I am grateful to the International Movie Data Base (IMDb) for the abundance of resources it provides about the entertainment industry. For example, about a multiple Academy Award Winner,  John Huston.

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A licensed pilot–and a prankster. He once flew over a golf course during a celebrity tournament and dropped 5,000 ping-pong balls on the players.

He is the only person to have ever directed a parent (Walter Huston) and a child (Anjelica Huston) to Academy Award wins.

His best friend Humphrey Bogart nicknamed Huston “Double Ugly” and “The Monster.”

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).

Once described Charles Bronson as “a grenade with the pin pulled.”

His WW II documentary Let There Be Light (1980) was one of the first films, if not the first film, to deal with the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD, called “shell shock” at the time) of soldiers returning from the war. Huston actually said that “If I ever do a movie that glorifies war, somebody shoot me.”

He based the documentary on his frontline experiences covering the European war and what he saw soldiers go through during and returning from the war.

Directed 15 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Sydney Greenstreet, Walter Huston, Claire Trevor, Sam Jaffe, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, José Ferrer, Colette Marchand, Deborah Kerr, Grayson Hall, Susan Tyrrell, Albert Finney, Anjelica Huston, Jack Nicholson and William Hickey. Bogart and Trevor won Oscars for their performances, as did Huston’s father Walter Huston and daughter Anjelica Huston.

After he and wife Ricki separated, she became pregnant by another man. When she died, Huston brought her daughter, Allegra Huston, to live with him and adopted her.

Ava Gardner was quoted as saying that her three films with Huston were “the only joy and fun I’ve ever had working in motion pictures.”

Late in his life he was invited to the Ronald Reagan White House for lunch (along with 20 or more other people, well-known in a variety of fields). The hostess for the occasion was the First Lady herself, Nancy Davis, who had known Huston slightly many years earlier because her stepfather, Dr. Loyal Davis, was Huston’s doctor. Although he was an outspoken Democrat, Huston attended the lunch and was the soul of tact and charm until Mrs. Reagan asked him if he didn’t think that her husband had turned out to be an even better President than everyone had expected. Smiling sweetly and still exuding the utmost affability, Huston replied, “Worse, my dear–far, FAR worse!” Mrs. Reagan’s response is not recorded, but it was Huston’s last visit to the White House.

Was amateur lightweight boxing champion of California.

Was known to have a mean streak when handling actors, and reportedly irritated John Wayne (who was slightly taller than Huston and much more massive) so much while filming The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958) that Wayne lost his temper and punched Huston, knocking him out cold.

Daughter Anjelica Huston was born while he was shooting The African Queen (1951) in Africa. He received the news of her birth by telegram.

He directed his father Walter Huston in three films: The Maltese Falcon (1941), In This Our Life (1942) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Accidentally struck and killed a Hollywood dancer, Tosca Roulien, while driving on Sunset Boulevard on September 25, 1933. Walter Huston appealed to MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer to use his influence with the LAPD regarding any questions of alcohol being involved. A subsequent inquest absolved Huston of any blame for the accident.

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: Huston played in The Other Side of the Wind (2018) and Welles in Moby Dick (1956) and The Roots of Heaven, and The Kremlin Letter.

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To learn more about John Huston‘s life and work, please click here.