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learning today. I've never felt like

1:00

I've been counted out, dismissed, passed

1:02

over, told I'd never be a

1:05

golfer with just one arm. But

1:07

the only thing that feels better

1:09

than proving people wrong is out

1:11

driving them. I'm 14-year-old golfer Tommy

1:13

Morsi, and I want to be

1:16

remembered from my ability. As a

1:18

champion partner of the Masters, Bank

1:20

of America supports everyone determined to

1:22

find out what's possible. In golf,

1:24

and in life, what would you

1:27

like the power to do? Bank

1:29

of America, Welcome

1:56

to another episode

1:58

of You Must

2:00

Remember This, the

2:03

podcast dedicated to

2:05

exploring the secrets and

2:07

or forgotten histories

2:09

of Hollywood's first century.

2:12

I'm your host, Karina

2:14

Longworth, and this

2:16

is another episode of

2:18

our ongoing series, The

2:21

Old Man Is Still

2:23

Alive. Is

2:26

Hollywood dead? No, I don't think so.

2:28

Many years ago, when I first started

2:30

making pictures, being in a film business

2:32

was a little bit disreputable. I hate

2:34

violence in pictures, just as much as

2:36

I do sex and incest. Old stories

2:39

I've forgotten mercifully. I've had such a

2:41

good time in my life, it wouldn't

2:43

bother me a bit if I died

2:45

at any time. I think it's up

2:47

to you. Younger fellas right now. There's

2:49

one thing that I hate more than

2:51

not being taken seriously is to be

2:53

taken too seriously. They're being sued by

2:55

women's left. And I'm still alive to tell

2:57

the tale. I

3:06

teased this episode as being about

3:08

one of Hollywood's greatest nepo

3:10

babies. But John Houston

3:12

is more accurately described as

3:14

a spoke -in -the -wheel of a

3:16

Hollywood dynasty. His

3:18

mother, Rhea, was a pioneering

3:20

sports journalist, and his father, Walter,

3:22

was a vaudeville actor. who

3:25

would become a movie star when his

3:27

son was in his 20s. There

3:29

was not a lot of money at

3:31

the time in either profession, but as a

3:33

young man, John had enough privilege to

3:35

pursue pleasure and adventure, always with the faith

3:37

that there would be enough to pay

3:40

for it down the line. By

3:42

the time he started having

3:45

children in his mid -40s,

3:47

including actor -filmmakers Danny and

3:49

Angelica Houston, John had

3:51

built up enough wealth of his

3:53

own that these kids grew

3:55

up in a literal castle surrounded

3:57

by servants and Monet paintings. Houston

4:01

dropped out of high school at 15 to

4:03

become a boxer, gave that up

4:06

to become a painter, acted

4:08

a bit, and then at 20

4:10

joined the Mexican cavalry. He

4:13

arrived in Hollywood in the early

4:15

1930s, where he was contracted

4:17

by Universal to write two films

4:19

for William Weiler, one of

4:21

which starred Walter Houston. Weiler

4:24

mentored John, who was soon writing

4:26

movies helmed by some of

4:28

the more interesting directors of the

4:31

era, including Robert Flory and

4:33

Anatole Litvak. Then,

4:35

Juarez, a script which

4:37

Houston had poured personal

4:39

experience into, became a

4:41

creative and commercial disappointment. As

4:45

Houston recalled later, I

4:47

knew that if I had

4:49

been the director instead of William

4:51

Deterly, this wouldn't have happened. To

4:54

prevent it happening again, he

4:56

had to direct himself. At

4:59

the time, the only established

5:01

screenwriter anyone could name

5:03

who transitioned into directing was

5:06

Preston Sturges. So

5:08

what Houston wanted to do, as

5:10

he recalled later, was highly

5:12

experimental as far as the

5:14

industry was concerned. Houston's

5:18

directorial debut, the pioneering

5:20

film noir, The Maltese Falcon,

5:23

was released the same year as

5:25

Citizen Kane. Both films competed

5:27

for the Best Picture Oscar, losing

5:29

to John Ford's How Green Was My

5:31

Valley, and it established Houston

5:33

as a fully -formed, directing giant

5:35

just as Kane did for

5:38

Wells. The two men

5:40

would cross paths and collaborate many

5:42

times throughout their careers. culminating

5:44

in Houston's performance in Wells'

