THE MASTER HUSTON

“I want to go in there,” John Huston said abruptly. He was in the middle of directing a scene from “The Dead,” his 40th feature, and the scene needed Huston. All morning he had been ensconced just outside the set, framing the shots on a TV monitor, and he had been patient. But the scene--of actor Dan O’Herlihy pouring himself a drink at a Dublin dinner-dance circa 1904--was taking too long. Huston is economical; on “Prizzi’s Honor” he got all but two scenes on a first or second take. And working with a TV monitor proves no hindrance--Huston frames the shots, as his son Tony puts it, “like an Old Master, but faster.”

Though uninsurable due to emphysema--his friend, director Karel Reisz (“Sweet Dreams”), volunteered to be “insurance stand-in” on “The Dead”--Huston at 80 doesn’t wear glasses or a hearing aid and he is ambulatory. He’s in a wheelchair only because it holds the oxygen tanks, and Huston mustn’t go more than 20 minutes without using the tanks. But when he stood up and said, “I want to go in there,” nobody was surprised. Because Huston thinks on his feet, so to speak.

“Let’s give the maid Lily something to do before Dan pours his drink,” Huston suggested as a way of opening the scene. “Is the camera set? Is the table set?” Huston is almost always ahead of everyone. “OK. Have Lily at the head of the table, sorting the silver,” he told assistant director Tommy Shaw. “Let’s just see what happens.”

“Ahead of the table?” someone asked. “No, dear,” replied Huston evenly. “ At the head of the table. And ahead of the people, too. She can walk toward the camera. Just let me see it once!”

Huston was on the edge of impatience. The young actress, Rachel Dowling, wasn’t sure whether to walk left or right. “Why can’t she walk out camera right?” Huston asked.

“Because she’d block the dolly, sir,” said a voice from somewhere on the set.

“Then get rid of the dolly,” said Huston, using what appeared to be common sense. “Can’t we give Lily something more to do?”

“Yeah, she can clean the ivory and ruin the soundman’s day,” said a grip under his breath.

“I want her to set the table,” said Huston firmly. “And let’s give Lily a moment or two of camera time,” he added, knowing full well what that meant to a young first-time actress. Yet just as an observer was impressed by the director’s thoughtfulness, Huston showed another color.

To O’Herlihy he said, “You are taking too long with the drinking, Dan.” The scene had already taken a good part of the morning. “And there’s too much blarney.”

“I know, John. I have a problem.”

“Yes, and it’s your problem, Dan, so you solve it. Make it less regular.” This said, Huston hummed softly, almost inaudibly, while O’Herlihy figured out the moment. Then Huston swerved his chair slightly in the direction of sound mixer Bill Randall. “Is Dan talking loud enough for you, Bill?”

“Yes, he’s loud enough.”

“Yes, but he can be loud and not understandable--there is a difference,” Huston corrected. Then he returned to watch O’Herlihy pouring. “Dan, be sure the ladies see the drink before you say the line ‘God help me, it’s doctor’s orders.’ ”

“OK, John, I just thought--”

“Never mind what you thought!”

Less than a minute later, Huston was nurturing O’Herlihy, smiling broadly and humoring him. Huston also demonstrated the art of pouring a drink for one and all. “Let’s pull the camera back fast, Fred,” he told cinematographer Fred Murphy (“Hoosiers”). The take went perfectly.

“Good, Dan,” said Huston naturally, as if the take were the first. “Really quite funny!”

“I’m depressed,” said Weilland Schulz-Keil, the co-producer of “The Dead,” midway in the third week of shooting. “I’m depressed because of that man in the chair.”

He didn’t mean Huston. The man was a fire official who had just been added to the film’s $5.5-million budget at a cost of $10,000. Building authorities in Valencia demanded that a full-time fire official be on the set, and now the official demanded an assistant.

Donal McCann, the Irish actor (“Cal”) who co-stars opposite Huston’s daughter Anjelica, quietly asked a crew member why a fire official was paid more than an actor.

“Because he’s trained,” was the joking reply. McCann, whose training at Ireland’s Abbey Theater goes all the way back to the landmark 1970 production of “Waiting for Godot” opposite Peter O’Toole, didn’t bother to laugh.

“This fire official thing,” said Schulz-Keil, who also produced Huston’s “Under the Volcano,” “is an example of why independent producers don’t want to work in Hollywood.”

