Want to know the best John Huston movies? How about the worst John Huston movies? Curious about John Huston’s box office grosses or which John Huston movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which John Huston movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
I have my dad to thank for the fact that I am a huge John Huston fan. My dad loved The Man Who Would Be King, The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo. All of those films were directed by Huston and they were movies that my dad talked about on a regular basis. I still remember when Huston had an interview in Playboy magazine. I might have been the only underage boy in the world trying to get my hands on a Playboy magazine….for the words in the magazine and not the pictures in the magazine.
John Huston (1906-1987) was an Oscar® winner director and screenplay writer. Huston was involved in making movies from 1930 to 1987. During that time he was involved in many classic films. His movies were nominated for a combined total of 86 Oscars®…winning 14 Oscars® in different categories. When looking at adjusted domestic box office….John Huston’s movies grossed over 4 BILLION dollars. So with all of these stellar numbers, I felt it was time for John Huston to finally have his own UltimateMovieRankings page……plus it was a requested page by RW, Timlin33, and CameroonWake.
His IMDb page shows 40 writing credits, 54 acting credits, 47 directing credits and 9 producing credits from 1930-1988. This page will rank 52 John Huston movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings.
John Huston Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort John Huston movies by Huston stars or co-stars
- Sort John Huston movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort John Huston movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort John Huston movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each John Huston movie received.
- Sort John Huston movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above John Huston Table
- Twenty-six John Huston movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 48.16% of his movies listed. Sergeant York (1941) iwas his biggest box office ht when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
- An average John Huston movie grosses $101.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 42 of John Huston’s movies are rated as good movies…or 77.77% of his movies. Chinatown (1974) is his highest rated movie while Tentacles (1977) was his lowest rated movie.
- Twenty-four John Huston movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 44.44% of his movies.
- Ten John Huston movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 18.51% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 36 John Huston movies scored higher than that average….or 66.66% of his movies. Sergeant York (1941) got the the highest UMR Score while Tentacles got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About John Huston
1. John Marcellus Huston was born in Nevada, Missouri.
2. John Huston was an accomplished boxer. He won the Amateur Lightweight Boxing Championship of California and finished his boxing career with a 22-3 record.
3. John Huston was married five times. Four of the marriages ended in divorce. His fourth marriage to Enrica Soma ended when she was killed in a car accident. He had five children.
4. The Huston acting family has 280 IMDb acting credits since 1929. John’s dad Walter had 53 credits, John had 54 credits, daughter Anjelica has 84, son Danny has 60 and grandson Jack has 29. This total is of June 8th, 2015.
5. This gets us to one of my favorite pieces of movie trivia. John Huston directed his dad, Walter Huston, to an Oscar® winning performance in 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 37 years later....John Huston directed his daughter, Anjelica Huston, to an Oscar winning performance in 1985’s Prizzi’s Honor.
6. John Huston was nominated for 15 Academy Awards®. He was nominated 5 times as Best Director, 8 times for Best Screenplay, 1 time for producing a Best Picture and 1 time as Best Supporting Actor. He won two Oscars®….both for 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He was also nominated for 8 Golden Globes®…winning three times.
7. John Huston’s role as Noah Cross in 1974’s Chinatown was named as the 16th Greatest Villain in movie history by the American Film Institute. Somehow…Huston did not get an Oscar® nomination for that very memorable role.
8. John Huston tried for many years to make The Man Who Would Be King. In the 1950s he wanted Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart to play the two leads. Their untimely deaths ended that. In the 1960s he tried unsuccessfully to get Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole for the parts. In the 1970s he approached Paul Newman and Robert Redford for the roles. Newman suggested that Huston talk to Michael Caine and Sean Connery. It might have taken 20 plus years to make the movie but it ended up working out pretty well.
9. The African Queen is an all-time classic. The adventures of Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, John Huston and Lauren Bacall while making the movie might be even more impressive than the movie. Lots of great books are out there about the filming of The African Queen and Clint Eastwood even did a movie about it…..one of his least seen movies….White Hunter Black Heart.
10. Check out John Huston’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Steve’s John Huston You Tube Video
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Steve’s John Huston video is now part of the page.
Thanks Bruce, appreciate the share.
gern geschehen
Well I commented on Steve’s video but could not get the link to this comment…will have to wait until I get back home.
I mentioned in Part One the big household names that DeMille, John Ford, Hitch and Huston became both in their own eras and historically. Although each of them worked with many stars throughout their careers, people like me growing up in the 1950s always tended to primarily associate those 4 producer/directors with a handful of particular performers. Ford was of course always linked to Duke Wayne in our minds, Hitch to Grant, Stewart and Grace Kelly, and because Greatest Show on Earth and Ten Commandments were such dominant 1950s epics when we kids heard DeMille’s name we immediately thought of our own big idol Chuck Heston. Indeed just as many moviegoers have to stop and remember that there were only 3 Rock/Doris films, the number of movies that the above-mentioned stars and directors made together greatly magnified themselves in our minds.
