31 thoughts on “Walter Huston Movies”

1. Added Steve latest video to this page. Our thoughts found on his channel.

   Walter week on Top 10 Charts? Who is next….Walter Pidgeon, Walter Matthau or Walter Disney? I have seen 7 of the movies….but they are all in the Top 11. I notice you did not give him credit for The Maltese Falcon (poor Captain Jacoby…dies in the movie and then does not get credit for it…lol)….for years that was the only movie I saw of his….and that was a cameo for his son. Growing up I was a huge fan of this son, John….mainly because of The Man Who Would Become King. Ok…back to Walter. Favorites would be #1 Treasure of Sierre Madre…great movie. #5 And Then There Were None….the best film version of that classic novel. I suspect after the success of Knives Out…that somebody is thinking of rebooting that movie in the near future. and #11 Dragonwyck…good solid movie. Good stuff. Voted up and shared

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   1. Hi Bruce, thanks for checking out my Walter Huston video, appreciate the vote and share. If I had included his uncredited cameo in The Maltese Falcon it would have been the no.1 film on the video which wouldn’t ring true and wouldn’t be fair to the other movies he had more meaty roles in.

      More Walters? Well I’ve done a video on Walter Pidgeon and recently showcased Disney animation in a lengthy video. How about Walter Slezak? Heard of him?
      Your tally 7, mine 6 and Flora beats us both with 19. My next subject was in three classic Brando movies.

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      1. Thinking your next subject will be one of the many Oscar winning co-stars of the best disaster movies of all-time. I am of course referring to the great Beyond The Poseidon Adventure. If my guess is correct, then you are considering One Eyed Jacks as one of Marlon’s classics.

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2. Your Huston video gave me 98% satisfaction and as with by far the greater part of your work, I found Walt’s video a joy to watch. I counted only 12 SETS of STILLS/LOBBY CARDS, but I liked them all.

   1/Sizzling Jane- another talented thespian who came under The Big Knife of Hirsch
   2/Walt and my Joan in Rain
   3/Shanghai Gesture – with Mature wearing a funny hat.
   4/Beast of the City
   5/Walt as Trampas in the Virginian***
   6/Duel in the Sun
   7/Edge of Darkness
   8/And Then there Were None-can never catch it nowadays on TV repeats.
   9/The Devil and Joel Webster/aka All That Money Can Buy
   10/Yankee Doodle Cagney
   11/two for Treasure of the Sierra Madre “Fred C Dobbs don’t lie!”
   12/ and especially: two for the great Dodsworth. I often watch my DVD of it again when I return from holiday.

   ***Good to see your Work Horse pal getting a plug in both the posters and still . In the long-running TV series [1962-71] of The Virginian, Doug McClure played Trampas as one of the HEROES.

   However Walt’s Trampas is a bad guy as was Brian Donlevy in the 1946 McCrea version. Brian can’t have been all bad: his parents came from Portadown over here where I was born and for a long time, columnists over here implied that HE too was born in Portadown whereas his birthplace was Cleveland Ohio, US. I loved the TV series but never saw either of the movies.

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3. “Walter Huston had a glowing, accessible warmth. Villain or hero, he turned all his co-stars into cardboard whenever he walked on the screen.” The Oracle, pontificating in his 1983 book. MY PICK OF THE 20 BEST POSTER ENTRIES IN YOUR HUSTON VIDEO:

   1/Walt as Uncle Abe***
   2/two for Rhodes
   3/foreign language for Dragonseed
   4/Hell Below
   5/The Great Sinner
   6/Mission to MANCHESTER
   7/two for Kongo
   8/two for Rain
   9/Shanghai Gesture – with Mature in a funny hat!
   10/Beast of the City
   11/Law and Order
   12/two for Dragonwyck
   13/The Furies
   14/American Madness – we witness a lot of that on this site!
   15/two for All that Money Can Buy
   16/first one for The Virginian***
   17/Dodsworth
   18/two for Treasure of the Sierra Madre
   19Joe Yule Jr and Walt in Summer Holiday
   20/two for Yankee Doodle Dandy.

   **TRIVIA No 1
   The Great ‘Linc’ was maybe ahead of his time when he observed that “You can fool some of the people ALL of the time,” – but Joel was on his way in the next century!!

   ***TRIVIA No 16
   THE VIRGINIAN: “Ya wanna call me that – SMILE!”
   TRAMPAS: “I always smile with a gun at my belly!”

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4. Walter Huston’s movie career ended in 1950 the year in which, at the age of 9, I started watching films, so I never became familiar with a fair number of his movies. However the ones that I most remember him in are my 3 favorites: Dodsworth, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and especially 1945’s And Then There were None, produced and directed by Rene Clair and based on the novel by The Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. Walter played an uncredited role in his son’s 1941 Bogie classic The Maltese Falcon, but I cannot recall Walt in that one; though The Work Horse includes it in HIS Top 6 Walter Huston films.