Originally “The Dead”--based on a 1907 short story from James Joyce’s first book, “Dubliners”--was to be shot at Dublin’s Ardmore Studios. But last year Ardmore was in the process of being acquired by MTM Enterprises. (The plan was for MTM to film American TV series in Ireland and export them.) When MTM’s offer to buy Ardmore collapsed, so did “The Dead.” On top of which, Huston’s health forbade an Irish winter. Since 95% of the story is interior, the decision was made to scout local locations--and pray for Huston’s health.

“Yes, one day John will die,” said Schulz-Keil over a lunch the week production began. “But are we worried? No! Frankly, I haven’t seen him be this happy in a long time. You know why? He’s in complete control. John likes to be in control.”

The idea to film “The Dead” came from--well, the answer depends upon whom you ask.

Thirty-six-year-old Tony Huston (who co-wrote the screenplay with his father) remembers collecting a set of Irish first editions 20 years ago as a gift for his father and suggesting “The Dead” as a film. John Huston remembers a young girl, a Joycean scholar, approaching him on the set of “Moby Dick” in 1955 and suggesting “The Dead” as a film. Schulz-Keil remembers five years ago discussing movie romances with Huston on the set of “Annie” and suggesting “The Dead” as a film.

Explained Schulz-Keil: “Ray Stark (the producer of ‘Annie’) is a prankster, and Ray hired me to play an anarchist, an 18th-Century revolutionary who tries to knock Annie off and gets stopped by the dog. That one scene took four weeks, and John and I began talking about a movie, a treatment of love and marriage. We asked each other questions. Does love end with marriage, or does it begin? Those kinds of questions. The kinds of questions you find in this short story.” The story--of a husband’s jealousy of his wife’s dead lover--is based loosely on reality: James Joyce’s wife, Nora, had a premarital fling with a bank clerk in Rome. When Joyce learned of the affair, he became a writer obsessed. At 25, he began writing the story, realizing that jealousy unlocked his own ability to love. The theme--that the dead do not stay buried--has haunted Joyceans and others for decades.

The Hustons’ treatment of “The Dead” took three months to write and two weeks to be rejected by every Hollywood studio. According to Schulz-Keil, “Studio people don’t read James Joyce.” A development executive at Vestron did, however. “This chap in the story department at Vestron wrote his dissertation on Joyce, and Bill Quigley, who heads Vestron, was an Irish literature major who played rugby.”

Vestron, a major player in the ‘80s videocassette boom, is newly investing in movies and gave--along with four other European-based financing companies--the green light to a $5.5-million budget that includes two weeks of second-unit location work in Dublin. Ten months after Schulz-Keil and his partner, Chris Sievernich (“Paris, Texas”) put $300,000-$400,000 of their own money into developing “The Dead,” the cameras were rolling.

The producers were unwilling to compromise in two areas. Firstly, all actors had to be Irish. (“Ryan O’Neal in ‘Barry Lyndon’ is not what we wanted. Even though Ryan O’Neal is Irish. We wanted people from County Galway. “) Secondly, sets and costumes would not be skimped on. Huston hired a world-class team--art director Stephen Grimes (“Out of Africa”) and costume designer Dorothy Jeakins (“The Misfits”), who came out of Santa Barbara retirement to work for Huston for the fifth time. (“John has a way of charming ladies out of retirement,” said one of the producers. The other truth about Jeakins is that she was the best friend of Ricky Huston, Anjelica’s late mother.)

But the big misconception about “The Dead” was that it was a dynastic swan song for John Huston, a “Golden Pond” for the Huston clan. Actually, Donal McCann was signed before Anjelica, and Anjelica offered to read with McCann; according to the producers, she is “one of maybe five elegant Irish actresses the right age.” Tony Huston was hired as screenwriter because of his lifelong affinity for Joyce. “Hiring him was our idea, not John’s,” claimed Schulz-Keil. “And John himself was practically weaned on Joyce. He was given, by his mother, a first Paris edition of ‘Ulysses.’

“This movie is not being made because of the success of ‘Prizzi’s Honor’ or Anjelica’s Oscar or John’s health. It is being made because we wanted to film ‘The Dead.’ John Huston has had emphysema since he was 40. He’s had every surgery known to man. He almost died four times last year. But when he works, he comes to life.”

