Walter Huston
Walter Huston was Canadian by birth, 1884 to 1950, and he arrived in sound pictures as a fully formed adult actor with none of the silent-era mannerisms that sank so many contemporaries. The voice is the first thing anyone notices: dry, unhurried, able to sound kind and merciless inside the same sentence.
He was good at two things in particular. The first was decency under pressure, which is the whole of Sam Dodsworth in Dodsworth, a retired manufacturer whose marriage comes apart around him while he keeps trying to behave well. The second was its opposite, a relish for men who enjoy their own wickedness: Mr. Scratch in All That Money Can Buy, a rural devil with a farmer's manner, and the fire-and-brimstone missionary of Rain, whose certainty is the most dangerous thing in the film.
The late run is the famous one. He narrated the wartime documentary Why We Fight: Prelude to War, turned up uncredited as the ship's captain in The Maltese Falcon, and then took both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for supporting actor as the old prospector Howard in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son John. The performance is loose, cackling and delighted, a veteran finally allowed to be funny on screen. He is the patriarch of four generations of Huston actors, including John, Anjelica, Danny and Jack, and the standard the rest of them get measured against.
Movies (16)
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
- The Outlaw (1943)
- Duel in the Sun (1946)
- All That Money Can Buy (1941)
- The North Star (1943)
- And Then There Were None (1945)
- American Madness (1932)
- In This Our Life (1942)
- Why We Fight: Prelude to War (1942)
- Rain (1932)
- Swamp Water (1941)
- Dodsworth (1936)
- Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
- The Furies (1950)
- Dragonwyck (1946)
Where to start with Walter Huston
Two films do most of the work. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is the obvious one and it earns the reputation: Howard is the only man in the picture who understands what gold does to people, and Huston plays him as a capering pragmatist rather than a sage. Then watch Dodsworth, which is quieter and possibly better, a middle-aged marriage examined with an adult seriousness Hollywood almost never attempted.
After that, go for range. All That Money Can Buy has him playing the devil as a genial neighbour, Rain a missionary whose righteousness curdles, and The Furies a cattle baron who cannot let go of anything. Yankee Doodle Dandy is the warm paternal register, And Then There Were None the tidy Christie ensemble, and The Maltese Falcon a walk-on you will spot in a single scene.