However possibly my own favourite linkage was the Bogie/Huston one because they both had such “hell-raiser” reputations that I greedily lapped up biographies that gave me many colorful anecdotes about them [though how much of it was true is open to question because it was said by some cynics that Bogie although verbally aggressive couldn’t have fought his way out of a wet paper bag.] However what is true is that they had a highly prolific and rewarding professional relationship and the beauty of your EP video is that it captures the full flavor of that relationship in its heyday and the video therefore scores 99% in my notes.
BEST POSTERS 1-20 To be honest I’m being a bit pretentious here as the quality was so even throughout that it is beyond my skills to distinguish the very best in most cases. Anyway I truly love Under the Volcano, 2 from Freud, 1st one for Night of Iguana, Fat City [criminally neglected by audiences] 2 great ones for Man Who Would be King, Moby Dick and the foreign language ones for Heaven Knows Mr Allison, Key Largo, Asphalt Jungle, and Treasure of Sierra Madre. Also striking is the poster for The Dead considered by Rogert Ebert as one of the greatest all time movies and which was John’s last directorial film and starred his daughter, and I presume for the African Queen we have another one of your excellent magnified lifts from a poster. I can’t stop there though because the first two stunners for Moulin Rouge must be mentioned too.
Super STILLS are (1) Burton with his “harem” (2) Moby Dick ensemble (3) Clift, Monroe and Gable (4) Audie in Red Badge of Courage, one of the few Huston movies released over here as a supporting feature (5) Maltese Falcon ensemble (6) Bogie and Katie. He claimed she was “bossy” on set but he loved it (7) confrontation between Bogie and “Mr Robinson” as Humph respectfully referred to Eddie at times on the Key largo set –“I’ll not start filming until Mr Robinson feels he is ready to join us.”
You and our own “hell raiser” agree on 5 of Huston’s Top 6 best reviewed movies. After those 5 you include in your 6 Asphalt Jungle whereas WH goes for Man who would be King in his
Hey Bob and Steve
1. John Huston is one of my all-time favorite directors…..so many great movies at the top of the rankings…..but sadly so many weak movies at the bottom.
2. I think the impact The Man Who Would Be King had on me is one of the main reasons for me liking him so much.
3. Sadly…YouTube will not let me log in to comment on Steve’s video…..and I do not have access to my website to add Steve’s video there.
4. I will have to catch up on all of the latest Lensman videos when I get back.
5. Good to know our ratings are so close.
6. “Hey Bob…we just bought you something…if you share your address we will get it in the air in the next few days….do you still have my e-mail address?”…this was from a previous comment that was not labeled “Cogerson to Bob”.
Looking forward to checking out Steve’s John Huston video.
HI BRUCE
Thanks for interesting feedback on my McDormand/Huston posts. I have e mailed you my home address.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and comparison, always appreciated. Happy to know the posters and stills met with your approval.
Huston worked with a lot of big name actors, but it’s a shame a Heston-Huston project never materialized. I think they would have enjoyed working together.
6 John Huston films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources, they are –
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Maltese Falcon ,The
Chinatown
African Queen ,The
Asphalt Jungle ,The
Man Who Would Be King ,The
7 more scored 9 out of 10 including Key Largo, Red Badge of Courage and Prizzi’s Honor.
Sierra Madre tops all the charts except at the UMR – Chinatown tops Bruce’s critics chart and Sergeant York tops the UMR chart.
Huston was one of the screenwriters on Sergeant York which was directed by Howard Hawks. I only included Huston’s acting and directing credits on my video. Otherwise it’ll be like seeing Citizen Kane pop up on Alan Ladd’s chart and who would want that? [Bob growls]
Huston on Paul Newman – “Paul Newman is full of innovation. He has wonderful immediate ideas.”
Huston on Jack Nicholson – “I have great respect for him. Not only as an artist but as an individual. He has a fine eye for good paintings and a good ear for fine music. And he’s a lovely man to drink with. A boon companion!”
Huston on George C. Scott – “One of the best actors alive. But my opinion of him as an actor is much higher than my opinion of him as a man.”
Huston on Robert Mitchum – “I think Bob is one of the very great actors and that his resources as an actor have never been fully tapped. He could be a Shakespearean actor.”
Huston on Clark Gable – “Clark Gable was the only real he-man I’ve ever known, of all the actors I’ve met.”
Huston on Albert Finney in Under the Volcano – “I think it’s the finest performance I have ever witnessed, let alone directed.”
