Walter Huston

Walter Thomas Huston (/ˈhjuːstən/;[1] né Houghston; April 5, 1883[1] – April 7, 1950) was a Canadian actor and singer. Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son John Huston. He is the patriarch of the four generations of the Huston acting family, including his son John, Anjelica Huston, Danny Huston, Allegra Huston, and Jack Huston. The family has produced three generations of Academy Award winners: Walter, his son John, and John's daughter Anjelica.

Walter Huston
Huston in The Furies (1950)
Born	Walter Thomas Houghston (1883-04-05)April 5, 1883 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	April 7, 1950(1950-04-07) (aged 67) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Resting place	Belmont Memorial Park
Occupation	Actor, singer
Years active	1902–1950
Spouse(s)	Rhea Gore ​ ( m. 1904; div. 1912) Bayonne Whipple ​ ( m. 1915; div. 1924) Ninetta (Nan) Sunderland ( m. 1931)
Children	John Huston
Relatives	Tony Huston (grandson) Anjelica Huston (granddaughter) Danny Huston (grandson) Allegra Huston (granddaughter)

Early life

Huston was born in Toronto, Ontario, where he attended Winchester Street Public School.[1][2] He was the son of Elizabeth (née McGibbon) and Robert Moore Huston, a farmer who founded a construction company.[3] He was of Scottish and Irish descent.[4] He had a brother and two sisters, one of whom was the theatrical voice coach Margaret Carrington (1877–1941).

His family moved, before his birth, from Melville,[5] just south of Orangeville, Ontario, where they were farmers. As a young man, he worked in construction and in his spare time attended the Shaw School of Acting. He made his stage debut in 1902. He went on to tour in In Convict Stripes, a play by Hal Reid, father of Wallace Reid and also appeared with Richard Mansfield in Julius Caesar. He again toured in another play The Sign of the Cross. In 1904, he married Rhea Gore (1882–1938) and gave up acting to work as a manager of electric power stations in Nevada, Missouri. He maintained these jobs until 1909.

Career

In 1909, with his marriage foundering, he appeared with an older actress named Bayonne Whipple (born Mina Rose, 1865–1937).[6] They were billed as Whipple and Huston and, in 1915, they married. Vaudeville was their livelihood into the 1920s.

Huston began his Broadway career on January 22, 1924, when he performed there in the play Mr. Pitt.[7] He then solidified his Broadway career with roles in productions such as Desire Under the Elms, Kongo, The Barker, and Elmer the Great.

The "first camera study" of Huston for his title role in D. W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930)[8]

Once talkies began in Hollywood, he was cast in both character roles and as a leading man. His first major role was portraying the villainous Trampas in The Virginian (1929), a Western that costars Gary Cooper and Richard Arlen. Some of Huston's other early sound roles include Abraham Lincoln (1930), Rain (1932), and Gabriel Over the White House (1933).

Huston remained busy on stage and screen throughout the 1930s and 1940s, becoming during that period one of America's most prominent actors. He starred as the title character in the 1934 Broadway adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel Dodsworth as well as in the play's film version released two years later. For his role as Sam Dodsworth, Huston won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and was Oscar nominated. He performed "September Song" in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday (1938). Huston's recording of "September Song" is heard repeatedly in September Affair (1950).[9]

Huston makes an uncredited appearance in the 1941 film noir classic The Maltese Falcon, portraying the ship's captain who is shot just before delivering the black bird to Sam Spade, played by Humphrey Bogart. Walter's son, John Huston, directed the picture. As a practical joke during filming, John had his father enter the scene and die in more than 10 different takes.

Among several of his contributions to World War II Allied propaganda films, Huston in an uncredited role portrays a military instructor in the short Safeguarding Military Information (1942). That film was produced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and distributed by the War Activities Committee of the Motion Pictures Industry. He, along with Anthony Veiller, is also a narrator in the Why We Fight series of World War II documentaries directed by Frank Capra. Other films of this period in which he appears are The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) as Mr. Scratch, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and Mission to Moscow (1943). In the latter feature, a pro-Soviet World War II propaganda film, he plays United States Ambassador Joseph E. Davies.

Huston portrays the character Howard in the 1948 adventure drama The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was also directed by his son John. Based on B. Traven's novel, the film depicts the story of three gold prospectors in 1920s post-revolution Mexico. Walter Huston won the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film, while John Huston won the Best Director Academy Award, thus making them the first father and son to win at the same ceremony. His last film is The Furies (1950) in which he costars with Barbara Stanwyck and Wendell Corey. In that Western, Huston's final line is "There will never be another one like me."

Death

On April 7, 1950, two days after his 67th birthday, Huston died of an aortic aneurysm in his hotel suite in Beverly Hills.[10][11] He was cremated and his ashes were buried at Belmont Memorial Park in Fresno, California.[12]

Legacy

In 1960, a decade after his death, Huston received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard, memorializing his contributions to the entertainment industry through his extensive, critically acclaimed work in motion pictures.[13][14] He was also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.[15]

Huston's son John initially became a screenwriter before becoming an Academy Award-winning director and acclaimed actor. All of Huston's grandchildren have become actors, as well as his great-grandson. Granddaughter Anjelica sang "September Song" on the May 7, 2012 episode of the NBC TV series Smash.