   On Broadway in 1938, in the musical play Knickerbocker Holiday, Walter, playing Peter Stuyvesant, introduced the classic nostalgic and haunting September Song. Walter’s recorded rendition of it has long been in my own musical collection, even since when I was a young man; though you’ll appreciate from the following extract from the lyrics that the song is more appropriate to me at my current age!! Ironically in real life Walt never reached “December”; regrettably, like Hirsch, and THAT was sad too, Walt died when he was only 67.

   Oh!it’s a long, long while
   From May to December
   And the days grow short
   When you reach September

   And I have lost one tooth
   And I walk a little lame
   And I haven’t got time
   For the waiting game

   And the days turn to gold
   As they grow few
   September, November
   And these few golden days
   I’d spend with you

   Sadly[from my perspective in view of my love of the song] the creators of the Knickerbocker Holiday play itself used it as a covert allegory that apparently sought to equate with Hitler’s fascism, US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s progressive and democratic New Deal economic policy which sought to meet the United States’ need to recover from the Great Depression.

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   1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and song lyrics, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.

      I’d love to see And Then There Were None but like you say it rarely pops up on TV, I saw the Oliver Reed version recently and it wasn’t very good. I think the original Agatha Christie title was Ten Little Indians? And there was a far more racist title too originally?

      I can’t remember if I’ve seen The 1929 Virginian, I hope I have it in the collection.

      Just when his career received a big boost with his Oscar for Sierra Madre, Walter sadly died at the age of 67. Loved his performance in Sierra Madre, a decent man who did the right thing at the end and survived, the moral of the tale. While Bogie was blinded by greed. Great movie.

      Five films scored 10 out of 10 in Huston’s filmography – Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Dodsworth, The Devil and Daniel Webster, And Then There Were None, the entire top 5.

      Sierra Madre is tops at both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. It’s no.1 at the UMR too.

      “I was certainly a better actor after my five years in Hollywood. I had learned to be natural – never to exaggerate. I found I could act on the stage in just the same way as I had acted in a studio: using my ordinary voice, eliminating gestures, keeping everything extremely simple.”

      On accepting the Supporting Actor Oscar for Sierra Madre – “Many years ago . . . many, MANY years ago [laughter from the audience] I brought up a boy, and I said to him, “Son, if you ever become a writer, try to write a good part for your old man sometime”. Well, by cracky, that’s what he did!”

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      1. HI STEVE: Thanks for the fine feedback. The history of And Then there Were None’s title is rather convoluted but as far as I can make out it goes as follows.

         1/Agatha’s original title for the book was the now-perceived racist title Ten Little Ni**ers, probably the EXCEPTIONALLY RACIST TITLE title you’re thinking about, and initially the 1945 movie was released here in the UK under that title.

         2/In 1958 when I first saw the 1945 movie locally it was still called Ten Little Ni**ers. Ultimately of course ‘political correctness’ caught up with it.

         3/I saw it as well under the title Ten Little Indians starring Hugh O’Brien in 1965; but I think that today everybody has bowed to ‘political correctness’ and THEY ALL call it And Then There were None.

         4/I have also recently seen a 3rd version of it, a television mini-series under of course the Then there Were None title. It was released by BBC in 3 parts [combined length 180 mins] over Christmas 2015 and Charles Dance and Sam Neill were probably the two most important stars in it.

         5/Barry Fitzgerald was [unusually] the top-billed star in the Huston 1945 movie; and Charles Dance played Barry’s part in the TV miniseries with Toby Stephens in the Huston role.

         6/The mini-series was enjoyable but (1) for me it didn’t have the atmosphere that Rene Clair enthused into the 1945 film (2) once you know the ending a movie usually doesn’t have the same impact anyway, Hitch’s Psycho being the possible exception.

         7/I thought the Hugh O’Brien version was the poorest of the 3 versions that I’ve seen; the 1974 Reed/Richard Attenborough version has so far escaped me and from you say I have been lucky!

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         1. STEVE – Apologies for spelling ‘O’Brian’ as ‘O’Brien’. The Work Horse will be on my case if I don’t quickly point out the error!

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5. walter huston had a bit part in the reissue of birth of a nation(1915) reissued in 1931. not only is walter ,john hustons father , also angelica hustons grandfather , I love her acting. I saw top 5. 10 and favorite : maltese falcon. 10 not favorite : yankee doodle dandy. 9s not favorites: treasure of the sierra madres, dodsworth. duel in the sun did not get much from an incredible cast a 7, pleasant to see on a rainy afternoon if no 8s,9s, or 10s available.

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   1. Hey bob cox. Good thoughts on Walter Huston. The Huston family has lots of talent. Your comment does not even include Danny Huston (character actor in a million movies) and the 4th generation Huston…Jack who took over the Ben-Hur role in a recent ok movie. One day I will have a page on Angelica. Right there with you on Maltese Falcon. I enjoyed Duel in the Sun much more than you did….but I have not seen it in a very long time. Good stuff.

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