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Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781629142371 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2014 |
| Edition description: | Updated |
| Pages: | 872 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.60(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
"JUST GIVE 'EM HELL!"
THE SUN WARMED THE MEXICAN COAST ON CHRISTMAS day in 1986, but John Huston couldn't feel it. The chill in his bones began the night before and he knew, but would never admit, that his doctors had been right when they advised him not to make the trip. No one thought he should go — his children, his friends, those who were involved with his next picture all knew it was a bad idea to make such a journey in his condition.
It was madness to be so far away from Cedars-Sinai Hospital and the IVs and antibiotics that had become commonplace in his life. But once Huston had made up his mind to see Mexico for possibly the last time, no one was going to talk him out of it. The man was eighty years old and had been suffering from what one of his doctors called "the worst case of emphysema I've ever seen" for more than twenty years. He had been given up for dead at least three times. His lung had collapsed seventeen years before, in 1969, just as he was to begin The Kremlin Letter in Finland. Over the years he had suffered a gut operation, various bouts of pneumonia, gout, eye problems, and surgery for an aneurism — the same ailment that caused his father's death in 1950. Huston knew the risks involved in leaving Los Angeles, but he also remembered that his father died at the Beverly Hills Hotel before the ambulance arrived. If John was going to die, then at least let it be the way he had lived his life: on his own terms. And even if his doctor had warned him about how severe his sickness was, the doctor had also told him that he'd probably live forever — an idea everybody who knew John Huston was beginning to believe.
Even Maricela, his companion, whom Huston said he had grown to love more than any of his wives, wasn't happy about going back to her native country for only a short time. She would have preferred to settle in, to see her mother and her family, to get into a routine. But with "that stubborn bull" there were no routines.
She was fifty years his junior. With her close-cropped hair and strong, stout body she resembled a young Gertrude Stein as Diego Rivera might have painted her. When she wasn't referring to Huston as an old bull, she called him "Papa Bear." He called her "Baby." Like many of the women in Huston's life, Maricela Hernandez was Eliza Doolittle — the only good thing to come out of his fifth marriage, he sometimes joked. When Cici, wife number five, threw him out one time too many, it was Maricela, Cici's maid, who came to him. Cici, he would later say, was a "crocodile." But Maricela was an angel — an illegal alien, totally devoted to taking care of him. "To this day," Huston observed, "her green card is more important to her than a doctor's diploma." Huston's first son, Tony, had come to believe she was a saint. "She's the only reason Dad is alive today." Huston had bought a house for her in Puerto Vallarta, and they went there for a week before Christmas.
Zoe Sallis, the forty-seven-year-old bronze-hued, attractive mother of Huston's other son, Danny, flew in from London, as was her custom, to be with them during the holidays. Zoe had been born in India, educated in England, was devoted to a guru, dedicated to her son Danny, protective of John, and not very fond of Maricela. Although they had never married, Huston had supported her most of her adult life.
John Hankins, Huston's longtime friend, who lived in Ajijic, near Guadalajara, had driven five hours to Puerto Vallarta to see him. They got to know each other in Africa, when Huston was making The African Queen. Hankins was his pilot. "The bravest man I ever knew," Huston would say. They became great friends. Now they played backgammon and reminisced about old times.
* * *
Both Tony, thirty-six, and Danny, who was not yet twenty-five, arrived three days before Christmas. Tony was tall, lean, and preppy, with a hawkish face, a smug smile, and a distinctive manner of speaking. All the psychological traumas of being the first son and growing up in the shadow of a great man had penetrated his soul. Danny had a rugby player's body and an innocent, congenial face. He resembled his grandfather, Walter Huston, as a young man. Since he had grown up seeing his father only on holidays, he didn't carry his elder half-brother's burden and was, subsequently, a delight to his father. Tony had brought a pound of caviar and Danny a book on Henry Moore to give to John.
