“To this day, having a single consuming interest is unthinkable to me. At different times in my life, boxing, writing, the horses, and art have been just as important to me as making pictures.”

“I think the camera is simply a better observer than the human eye. It sees into the soul somehow.”

John Huston is one of those amazingly talented, yet under-educated in the accepted sense, people who surface every now and then.  Son of the character actor, Walter Huston, who began in vaudeville, introducing his son John to the stage at age 3, and a newspaperwoman.  They divorced when John was very young, and he spent most of his youth travelling the country with one or the other.  Formal education ceased at age 14, when he left school to become a boxer - a career in which he gained some success and titles at state level.   This was followed by a spell of acting, a trip to Mexico where he joined the cavalry, and a spell in Paris studying painting and living on the streets.  In 1933 he returned to the US where he acted and wrote scripts, finally impressing Warner Brothers enough to be given the job of directing and writing The Maltese Falcon, which was a huge success and has become a classic.  During the war he served in the Signal Corps and made war documentaries.  This was followed by spells on Broadway, and success with films such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, until he left the US for Ireland, in disgust with the McCarthy purges.  Eventually he returned - first going to Mexico, and made many more films, some great, some not so great, as well as acting in films such as Chinatown as well.  He was married five times, and had numerous affairs.  He had two children - Anjelica and Danny, both actors in their own right, and two adopted children.  The emphysema from which he suffered in his later years did not slow him down, and he died of pneumonia, still filming at the age of 81.