Hollywood kept Huston busy over the next few years, in such early talkie classics as The Criminal Code (1931), American Madness, Law and Order (as a thinly disguised Wyatt Earp in a Western parable-cowritten by his son John-with resonance to Prohibition-era gangsterism), Rain (all 1932), and Gabriel Over the White House (1933, one of his most fas- cinating roles, as a corrupt president transfigured by an unexplained heavenly influence). He also appeared in Star Witness, The Ruling Voice (both 1931), Kongo, Night Court, Beast of the City (all 1932), Hell Below, The Prizefighter and the Lady, Ann Vickers, Storm at Daybreak (all 1933), Keep 'Em Rolling (1934), Transatlantic Tunnel (1935), and Rhodes of Africa (1936), among others.
Huston scored his greatest personal triumph in both stage and screen adaptations of Sinclair Lewis's Dodsworth playing the retired industrialist who sheds his nagging, unfaithful wife for true love with an American expatriate in Europe. Huston received a 1936 Oscar nomination for his solid, intelligent work in that film, although he more or less abandoned movies for the next few years (except for supporting turns in 1938's Of Human Hearts and 1939's The Light That Failed He earned another Academy Award nomination for his canny performance as "Mr. Scratch" in All That Money Can Buy (1941), the screen adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster," scored a triumph on Broadway in "Knickerbocker Holiday" (singing "September Song"), and played a bit in his son John Huston's directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon (1941, as the mortally wounded ship captain who brings Bogart the Falcon).
The role of George M. Cohan's father in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) brought Huston his first Academy nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He appeared in John Ford's propagandistic December 7th (1942), Howard Hughes's oft-delayed The Outlaw (filmed in 1941), played in the Russian-themed Mission to Moscow and The North Star (both 1943), and was misguidedly cast as an Asian in Dragon Seed (1944). (Many thought of him as a quintessentially American actor.)And Then There Were None (1945), based on a novel by Agatha Christie, gave Huston a delicious supporting role as a drunken doctor who may also be a murderer. Huston was among the all-star cast in David O. Selznick's epic Technicolor Western, Duel in the Sun (1946), and finally won an Oscar for his rich supporting role in son John's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), as the crusty, cackling old desert rat who leads Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt to a gold deposit. It was an unqualified triumph for both Hustons. He remained active-and prominent-in such movies as Summer Holiday (1948), The Great Sinner (1949), and The Furies (1950), the last-named completed shortly before his death.
Father of John Huston, Grandfather of Tony Huston, Anjelica Huston and Danny Huston.
Later,
Kenaz
