The only actor John Huston considered a genius: “Something else entirely”
For over four decades, John Huston was one of the greatest and most versatile filmmakers in all of Hollywood.
He made his movies like he was drawing genres out of a hat. He would pivot from westerns to musicals to sports dramas to black comedies in the blink of an eye. When you’re this good at making films of all different types, suddenly, every actor in town wants a piece of your magic, as Huston found out for himself.
He helped his own father, Walter Huston, to an Oscar victory for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 35 years before he directed his daughter, Anjelica Huston, to the same prize in Prizzi’s Honour. Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Carol Burnett; the stars of his pictures were brilliant and more numerous than the stars in the actual night sky. But there was one name he saw as being brighter than all the others combined.
In a 1986 interview with Playboy (I was reading it for the articles, honest), Huston was asked to name people he considered ‘geniuses’ in their respective fields. Alongside the writers like Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner and artists like Henry Moore and Mark Rothko, he named just one actor – the great Marlon Brando.
“Brando was something else entirely,” claimed the esteemed filmmaker. “Brando had an explosive thing; you felt something smouldering, 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.”
Huston actually got to direct Brando in the bizarre, straight out of a fucking fever dream, sex drama Reflections in a Golden Eye. He was able to witness firsthand what so many fans and critics couldn’t even fully comprehend. Brando was an ever-shifting, often unreliable ball of goddamn emotion. There was never any doubt that what he was feeling on screen was what he was also feeling in his heart. He produced some of the greatest performances of all time, while also being responsible for some of the strangest, sometimes disturbing acting roles ever committed to film.
The great irony is that, every time Huston and Brando actually worked together, it was a bit of a mess. Reflections in a Golden Eye was a number one movie, but received tepid critical reviews. Most of the attention went towards its sexual themes, which were far more overt than in most of the other fare on offer at the time.
Carson McCullers, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, died two weeks after its release. Don’t read too much into that. Then there’s Candy, a sex comedy in which Brando and Huston both appeared as actors. The film was so bad that it almost ended the former’s career.
Even two decades on from his death – and many more from his career peak – Brando continues to be a divisive figure. You might not agree with Huston’s claims of him being a genius, but you have to admire him as a cultural force to be reckoned with.