How much like Dublin can it get in Valencia--especially in an industrial park? Well, if you close your eyes and open them, you feel the insides of a proper Dublin house, circa 1904. The legerdemain of art director Grimes resulted in hand-painted tiles, extraordinary (but portable) stained-glass windows, brass samovars and a mood that Grimes had to hustle for. The house where Joyce set “The Dead” is still standing, at 15 Ushers Island in Dublin, and Grimes had only recently returned with sketches and impressions.

(“The thing about Irish movies,” remarked Tony Huston, “is that so few directors get the conception right. ‘The Quiet Man’ is as close to Irish life as ‘Star Wars’ is to contemporary American life. Blarney exists only in America’s imagination. The idea of ‘fighting Irish’ is a myth that began in American pubs. I’ve never seen an Irishman strike a blow. That doesn’t mean they can be bullied.”

Grimes, who’s British but lives in Rome, was unfortunately rushed: The week before production began on “The Dead,” he left for Europe for a previous commitment, “Haunted Summer,” a picture that Huston was originally set to direct before his most recent illness; Ivan Passer is his replacement.

“People say I’m John’s natural son,” cracked Grimes the day he left, “but it’s only a rumor started by Italian fascists. John and I have done 12 pictures together.” Grimes met Huston on “Moby Dick”; the aspiring art director wanted so badly to work with Huston he did some 1,000 sketches “in the style of Rockwell Kent, because John was then enamored of the work of Rockwell Kent. John looked quickly at my work and said ‘Fine. Fine. Fine.’ That’s Huston’s way of letting you know you are OK. If he’s unhappy, you know it. John can be wicked. The thing about John is, he expects you to anticipate the unexpected, and he gets mad if you don’t. But he’s the closest thing to genius I’ve ever met.”

One afternoon, Huston set up what was a deceptively simple scene: a love-seat tete-a-tete between an older woman (Marie Keane) and her nephew (Donal McCann). The aunt is letting the nephew know she knows of his real feelings for his wife Gretta (Anjelica Huston). The director sits side-by-side with Keane, using his hands as a painter to get the emotion he wants.

“Painting,” Huston had said earlier that day, “has for me been maybe the most important influence. That and what I read. I’ve never arranged figures to look like a Velasquez, but maybe unconsciously . . . that’s why I didn’t want to meet Picasso probably. Each time I had the occasion to meet him, I had reservations. I felt, here was this man who was constantly working. Why should I impose another figure on him? I knew everything about his work.” (Legend has it that during Huston’s filming of “Moulin Rouge,” Picasso rented a room in Montmartre to observe.) “With Picasso I knew the essentials. It’s like Toulouse-Lautrec. One reason I wanted to make that movie (“Moulin Rouge”) was that he painted without a hint of emotion. He went right to the essentials.”

So, too, does Huston. In the love-seat scene, for example, he told Donal McCann, “Say the line ‘Into the valley of death’ very fast. There will be a moment when you will look across the room at Anjelica. We’ll find that moment.” The moment was found within 15 minutes, and shooting ended early. Sound mixer Bill Randall, a first-timer with Huston, was impressed. “I just did a picture in Chicago where we had 14-hour days. Huston gets what he wants in eight hours. Also he knows what he wants. Do you know how rare that is?”

Huston this particular day was wearing a black velour sweat suit, a white T-shirt and suede boots. His spirits were up in the early evening; as has been said of him, he takes life without ducking. The day before, he had won the Super Bowl pool. He put his win down to the luck of the Irish.

Robert Redford (who’s part Irish) has categorized the Irish as selfish and loyal, a definition Huston doesn’t mind. “Ireland is where my spirit went,” Huston said in very pronounced tones. “The appeal for me was as an outsider. And I’ve had this abiding interest in Irish Literature since I was 21. It was then my wife read me ‘Ulysses’ aloud and I remember crying. . . . The other day I’m told one of the actresses cried--joyfully--over a piece of direction. Happy tears, but she didn’t let me see them. The Irish are like that.”

Huston, who’s American-born but travels with an Irish passport, vividly remembers his first visit to Ireland, for a hunt, “a hunting ball, actually. It was the wildest thing I’ve ever witnessed, still to this day, and I don’t mean in a sexual way. This was 1951, in County Wicklow. There was this joyfulness to the hunt, the people weren’t formal or self-conscious like the English. My first night in Ireland, I was taken by a butler to my room in a manor house. I looked out the window and saw the most beautiful thing I ever laid my eyes on. It was a lake, and in the foreground were three deer, and I just drank it in. I started going whenever I could. The Irish have a helluva good time, really. Then finally I bought a house, but it needed a staff, a house that big. . . .”