Huston on Brando – “Brando was something else entirely. Brando had an explosive thing; you felt something smoldering, dangerous, about to ignite at times. Did you see Julius Caesar? Christ! I will never forget that; it was like a furnace door opening–the heat came off the screen. I don’t know another actor who could do that.”
HI STEVE
Thanks for comprehensive response to my Huston posts. I love the set of quotes you’ve given me.
Finney’s great 1984 performance in Under the Volcano had obviously replaced Brando’s 1967 Reflections one in Huston’s sentiments as the greatest performance he had directed. However no Brando fan could ever complain about Huston’s general tribute to Marlon in your final quote.
I agree it’s a pity OUR Chuck didn’t get to work with Huston whereas your fave Mumbler not only got to be directed by him but also to act alongside him in Candy though I don’t think they had any scenes together. Huston sure picked some oddball movies in which to demonstrate us his acting skills. Candy was a really weird one.
Bob, I saw Candy a few years ago and what a strange film it was too, one reviewer called it – “An incoherent, bewildering and hedonistic mess of a movie which must be seen to be disbelieved.” Brando wasn’t exactly choosy at that time (1968) and wasn’t about to turn down $50,000 to appear in it (flirting with the girls was a bonus). Four years later and he was back on top again.
HI STEVE
I’ve seen fees quoted for several Brando films but never for Candy so i appreciate the information.
That $50,000 for his Candy cameo is worth approx $360,000 in today’s money according to the US Bureau of Labor Stats. However that latter source shows that for a 3 scene cameo in George C Scott’s 1980 The Formula Marlon was paid 8.7 million in 2018 dollars, much more than poor George who was the movie’s star and in it throughout. To paraphrase an old saying “Thus are the mighty risen!”
In my opinion John Huston is among that select group of Classic Era Hollywood directors/producers such as DeMille, Hitchcock, and John Ford whose names were box office as well as a byword for high art. Just as the collaboration between Wayne and Ford enhanced the legendary status of both of them so did the working union of Bogie/Huston enhance their legend and of course many if not most of their classics are to be found among the films they made together.
Ironically therefore Huston is on record as saying that he thought that the best performance that he ever coaxed out of an actor was Brando’s one in the huge flop Reflections in a Golden Eye. Although the critics savaged that film Huston himself seemed pleased with it and in an interview that I saw on TV in which he was relaxing in a bath he said apparently quite proudly “ Others might be able to do a better job of it but it was the best work that I could ever do. “ [Bet you Joel didn’t agree!]
HUSTON VIDEO 45-21 All 3 for Tentacles, Phobia, Candy [huge ensemble cast but awful film which one columnist described as a vehicle for a bunch of leading actors to get rich as well as drunk on set] Battle for Planet of Apes, 1st one for Barbarian and Geisha [great poster for a terrible film that even a Wayne devotee such as I can’t defend ]Across the Pacific, foreign language one for Judge Roy Bean, Burt in iconic form with Audrey in The Unforgiven, Sir Michael Caine declaring Victory and a highly original 1st one for Reflections in a Golden Eye.
Your posters for that one reflects Brando’s low point in 1967 as after the 1951 Streetcar it was the only time he ever got second billing over half a century, leaving aside those cameos [Candy] and supporting parts [The Formula, The Score] for which he got ridiculous fees for the little he did. However even in Reflections he retained some clout as he got equal money to Liz the highest paid female star at the time and he also had final choice of stills. That choice must have been c*** though because you have included none of them!
Just 3 stills recorded in my notes on part One but I liked them (1) Flynn and Howard [I’ll bet some drinking went on when those two got together!] (2) the Ark (3) magnificent lobby card for Bogie’s Beat the Devil – the movie itself not one of their finest outings together in my view.
Enjoyable Part One as I got plugs in for 3 of my top idols, Wayne, Brando and Caine, but to be continued tomorrow——
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing the first half of my John Huston elongated video, it is to be appreciated. Enjoyed the trivia, glad you liked the picture show.
Yep lots of famous classics in Huston’s varied filmography, a skilled director and an Oscar nominated actor too.
Sorry I didn’t include stills from Reflections in a Golden Eye, don’t worry in the coming weeks you’ll get your money’s worth in stills featuring Brando and Liz, Clift and Frankie too. [Bob punches the air]
Look forward to part 2 of your review.
I never cared for “The African Queen,” I cannot say why. Huston remade it as “Heaven Knows Mr. Allison,” Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr filling in for Bogart and Hepburn. In some ways, it is better.
Hey James….thanks for the mini-review if African Queen….sorry you never cared for that movie. Now that you mention it…..Heaven Knows Mr. Allison has a lot in common with African Queen….I had never put that together before. Thanks for the comment and the visit.