In 1998, Scarecrow Press published John Weld's September Song—An Intimate Biography of Walter Huston.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1929	Gentlemen of the Press	Wickland Snell	Film debut
1929	The Lady Lies	Robert Rossiter
1929	The Virginian	Trampas
1930	Behind the Make-Up	Joe in Clark & White's Office	Uncredited
1930	Abraham Lincoln	Abraham Lincoln
1930	The Bad Man	Pancho Lopez
1930	The Virtuous Sin	Gen. Gregori Platoff
1931	The Criminal Code	Mark Brady
1931	The Star Witness	District Attorney Whitlock
1931	The Ruling Voice	Jack Bannister
1931	A House Divided	Seth Law
1932	The Woman from Monte Carlo	Captain Carlaix
1932	The Beast of the City	Jim Fitzpatrick
1932	Law and Order	Frame "Saint" Johnson
1932	The Wet Parade	Pow Tarleton
1932	Night Court	Judge Andrew J. Moffett
1932	American Madness	Thomas A. Dickson
1932	Kongo	Flint Rutledge
1932	Rain	Alfred Davidson
1933	Gabriel Over the White House	Hon. Judson Hammond
1933	Hell Below	Lieut. Comdr. T.J. Toler USN
1933	Storm at Daybreak	Mayor Dushan Radovic
1933	Ann Vickers	Judge Barney "Barney" Dolphin
1933	The Prizefighter and the Lady	Professor Edwin J. Bennett
1934	Keep 'Em Rolling	Sgt. Benjamin E. 'Benny' Walsh
1935	Trans-Atlantic Tunnel	President of the United States
1936	Rhodes of Africa	Cecil John Rhodes
1936	Dodsworth	Sam Dodsworth	New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor Nominated-Academy Award for Best Actor
1938	Of Human Hearts	Ethan Wilkins
1939	The Light That Failed	Torpenhow
1941	The Maltese Falcon	Captain Jacoby	Uncredited
1941	The Devil and Daniel Webster	Mr. Scratch	Alternative title: All That Money Can Buy Nominated-Academy Award for Best Actor
1941	Swamp Water	Thursday Ragan
1941	The Shanghai Gesture	Sir Guy Charteris
1942	Always In My Heart	MacKenzie "Mac" Scott
1942	In This Our Life	Bartender	Uncredited
1942	Yankee Doodle Dandy	Jerry Cohan	Nominated-Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1943	December 7th	Uncle Sam
1943	The Outlaw	Doc Holliday
1943	Edge of Darkness	Dr. Martin Stensgard
1943	Mission to Moscow	Ambassador Joseph E. Davies
1943	The North Star	Dr. Kurin
1944	Dragon Seed	Ling Tan
1945	And Then There Were None	Dr. Edward G. Armstrong
1946	Dragonwyck	Ephraim Wells
1946	Duel in the Sun	The Sinkiller
1948	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	Howard	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture National Board of Review Award for Best Actor New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor (2nd place)
1948	Summer Holiday	Mr. Nat Miller
1949	The Great Sinner	General Ostrovsky
1950	The Furies	T.C. Jeffords	(final film role)

See also

• Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood
• List of actors with Academy Award nominations

References

1. According to the Province of Ontario. Ontario, Canada Births, 1869–1911. ancestry.com
2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on November 15, 2012. Retrieved October 2, 2012.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
3. Morrison, Michael A. (1999). John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor (Volume 10 of Cambridge studies in American theatre and drama). Cambridge University Press. p. 75. ISBN 0-521-62979-9.
4. Huston, John (1994). An Open Book. Da Capo Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-306-80573-1.
5. Arthur Huston, "Melville Junction", Wm. Perkins Bull fonds, ca. 1934. Available at the Region of Peel Archives, Brampton.
6. "Walter Huston/Bayonne Whipple; response from Ancestry.com dated March 17, 2005". Archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com. 2005-03-17. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
7. "From the Archives: Heart Attack Fatal to Actor Walter Huston". Los Angeles Times. April 8, 1950.
8. "The Screen's Newest Lincoln", The New Movie Magazine (New York, N.Y.), March 1930, p. 82. Internet Archive, San Francisco, California. Retrieved September 11, 2019.
9. Crowther, Bosley (February 2, 1951). "September Affair,' With Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten, Opens at the Music Hall". The New York Times. Retrieved January 25, 2019.
10. "Hollywood Death of Walter Huston". The Glasgow Herald. Glasgow, Scotland. April 6, 1950. p. 4. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
11. Huston, John (1994). An Open Book. Da Capo Press. p. 185. ISBN 0-306-80573-1.
12. "Services Planned for Walter Huston". Spokane Daily Chronicle. Spokane, Washington. April 10, 1950. p. 9. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
13. "Walk of Fame Stars Walter Huston". Hollywood Chamber of Commerce/Walk of Fame.
14. "Hollywood Star Walk: Walter Huston". latimes.com.
15. "Theater Hall of Fame members".

Further reading

• Alistair, Rupert (2018). "Walter Huston". The Name Below the Title : 65 Classic Movie Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age (softcover) (First ed.). Great Britain: Independently published. pp. 129–133. ISBN 978-1-7200-3837-5.
• Weld, John (1998). September Song: An Intimate Biography of Walter Huston (hardcover) (First ed.). Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-3408-8.

External links

• Walter Huston on IMDb
• Walter Huston at the Internet Broadway Database