Huston’s love for St. Clerans, the Georgian house in Galway where he lived throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, is real. (It’s a shared love. Several years ago Anjelica Huston took Jack Nicholson to see St. Clerans, and the two of them almost bought the place on the spot. The memories are that powerful.) Ask him if his Irish residency cost him work (or visibility) in Hollywood and he nods. “Maybe. You could possibly say in that regard I hurt my career. I know I was living in a style I couldn’t afford any more after a time. Everything became five times as expensive.” Huston paused, then drew the listener closer, as if for a confidence. “I might have missed some things,” he said. “But I’ve had a marvelous life.”

One afternoon, it was suggested to Huston that a movie of his life might be worth plotting. The idea intrigued him, and got him off the subject of “The Dead.” (“Every breath he takes, every word he utters, is about this picture,” a Huston publicist unconnected with “The Dead” remarked at Christmas. “Even in Puerto Vallarta!”) The Huston tradition of spending the year-end holidays at Las Caletas, his compound in Mexico, was not broken: Huston’s three physicians strongly advised him not to fly, but he simply smiled and went to the airport. On return to the Valencia location, he found himself ensconced at the Ranch House, an unluxurious motel along Interstate 5 that’s housing “The Dead” company.

“Last night, I was sitting in my motel room, and I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ ” Huston said, shaking his head. Valencia bores most of the actors and does even more depressing things to Huston. The myth that, with age, one would gladly trade possessions for health was shattered.

“I only own books now,” said Huston, “and there is a kind of catharsis to that, but I’ll tell you something. I cherished those Irish acres I owned. I cherished the walled-in tree garden started by the sea captain who brought back trees from every voyage. Wonderful strange exotic trees! . . . The ex-jockey Billy Pearson came to see me recently and he brought a catalogue from the San Francisco Museum of Art. On the cover was one of Monet’s water lilies; that painting hung in my house in Ireland. And I sold it for one-tenth its value. Gone is my pre-Columbian collection. Gone are the antiques! I’m telling you, I divested myself.”

Huston’s voice was rising as he told of St. Clerans, the house and the art--and one sensed (and later confirmed) a kind of regret--in one area only. It’s the regret of the sensualist. Huston wasn’t a saver; money was to be spent, lavishly and endlessly. Anjelica Huston recalls as a child sneaking into her father’s closet and finding antique Chinese silk robes, Navajo jackets, exquisite hand-made moccasins; once in the ‘60s, she saw her father get off an airplane in a custom-made black leather suit. (When asked by Otto Preminger to act in “The Cardinal,” Huston agreed--if the best Vatican tailor could make his wardrobe, and if he could keep the clothes. Preminger caved in.) The Huston style mirrored the style--and the optimism--of the postwar boom of the late ‘40s and ‘50s. It’s not a style one abandons, even with age.

“Anyway, last night I was sitting in my motel room,” continued Huston, “and I was looking at the furniture and hating it, being disgusted by it. The dome chairs and the horrible applique. I almost cried for a moment. I thought, ‘How the hell do people live today with these kinds of pieces?’ And I thought, ‘Why am I here? I who had these beautiful possessions!’ But the same and other questions occur all the time.” Huston seemed not to need protection from hard questions, of morality or money or whatever, so the discussion proceeded. “Questions like ‘Why am I not on horseback?’ also occur. But when it comes to the question of ‘Isn’t it better to divest?,’ I say ‘No.’ ”

Huston clinging to Louis XIV furniture is not the expected image. Globe-trotting, yes, and never being grounded for more than three months at a time. And never ever retiring, manor house notwithstanding. Huston’s closest director-friend was the late William Wyler, and Huston says Wyler “really didn’t need to make picture after picture the way I did. I was never without a project. Some of the ones were made for money, and some were for more artistic reasons, to make something memorable. But Willy was different. Willy actually retired. I wouldn’t do that.”

Huston has been right and wrong in a long career. In 1969, four of his films made it onto a readers poll of the 10 most-admired American movies, but others were mere potboilers. (The classics, of course, include “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The African Queen” and “The Asphalt Jungle.” The clunkers: “The Kremlin Letter,” “Sinful Davey,” “The Barbarian and the Geisha,” among others.)

