Walter Huston makes authority sound conversational, and gives experienced men the pleasure of knowing better. We rate him most when that confidence becomes funny: his Howard in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is excellent company, even when he talks too much.
Fi1m perspective
Howard knows more about prospecting than his companions, and enjoys telling them so. In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Walter Huston makes that confidence part of the pleasure of spending time with him. His advice is worth hearing, but he is plainly enjoying himself as he gives it. We laughed at his eagerness to explain, because Huston makes the satisfaction of knowing better so recognisable.
Huston entered films with sound in 1929, and became a leading character actor through the 1930s and 1940s. The casual speech and economical gestures help explain why such different parts could feel natural in his hands. As Sam Dodsworth in Dodsworth (1936), he conveys emotion by underplaying it. Mr. Scratch, the devil in All That Money Can Buy (1941), and Jerry Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) offer different uses for that assured manner. Howard allows the same conversational delivery to become exuberant.
John Huston’s writing and direction give Walter room to be conspicuous without making the whole adventure depend on him. Tim Holt, as Bob Curtin, supplies an important steadiness, keeping the exchanges between the prospectors from becoming a contest of emphatic performances. Howard’s experience makes him useful to the others, while his pleasure in displaying it gives them something to put up with. Walter makes the philosophical speeches sound like a habit this particular man would have, rather than something he has been asked to recite.
Even so, Howard can talk too much. John Huston’s screenplay sometimes explains greed after the men have already made its dangers clear, and Walter cannot make every further explanation necessary. Steiner’s music can be similarly insistent, pressing feelings the performances have already conveyed. These are irritations in a film we recommend warmly, rather than reasons to turn it down. Start with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and bring a little patience for the lectures.
Biography
Walter Huston was a Canadian-born actor and singer. He played Howard in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), directed by his son John Huston, for which he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Huston began his career on the stage in Toronto and worked in vaudeville and on Broadway before entering films in the late 1920s. Other notable film roles include Sam Dodsworth in Dodsworth (1936), Mr. Scratch in All That Money Can Buy (1941), Jerry Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and T. C. Jeffords in The Furies (1950). He died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1950.