Anjelica, Huston's daughter, wasn't going to make it; she was in Aspen with Jack Nicholson, but Allegra, Tony and Anjelica's half-sister, had flown in from London to be with her "father." Allegra, whose IQ was touted like a thoroughbred's lineage, was not Huston's by blood, but he considered her his daughter. When her mother, John's fourth wife, Ricki, died in a car accident in 1969, Allegra was only four. Although Ricki was still legally married to John, they had separated long before. Allegra's real father, an English Lord and travel writer named John Julius Norwich, never publicly acknowledged the child as his, and it was Huston who said he'd take her and give her his name. Now she was working for a publishing company. Her Christmas gift for John was a silver pen.
Once Huston decided to go to Mexico for two weeks at Christmas various friends planned to come down and visit him in Puerto Vallarta and at Las Caletas, the primitive home he had carved out of the jungle along the coast, which could only be reached by boat. The land belonged to the Chacala Indians and Huston had rented it for ten years, figuring they would be his last. But he survived the lease and had paid $10,000 for another year. It was a far cry from his huge Georgian manor in Galway, which he had filled with the art treasures he had collected over his life. There, dinners were formal affairs, guests were often celebrated, Tony had learned to raise falcons, Anjelica put on dog and pony shows, Huston became co-master of the Galway Blazers and rode to the hounds. At Las Caletas, Huston had decided to shed the material life. His only concessions to the outside world were a shortwave radio and a satellite dish, which brought him the sports he loved to watch. Despite the chill Huston felt the night before, he still insisted on taking the open boat there.
It was not an easy trip. Attached to plastic tubing that ran from his nose to an oxygen tank, he had limited mobility. From the car, a huge, heavy chair was brought for him to sit in and long poles were placed underneath to balance it. Huston, like an Ashanti chief in his palanquin, was lifted and gently placed on board the small boat. The ride over was choppy and took almost three-quarters of an hour. By the time they arrived he was looking gray, and Tony and Maricela were worried that they had made a mistake in letting him talk them into this trip. Tony was upset that his father wasn't showing appreciation at having his family with him. Zoe was upset with Tony's attitude, and Danny sided with his mother. Allegra never could bear Tony's arrogant behavior. And Maricela could do without them all; she was the one who would have to nurse John. And she was afraid that his pallor meant Tony better start calling Dr. Rea Schneider in Los Angeles.
When his other doctor, forty-five-year-old cardiologist Gary Sugarman, heard that Huston was in Mexico, he couldn't believe it. "Oh, shit. I specifically told that bastard he was not supposed to go. A cold or cough today, it's pneumonia in two days, and that's the easiest way to lose him."
The ordeal of caring for Huston was a heavy burden for Dr. Sugarman, who considered the grand old master not only "bigger than life," but also "the most singular, most interesting man I've ever met. Keeping him alive is a tremendous responsibility. I know he adores that place in Mexico, but he's got to give it up."
But try telling that to Huston, who had put so many things in his past — America, his U.S. citizenship, Ireland, fox hunting, big-game hunting, smoking, boxing, whoring, five wives, countless homes — all he had left was Mexico. "It's funny to think of my octogenarian father as being homeless," Anjelica observed, "but he is." No, he wasn't ready to put Mexico in his past.
Mexico was where, as a teenager, Huston first became fascinated by the "quest for adventure," where he saw generals driving long Pierce-Arrows, as their chauffeurs uncorked champagne bottles in the backseat, and theater ushers were shot dead for presenting an unacceptable seat to a self-important official. In the forties and fifties it was the place that brought out the pirate in him, as he explored jungle-covered ruins and smuggled out precious pre-Columbian art. And it was Mexico that was the site of some of his great film triumphs. It was where he directed his father in his only Oscar-winning performance in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and brought home an Indian kid named Pablo to his unsuspecting third wife, Evelyn Keyes. Where he returned again in the sixties to sleepy Mismaloya Beach to make Night of the Iguana, bringing with him a cast of characters that had newspapers around the world sending correspondents to report the anticipated fireworks. And still again, in the eighties, to film Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry's classic study of drunkenness and despair in Cuernavaca.