Working as an octogenarian can have drawbacks, as George Cukor discovered with 1981’s “Rich and Famous.” But Huston’s way was validated in 1985 with “Prizzi’s Honor,” a film that critic Pauline Kael called “the work of a young man.” Huston’s grin is never larger than when he’s told Kael’s line. “Who said it?” he asked ingenuously, big teeth flashing, knowing full well it was Kael.

“ ‘Prizzi’ was my reflection of what a red-blooded all-American love affair should be like, that’s all,” he said, clearly basking in the success. It had been the director’s first mainstream hit since “The Man Who Would Be King” in 1975. Being perceived prestigiously is important to Huston. Considering the kind of swath he cut for 40 years--reveling in life and art on several continents--the feedback now is critical. He isn’t mired in the past, but he is still John Huston .

It was expensive to be Huston--five divorces, expensive horses, movies made for salary, not prestige--and Huston needs to know the price wasn’t too high. Since the early ‘50s, when Lillian Ross began writing about him for the New Yorker, Huston has been comfortable with the press and gotten some of his validation directly from journalists. At the Cannes Film Festival, he once saw 17 journalists in a day, giving each a fresh interview. When a reporter suggested that, particularly now, he didn’t want to wear Huston out, the director’s assistant, Marilyn LaSalandra, countered: “You can’t wear him out.”

You can get him to tell the truth, though, and not just be colorful about it (unless you call black a color). “The other day I was running myself down,” Huston said, resenting himself for resenting himself. “You know, the usual thing. I was worrying about what I did wrong in my life. That’s what happens when I look back. And my son Tony looked at me and said, ‘What is success anyway? A half-dozen of your pictures will be remembered as long as pictures are remembered.’ He said, ‘You are working, you will never stop working, and that is more than most of them can say. You have no reason to feel sorry for yourself.’ ”

“And you listened?” Huston was asked.

“I listened well enough to tell you just now!”

“Yet you don’t dwell on history.”

“Unless you are writing a book or telling a story, there’s no damn use. I’m not James Whitcomb Riley, where images took hold in the form of pipe smoke--such clinging to memories! To dwell on old sweethearts is nonsense. When I reminisce I regret. . . . I always remember the times I let my ass show. So I don’t talk about the past because I don’t want my ass to show.”

Even now? Is Huston on a movie set in Valencia less at peace than Huston, country squire at St. Clerans? Though he occasionally wheezes, within five minutes of talking to him you’ve forgotten the oxygen and the wheelchair--and so somehow has he. He seems strong enough to be asked about fear. About what scares him most.

“You mean beside the animal fears? Like not being able to breathe? Or being behind bars? I asked that question of Marciela, the woman who keeps me alive. She loves me and takes care of me and she has a terrible history of trying to get into this country. Being called a wetback, being in bondage, and so on. So one day I asked her, ‘What scares you the most?,’ and she said, ‘Being thrown out of the place where I live.’ ”

(A Huston crony later confided that when Huston got the answer, he set about buying the woman a house and seeing to it the money he left her would take care of property taxes in perpetuity.)

But what scares Huston at 80? “I’m not avoiding the answer,” replied Huston. “I think what scares me most is what’s happening to this country, and this world. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen things be worse than now. And I’ve seen them be bad.”

Are we then sitting on deck chairs on the Titanic? “It’s worse,” he said darkly. “The Titanic is the planet Earth. None of us is on the sidelines now. I’ve never before been frightened about the state of the world. Our President--I like him personally and his wife is a very dear friend--but his whole focus is so utterly mistaken. I think the chance of finding a practical solution to the world’s problems is so remote as to be hopeless. But it’s even bigger than that. . . .

“It’s this: Human beings don’t seem to have learned anything. The human race has not profited by any of its tragic experiences.”

Four hours, two scenes, and one production conference later, Huston curled a finger indicating that the reporter should come over to him.

“What I said earlier? About humans not profiting by mistakes? I’ll give you an example: the changes at the New Yorker magazine. (New Yorker editor William Shawn was replaced last week by Knopf editor-in-chief Robert Gottlieb.) Why can’t the Newhouse family (owners of the New Yorker) endow the magazine from a family foundation? That would make them heroes. For 40 years, the magazine’s ‘Talk of the Town’ was the most stable, balanced flow of information. Now to see it end is too sad. They will lie, and say it won’t end, but it will. Why? Profit . . . the motive is ever the same.”

