Hard-Living Film Legend John Huston Dies in Sleep : Director of Classics Was 81

MIDDLETOWN, R.I. —  Director John Huston, who lived as hard and at times as dangerously as the characters he directed in a long and honored career, died today. He was 81.

Huston, who had suffered from emphysema for years, died in his sleep at a home he was renting near the filming site of “Mr. North,” which he was co-producing.

A longtime smoker, Huston had been released just last week from a hospital in Fall River, Mass., where he was treated for pneumonia.

He had also planned to act in “Mr. North” as he had in so many of the other films he directed, but the hospitalization forced him to turn over the role to Robert Mitchum.

During his half-century in film, Huston ventured deep into a jungle for “The African Queen,” pulled together misfits and outcasts for “Under the Volcano,” drank, caroused and befriended such mavericks as Ernest Hemingway and flourished in a Hollywood that cut most rebels down to size.

Films Considered Classics

Half a dozen of his 40 feature films were considered classics, including “The Asphalt Jungle,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “Key Largo.”

Orson Welles once said Huston was “playing Mephistopheles to his own Faust.” For his part, Huston, in his rich, deep voice, repeated his father’s advice: “Don’t work at anything simply for money. Choose your profession as you would choose your wife: for love--and for money.”

The business was in his blood. He was the son of Walter Huston and the father of Anjelica Huston, and made film history by directing each of them in movies that won them Oscars. He won two of his own for writing and directing “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

Forced to Use Oxygen

When he wasn’t behind the camera, Huston was narrating commercials and documentaries, writing screenplays or acting--in perhaps his best-known role, he played the corrupt father in “Chinatown.”

He rarely trimmed his pace, though he suffered in later years from emphysema that forced him to wear tubes leading to an oxygen tank. This summer, he completed his last film as director, the as-yet-unreleased “The Dead,” based on a James Joyce story and starring Anjelica. In order to get insurance, the producers, who included his son, Tony, had to have another director on standby.

Huston’s first acting role was as a Catholic bishop in “The Cardinal.” He played M in “Casino Royale,” and appeared in “Battle for the Planet of the Apes,” “Winter Kills” and “The Wind and the Lion.” He directed himself as Noah in “The Bible.”

Praised by Bogart

Humphrey Bogart, who starred for Huston in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The Maltese Falcon” and “The African Queen,” once said the 6-foot, 2-inch Huston, with his brooding manner, craggy face and broken nose, “has more color and is more photogenic than 90% of the actors in Hollywood.”

Huston was married five times, to Dorothy Harvey, Lesley Black, Evelyn Keyes, Enrica Soma and Celeste Shane. All ended in divorce, except for his marriage to Soma, who died after a long separation.

He had five children, Anjelica and Tony by Soma; Danny by Zoe Sallis; and Allegra and Pablo, whom he adopted. He had befriended Pablo, a Mexican orphan, while filming “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

“Recently I heard myself described as a living legend,” he remarked upon receiving an award for his achievements in 1985. “My doctors assure me that the first wintry blasts would almost certainly change my present status.”