wheel and deal and get a package together and present it to a studio and the studio will then pass on it. It's amazing that pictures ever get made--and a bad picture, a picture with no qualifications whatever, can get made as readily as something like Terms of Endearment, which was turned down by every studio in town. As to the Hollywood social scene, I've managed to avoid that for a lifetime, except in very small doses. I like country life--not farming but the sports that attend to country life: huntin', shootin' and fishin', as it were. I like working with and being with animals. I like making a picture if I feel I'm on the way to getting something good. I despair of making a picture if I feel it's going badly, which occasionally happens. Only occasionally, thank God--otherwise, I wouldn't go on making films.

[Q] Playboy: After all these years, are you still affected by reviews?

[A] Huston: Yes, the bad ones hit me. I read something recently that disturbed me no end. There's a female reviewer for The New Yorker who was writing about The Night of the Iguana, saying it was a badly made picture. Well, it's not a badly made picture. I know damn well it's not. She is a cunt. I'm prepared to forgive her for a lot of things but not for that. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: With cassettes and cable and satellite dishes, do you think seeing movies in a theater will become a thing of the past?

[A] Huston: I should think so. I find it very difficult to go to a theater if I have to line up round the block to see a picture. I'd go to see a fight or a horse race that way, but I would be goddamned if I would go to see a picture under those terms.

[Q] Playboy: Did you once tell Bogart that you were forever and eternally bored?

[A] Huston: No. Perhaps I was saying I was afraid of being bored, which is true. If I'm threatened with boredom, why, I'll run like a hare.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a secret to maintaining your creativity through a long life?

[A] Huston: Have I told you the story of a jai alai game I attended once? No? Well, there was a point that went on and on, an unbelievable rally that lasted five or more minutes, until one of the players lost. I heard the man behind me say, "He didn't lose it; his grandfather lost it." Well, it's not me; it's my grandparents.

[Q] Playboy: It's in the genes?

[A] Huston: Yeah, though you have to keep exercising the brain--it's a muscle like any other. I say this as the gates of senility open before me like a Beverly Hills estate.

[Q] Playboy: Are you afraid of death? Would you like to be in control of your own death, as Hemingway was?

[A] Huston: No, I don't care about that. What I wouldn't want to do is to hang around half out of my mind. I hope death approaches me very quietly, gently, touches me with a sleeve, says, "Lie down," puts its fingers over my eyes.

[Q] Playboy: But until then--

[A] Huston: There is usually something to do to keep from being bored--read a book, see a painting, ride a horse, skydive....

[Q] Playboy: You've left out something.

[A] Huston: Oh, yes, make another picture.

"What the hell. You can have a heart attack in the Beverly Hills Hotel and be dead before you get to the ambulance."

"Everyone said Jeanette MacDonald pissed ice water, but L.B. knew that she had heart."