Without taking a breath, Huston turned to his assistant and asked if she had “that list of local restaurants.” Then he looked at dailies of the film shot that day. He laughed heartily at the Hustonesque humor in “The Dead.” Then he went back to the Ranch House and got cleaned up for dinner.

As Humphrey Bogart said in 1951, the monster is still stimulating.

When you are on an all-Irish movie set, the subject much of the time is alcohol. Explanations of the Irish Virus (as drinking is known in Dublin) abound, and so do denials. Drinking is not evident on the set, ever, but talk about drinking is endless. One day with Huston a question arose--”Why are writers more often alcoholics than directors?”

From Huston, one gets an answer by first getting an anecdote. One night in 1943, Lt. John Huston was having dinner at Manhattan’s 21 Club; at the next table was columnist H. L. Mencken. Upon introduction, Mencken looked stunned, “Not John Huston? And you are really directing movies? Oh well, you’ll get that out of your system. You were meant to be a serious writer!”

Huston does seem to be one of the few film directors who could have made a career in publishing; one can picture him holed up in Ireland, or in Puerto Vallarta, writing away--and yet an autobiography (for which he received $500,000) is his only major piece of prose. “Real writers--people like James Agee and Ernest Hemingway--think of writing as religion,” said Huston easily. The only thing missing now when he talks would be a cigar or cigarette. But Huston has given up much in his life--the polo ponies, the art collection that prefigured many American collections in terms of breadth and originality--so cigarettes too can be lost.

“I don’t have that impulse toward books; screenwriting interested me more.” Possibly because it was more collaborative, and less lonely (not to mention more lucrative, which suited Huston’s style of life). “No, no,” he replied, steering the subject back to writing “I don’t think you have to be lonely to lead a writer’s life. Think of Maugham, Graham Greene, Hemingway. Hemingway wasn’t a lonely man, really. You write wherever you want to write. . . . Of course, with genius in letters we must remember that three-fifths of them were also alcoholics. Hemingway was a drinker but not an alcoholic; I don’t think drinking was what finished him, but he drank enough to undermine his health.”

But so did Huston, didn’t he? He belly-laughed at the question. “I’ve drunk enough. But I was not ever an alcoholic.” Was that so as to keep control? “Oh, I don’t know. I never liked waking up hung over. So I never took a drink the morning after drinking. Also, I’d probably not hit the bottle the following night. I just did not want to feel bad. . . . It’s the most self-serving kind of morality!”

Directors drinking versus writers drinking was a question worth holding onto, and later that day Huston was happy when he came up with a name: “John Ford was a proper drunk, but he was strong as an ox. Frankly, more actors and actresses drank than directors.” Two names had to emerge, and did: Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe. Huston directed Monroe in “Asphalt Jungle,” one of her first pictures (and her own favorite) and “The Misfits,” her final film. Told that Arthur Miller, Monroe’s last husband and the writer of “Misfits,” was now editing his autobiography, Huston looked surprised.

“Is he really? I lectured Arthur once, loudly, in front of a large group of people about Marilyn. I said that anyone who was letting Marilyn get drugs--and I specifically meant Arthur--should be . . . well, it was a criminal thing what was happening to her. What I didn’t realize at the time was how much abuse Arthur was taking from Marilyn. He was an iron man there in the Reno desert. He couldn’t stop her anymore than anyone else could. She was plain abusive and not nice. And Arthur has my respect now because I see how he withstood it and didn’t just walk away.”

Clift, unfortunately, lacked such a support system. Huston directed Clift first in “Misfits” and then a year later in the botched “Freud.” Their chemistry was less than perfect. (The notion that Huston bullied Clift is pooh-poohed by “Misfits” assistant director Tommy Shaw: “One day in Reno, Monty and John and I were sitting in a hotel room, and Monty was being nasty. It had to do with wardrobe. Monty ranted; John just looked down at a legal pad and doodled. Never looked up. Monty said, ‘Tommy, you don’t have anything to say about this.’ And John, without looking up, kept doodling, then said, ‘Monty, you’re wrong. Tommy has a great deal to say.’ That’s Huston. Uses the fewest words but his point is never lost.”)

