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Walter Huston: Movies
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The book convincingly demonstrates that remarkable combination of rugged realism and effortless ease Huston brought to his work. When many 1930s actors were continuing to substitute silent-movie style posing for more modern acting, Huston could make a character like Dodsworth in Wyler's film or the president in La Cava's Gabriel over the White House come brilliantly to life in portrayals both vividly dramatic and as real as your next-door neighbor. Using quotes that, because of the author's proximity to the time, sound more believable than most of the recreated conversations in movie star bios these days, author Weld lets Huston speak for himself on his approach to art and to life.
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Huston became an accomplished song-and-dance comedian in vaudeville and finally attracted the attention of playwrights and Broadway producers. He switched to the legitimate stage and then became a movie star and married again.
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Because Weld lived through most of the time he describes, September Song is as much about vaudeville, stock companies, Broadway, living out of a trunk, and the movies as about Huston himself. In a wealth of comic anecdotes, he captures the authentic atmosphere of American entertainment modes at the turn of the century, seen through the story of one of the popular artists of the time. Huston's struggles with fickle producers, errant performers, jealous wives, angry hotel owners, and the vagaries of nature in hindering his art are well documented, but the actor himself, who scored big on Broadway in the 1920s and '30s as well as in film, comes through with charm, wit, and more common sense than we have any right to expect of actors.
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