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Walter Huston
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Walter Huston, father of director John Huston, was one of the many Broadway performers who came to Hollywood at the dawn of the talkies. He was born in 1884, so he was no youth when he became a film star. He made 48 films, including Dodsworth, Rain (opposite Joan Crawford's Sadie Thompson) All That Money Can Buy (aka The Devil and Daniel Webster, as the Devil) and as James Cagney's father in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He played President Lincoln, with a script by Stephen Vincent Benet, for D.W. Griffith in 1930. He ... the President in one of the more bizarre visions of that office in Gabriel Over the White House, which proposed that what Depression America needed was a good Fascist.
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Walter Huston was working as an engineer in electric light and hydro installations in Texas, Montana, and Missouri, a career that lasted from 1905 to 1909. He met, then married, Rhea Gore. Their son, the future award-winning writer/director/actor, John Huston, was born in Missouri in 1906. It was around this time that Huston's own love for performing emerged. In what can only be described as a radical career change, in 1909 the engineer joined a vaudeville troupe.
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Released in 1941, The Maltese Falcon made Bogart into a star, and Walter Huston had a small part in the film. John Huston got another Oscar nomination. From then on Huston was primarily a director, though he ... wrote screenplays for films he did not direct, notably The Killers and The Stranger, both released in 1946.
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From All Movie Guide: Canadian-born actor Walter Huston enjoyed an early theatrical life of roller-coaster proportions which he doggedly pursued, despite a lifelong suffering of "stage fright." Taking nickel and dime performing jobs, quitting to pursue "real" work -- an engineering job came to an end when his inept attempts to fix a town's reservoir nearly resulted in a flood -- then returning to bit roles were all part of Huston's early days. Before 1910, Huston had toured in vaudeville, worked in stock companies, tried to maintain a normal married life, and fathered a son whose life was twice as tempestuous as Walter's: future director John Huston. The barnstorming days ended when Huston got his first major Broadway role in Mr. Pitt (1924), which led to several successful New York seasons for the actor in a variety of plays. His stage and vaudeville training made him an excellent candidate for talkies; Huston launched his movie career with Gentlemen of the Press (1929), and spent the 1930s playing everything from a Mexican bandit to President Lincoln. Returning to Broadway in 1938 for the musical comedy Knickerbocker Holiday, Huston, in the role of 17th century New Amsterdam governor Peter Minuit, achieved theatrical immortality with his poignant rendition of the show's top tune, "September Song," the recording of which curiously became a fixture of the Hit Parade after Huston's death in 1950.
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Walter Huston began performing in vaudeville in 1909. He made his Broadway debut in 1924 in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms and soon was in the revolving door between Broadway and Hollywood. While performing in The Commodore Marries in 1929, Huston made his first film Gentlemen of the Press. Later the same year he played opposite Gary Cooper in The Virginian.
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Walter Huston was born in Canada but enjoyed a successful career on the American stage. He left for a time to pursue engineering when his son was born. But he returned to vaudeville and then Broadway where he starred in Desire Under the Elms in 1924. In 1930 he played the title role in D.W. Griffith’s film, Abraham Lincoln. Returning to Broadway he created the title role in Dodsworth which he reprised on film in 1936 to best actor acclaim by the New York Film Critics.
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Walter Huston