But is Huston a bully? Paul Kohner, his agent since 1938, remembers that “John used to pick on me, terribly. It could be shameful the way he acted. I was scared of him, frankly, and completely buffaloed. Until one day--I was visiting him in Paris on the set of ‘Moulin Rouge’--he went too far. I said, ‘John, if you are going to talk this way, don’t talk to me again.’ He looked stunned, then he hugged me, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Paul.’ And he never treated me badly again. My point is that he isn’t always aware of how terrifying he can be.”

But Huston was supposed to be impatient with Clift, on “Freud,” particularily.

Huston on Clift is brief: “Monty was a very poor drunk,” he said disagreeably. “I tried to understand why Monty did so many things. He had that disfiguring auto accident. Now why did he do that ? Finally, everything pointed to his destruction; finally, he was a mess.”

Survivors don’t tolerate mess. And Huston is most of all a survivor. But is there a destiny about his kind of survival? Is there a reason why Huston is still working when his peers are dead or wanting to be working? Huston doesn’t think so. Huston doesn’t buy the idea of destiny. “I was always pretty confident, even before I was successful. I had good taste and good judgment and I could write a little.” Huston looked directly into the observer’s eyes and said, without doubt, that he believes in luck, Irish or otherwise.

“I know there are two schools of thought about this, but I don’t believe cream always rises. I’ve seen too many talented people not get that one lucky moment. I don’t believe that everyone who is supposed to make it does. For me, I can remember one moment that changed everything.” The moment was just 50 years ago this month. Huston had already done time in Hollywood, under contract at three studios, left and come back. “Willy Wyler took me to (producer) Henry Blanke, for whom I did a bit of work. There was a little problem on ‘Jezebel,’ and I rewrote a sequence. Blanke picked it up instantly, and it just all clicked. Pretty soon at Warners, I was the head . . . well, let’s say they thought I was a good writer.”

Even Jack Warner thought so, and Huston--who spoke his mind from the start--got away with talking the truth to Warner. “Jack was an interesting bird,” said Huston in a rare nostalgic moment. “He was a fou , in the French sense of a wise man who juggles with one eye closed. He told bad jokes and he could be very cruel while telling them, but the jokes themselves weren’t cruel. But if you said one wrong thing to Jack, that would be it.”

Nevertheless, Huston “two or three times” said awful things” to Warner. “One time was astounding. I simply said ‘Jack, you were wrong about testifying before the committee (the House Committee on Un-American Activities, to which Warner had given sworn testimony in 1947). And I remember exactly what he said. Jack said, ‘Does that make me a squealer?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and that was that. He reacted seriously, as though he was sorry he’d done it.”

But playing Hollywood politics at that level--and speaking one’s mind--could be likened to Russian roulette. If luck played its part in Huston’s life, would it also follow suit that Anjelica’s prize-winning Maerose in “Prizzi’s Honor” might never have happened? Is there destiny for the father and not the daughter? Or vice versa? Or not?

“Oh, ‘Prizzi’ might easily never have happened,” said Huston offhandedly. “Or happened too soon. But Anjel has an amazing ability I’ve only seen in one other actor, and that was my father (Walter Huston). They could both--and I saw this in Anjel as a little girl--jump in and out of someone else’s skin. My father could become a Russian general or a rag picker. It’s not mimicry, it’s something else, it’s something more unique. Anjel can demonstrate the mind and heart and sensitivity of an entire class of people. As a child, she could ‘do’ a French servant or an Irish servant or an English servant, and I could tell the difference.”

And father takes no credit. Genetics has nothing to do with it, according to Huston. “None of my children are in the least like me, or each other. Genes count, but what a variety of genes to select from!” said the man who was married five times and in long and short love affairs the rest of the time. Huston enjoys being told of a recent visitor to Ireland who said all the young men and ladies in County Galway look like John Huston. “Well, if genetics explained everything, every horse we had would have won the Kentucky Derby. I’m not even sure one teaches one’s children anything .”

Suddenly, it was time for Huston to go back to work. (As Lauren Bacall once put it, “John gives you his undivided attention until it’s time to move on.”) But before Huston left his trailer, he made sure the reporter had been given a copy of the lawyer’s letter spelling out the terms of his Christmas gift from his daughter and her friend Jack Nicholson. The letter explained the $100,000 John Huston Scholarship to the USC School of Cinema-Television, given by Nicholson and Anjelica. In script, at the bottom of the letter, Nicholson had written, “Dear Johnny--if this is okay with you, Merry Xmas. Love, Jack and Anjel.”