Now he sat in his living room, with Tony and Maricela watching anxiously over each wheeze, with Zoe and Danny and Allegra hoping to get at least one swim in. Huston began to wonder whether it was worth making still another effort to ward off the inevitable. He'd been fighting for so many years — the chills, the colds, the fevers, the infections, the coughing and choking — perhaps it was time to live out his days in quiet, surrounded by his family. "I don't know," he said to his eldest son, his soulful eyes made deeper by the pouches below them, "whether I can face going back again. I don't know, sometimes, whether the battle is worth it."
For Tony, those were fighting words. He knew from experience that it was a dangerous sign when his dad stopped being grouchy. But Tony was also feeling something else. His father had come to Mexico to rest before he plunged into making The Dead. It wasn't a movie that could easily be taken over by another director. "The Dead," a short story written by James Joyce, was as delicate as a spider's web. Funds had been raised on Huston's name alone. It would probably be his last picture. With Huston directing, it could easily make back its low budget. But Tony's concern was what if his father was ready to forget about The Dead, what would happen to his chance? Tony Huston had written the screenplay for The Dead. It was his shot, at long last, to prove, not only to himself, but to his father as well, that he was capable of more than playing with falcons or casting a balanced rod.
At thirty-six, Tony's professional life was still waiting to get started. He had chances in the past: At twelve, his father cast him in The List of Adrian Messenger; at twenty, his father let him try his hand at rewriting The Last Run; at twenty-five, he attempted writing music for The Man Who Would Be King; at thirty, he was made a second assistant director, a gofer, on Wise Blood. Nothing had really worked. This time, with James Joyce to guide him and his father to direct, Tony felt he finally had a chance for an honestly earned credit. He needed his father to live long enough to let him have that chance.
On the shortwave to Dr. Schneider, Tony described his father's symptoms and she said he must be brought back to Cedars. Huston, who hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours, had finally consented to swallow some food when Tony burst in and said with as much conviction as he could muster, "Dad, we have to get you back." Huston put down his fork. Zoe, Danny, and Allegra were furious with Tony for not waiting until John had eaten, but Tony had Maricela on his side and just told them all to bugger off.
Danny almost came to blows with his half-brother. Zoe was beginning to sense a radical change in the family chemistry. Tony had always been put down by John, but John now was beginning to listen to him. Allied with Maricela, he could undermine everyone. Tony made arrangements for himself, John, and Maricela to catch a four P.M. flight from Puerto Vallarta to Los Angeles on December 26. Zoe, Danny, and Allegra would stay another day at Las Caletas.
Tony was pleased that he had taken charge. He was relieved to be away from the others, who weren't, really, he liked to think, the same kind of family as he was to his dad.
Still, it had been upsetting. "It was the first family brouhaha for a very long time," Tony said. "Zoe spent most of her time in Mexico telling everybody that they were hated by everybody else. ... Telling Maricela that I detested her; telling me that Maricela hated me." Maricela, who was closest to John, had become the target because of a list of her alleged misdeeds that John Hankins had made and given to the family without John's knowledge. "It was ways that Maricela mistreated Dad," Danny recalled. "Like turning the generator off or saying it was broken and was sent to be fixed when in fact it had been sold. Or not giving him a breathing treatment when he wanted one. It was trivia like that and I thought this man was a little senile and thought he was seeing things that were not actually true." Nevertheless, the family met to discuss whether they should ignore it or mention it to John.
"Then Dad got ill," Danny continued, "and Tony blurted everything out to Maricela. Maricela blurted everything out to Dad, and it kind of got bigger than what it was supposed to have been."