Said the press-wise Huston, son of a reporter: “This hasn’t been announced yet. I think it will work well in your story.”

Dad won’t stop, you know. In Puerto Vallarta at Christmas, I realized something about our family. What the thread is. The thread is dad. He’s like a king on the throne; he’s like a tiger; he’s perverse and he won’t give up. He has the voice and spirit of youth.... The most important thing about him is that he’s economical. I don’t mean about money. I mean he never does anything useless. Each thing he does is vital. And he will not take death seriously.

--Dan Huston, 25-year old son of John, in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont, January 1987.

In Hollywood, famous children falter when asked to talk about growing up absurd. The humor is too often missing, the anger is too often there. The children of Huston, possibly due to European upbringings, are much less up-tight about their lineage. Especially Anjelica, the oldest daughter. Born in Malibu, reared in Ireland, schooled in England and France, Anjelica is purely a product of Hollywood. There are very few third-generation Oscar-winners. Anjelica, at 35, is The Daughter, but she is also right now thevery hot Daughter. Her first film as a grown-up leading lady, Francis Coppola’s “Gardens of Stone,” is due out this spring, to be followed in the fall by “The Dead.”

On this set, you know she’s the star: Her dog Minnie is very much around. Only dogs of stars get the run of a movie set. In a makeshift dressing room the size of a closet, Anjelica curled up lotus-style; it was her first day back after a sudden, fast bout with mononucleosis. Not having wanted to infect her father, Anjelica refused to pose for photographer Bruce Weber, who’s photographing “The Dead” for a Life magazine layout. But “I’m well now,” as Anjelica put it, meaning: Photo opportunities will abound.

Anjelica’s mother, ballerina Ricky Soma, was plucked from the corps de ballet not only by John Huston but by David O. Selznick, who brought her to Hollywood, and photographer Philippe Halsman, who put her on the cover of Life in 1947. (She died in a car crash in Italy at the age of 39, when Anjelica was 17.) Photos of mother and daughter are eerily indistinguishable. It’s not just that the beauty is timeless, it’s that both women seem ethereal and grounded at the same time.

“I’ve already been The Famous Film Director’s Daughter,” Anjelica said without an edge. “I was special until I was 12, when I went to London to school, and hated it. I realized I wasn’t that special. I was spoiled, I wasn’t lonely. There was no deprivation--but getting a Barbie doll changed my life. Just as seeing ‘Gidget’ changed my life. Because ‘The African Queen’ I’d seen 25 times before I turned 11.”

Anjelica looked up, fleetingly, at the one poster in her dressing room, Ed Ruscha’s “Brave Men Run in Our Family.” Her eyes seemed to say, “So do brave women.” At 16, Anjelica made the most disastrous movie debut since Jean Seberg in “St. Joan” in her father’s “A Walk With Love and Death.” It was years before Anjelica set foot on a movie set again. For a long time, she was a model (for Richard Avedon) and, mostly, a girlfriend (for Jack Nicholson). Now she’s something else.

“I’m not an adjunct or an accessory anymore,” she said proudly. “At a certain point, I decided to accept what came along.” What came along were a few “Laverne & Shirleys,” then four weeks’ work as an asylum inmate in “Frances,” which Anjelica admitted “was kind of like working as an extra. I was there to incite other ladies to insanity.”

Does one remain confident, as John Huston suggested he did during such lean times? “No,” responded Anjelica, grimly. “You feel hopeless a lot; you feel it’s never gonna happen; time is ticking away. But this acting bug, and it is a bug, doesn’t leave you alone.”

Her brother Tony likened his sister to an oak tree, “a tree that grows slowly and steadily,” but Anjelica isn’t sure of the imagery. “Does the oak tree grow too tall? I mean, they give you an Oscar one year, and the next time . . . what? Should the oak tree be chopped up for firewood? You get famous for 15 minutes--and if you’re lucky you get famous again for another 10 minutes.”

And yet her father has been famous for 40 years. “I understand him,” Anjelica said unexpectedly.”When working, I don’t ask him ‘How was I?’ I know what he wants. I like to please him. Maybe it’s more important for me to please him. . . .”

Her brother Tony said John Huston’s major gift was “the gift of not boring.” Her half-brother Danny said father’s gift was “the gift of economy.” And Anjelica? “Long legs.” When the serious laughter stopped, she added: “My father isn’t conventionally moral--but deep down he’s good. Genetically, we’re very well armed.”