Tony felt he had done nothing wrong, since he was siding with Maricela. "Actually," Tony said, "it's Allegra who looked down on Maricela, because she remembers her as Cici's maid. Allegra, in one sense, is very intelligent; in another sense, she's dumb. It's the dumbness of the supersmart. Allegra doesn't know that she hates Maricela, yet everything she does indicates it to somebody who can see. That's what it came down to: There was this tremendous jealousy of Maricela, who is one of the most remarkable people I've ever met. Nobody that I know has matured better than Maricela."
* * *
Five months earlier, in July, Tony had sat with his father in Burgess Meredith's Malibu home as Huston dissected his son's first draft screen- play of The Dead. It was a significant moment in Tony's life. "It was the first time that I've ever gotten on so well with Dad," Tony recalled. "And I learned something. Dad had the finest analytical mind I'd ever run in to. He was able to unravel something down to its basics. When he was criticizing my work, his mind was like a laser beam trying to get to the truth.
"But if you were not working with him on something, that laser frequently got turned on you. Particularly if you were his child. The very source of his writing ability could be extremely destructive in personal relationships. Because he could take one to bits."
The lesson Tony learned was a revelation: stay out of his father's way when there was no project to wedge between them. All those years of torment and abuse ... if only Tony had known!
At that time, The Dead was only an idea without backing. Nevertheless, Huston had wanted to solve certain structural problems with the script before leaving for Europe to make a film of John Louis Carlino's Haunted Summer, about the summer Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley spent in Italy with Lord Byron, when Mary Shelley conceived the idea for Frankenstein. Huston was excited about making the film. He had instructed the producer, Martin Poll, to hire his favorite art director and set designer, Stephen Grimes. He had discovered Grimes in 1954, when he was preparing Moby Dick. Over the next twenty-two years, Grimes was Huston's art director for fourteen pictures. They talked over details by phone between Italy and Malibu as Grimes got things ready for Huston's arrival in Rome in August.
Zoe and Danny were also awaiting Huston's arrival in London, where he had hoped to spend two weeks in final preparation for the film. Danny was especially excited because his father had asked him to assist him with the direction. But a week before he was to depart, Huston caught a chill, which turned into pneumonia. He was rushed to the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai — the ugliest, most depressing place in the world, as far as he was concerned — where they stuck needles into his bone- thin arms, intravenously fed him experimental antibiotics, and told him there was no way he could travel abroad to make a movie.
When Zoe and Danny heard that John was back in intensive care, they flew from London to be at his side. Tony was already there and so was Anjelica. "It was serious," Anjelica said, "but I'd seen him more critical than that. He was a terribly strong man, and his willpower was remarkable." His cardiologist instructed nurses to give Huston breathing treatments every hour all through the night, making sleep impossible.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Hustons"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Lawrence Grobel.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction xi
Part 1
1 "Just Give 'em Hell" 1
Part 2
2 Ma, Where's Pa? 43
3 To Be or Not to Be 60
4 Getting Married 71
Part 3
5 The Heart of a Trouper 85
6 Rising Stars 113
7 Dreadful Melodramas 140
8 Father and Son: Center Stage 168
Part 4
9 "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" 201
10 Women and War 234
11 Psychic Landscapes 262
Part 5
12 Keyes to a Treasure 277
13 Wheel of Fortune 295
14 "There'll Never Be Another Like Me" 328
Part 6
15 Red Badge and the Queen 351
16 Wild in Paris 379
17 The Devil and the Deep-Blue Sea 400
18 Up to Their Heads 430
19 Shooting in Mexico 456
Part 7
20 The Philosopher, the King, and the Goddess 475
21 Civilization and Its Discontents 501
22 "I Have a New Brother" 519
23 "And the Children Struggled Together" 544
24 Reflections 568
25 No Love, and Death 584
Part 8
26 Hard Times 611
27 Taking the Fifth 634
28 Enjoining Hearts 662
Part 9
29 Blood Ties 695
30 Mephistopheles to His Own Faust 727
31 The Collector of Souls 756
Epilogue 778
Postscript: After John 788
Notes 804
Films and Plays 817
Index 823