5:46

The Other Side of the Wind

5:48

as an aged genius inspired

5:50

equally by himself, Wells,

5:52

and their mutual friend, Ernest

5:54

Hemingway. When Houston

5:57

asked Wells what the film was

5:59

about, Wells said, When

6:15

Houston was acting in Wind,

6:17

his directing career was in limbo.

6:20

He hadn't had an unqualified

6:22

success since the African

6:24

Queen in 1951. In

6:26

1970, Houston was

6:28

as appropriately cast as a

6:31

director in The Dustbin, as

6:33

Wells himself would have been. Given

6:36

Houston's status at this point,

6:38

it wasn't much of a surprise

6:40

that he didn't make Andrew

6:42

Serres' director's pantheon. In

6:44

his 1968 book, Saris

6:46

branded Houston as, less than

6:48

meets the eye, a

6:51

category defined in the American

6:53

cinema as, the directors

6:55

with reputations in

6:57

excess of inspirations. In

7:00

retrospect, it always seems

7:02

that the personal signatures to

7:04

their films were written with

7:06

invisible ink. This

7:08

is actually a fair description

7:10

of Houston in that the

7:13

mythology surrounding him as a

7:15

great ladies man and mans

7:17

man overshadows his individual films

7:19

and also in that he

7:21

himself was reticent to acknowledge

7:23

what he called a unifying

7:25

theme in his films. Although,

7:28

even by the time Saras was

7:30

writing, one could have

7:32

seen that the majority of movies

7:34

Houston had made Featured men who

7:36

are determined to quote the protagonist

7:38

of a movie he hadn't made

7:41

yet, called Wise Blood, to

7:43

do some things I ain't never

7:45

done before. In

7:47

his capsule on Houston, Saris

7:49

Yance at the filmmaker is

7:51

still coasting on his reputation as

7:53

a wronged individualist with an

7:55

alibi for every bad movie. Houston

7:58

has confused indifference with integrity for

8:00

such a long time. that he

8:02

is no longer even the competent

8:05

craftsman of the asphalt jungle, the

8:07

Maltese Falcon and the African Queen,

8:09

films that owe more to casting

8:12

coos than to directorial acumen. Saris

8:15

also implicates Houston

8:17

in Marilyn Monroe's death,

8:19

claiming that the

8:21

director, quote, nearly finished

8:23

her with the casual cruelty

8:25

of the misfits, as

8:28

though Monroe's husband didn't write

8:30

that movie. Finally, Sarah

8:32

suggested that Houston's career

8:34

was irredeemable after his

8:36

much -maligned Moby Dick. This

8:39

was his one gamble with greatness, and

8:41

he lost, Sarah's declared. And

8:44

like the KG poker player

8:46

he is, he has been playing

8:48

cool and corrupt ever since. As

8:52

we'll see, Sarah's eventually changed

8:54

his mind about Houston, as many

8:56

had by the time he

8:58

died in 1987. just before

9:00

the release of his final film. I

9:04

decided to start my study of

9:06

Houston's old man years in 1966,

9:09

the year he turned 60

9:11

and released The Bible in

9:13

the Beginning. This

9:15

is Houston's version of the big

9:17

hit after which things got

9:19

weird. In Houston's case, though

9:22

this was one of the highest grossing

9:24

movies of 1966, it was

9:26

so expensive to make that it couldn't

9:28

turn much of a profit. and

9:30

he didn't get fully, productively

9:32

weird for another six

9:35

years. Today,

9:37

in part one of our season

9:39

finale, we will trace Houston

9:42

from the Bible in 1966

9:44

to his on -screen triumph

9:46

as the embodiment of Old

9:48

Man Evil in Chinatown in

9:50

1974. We'll talk

9:52

about his flight from Hollywood,

9:54

which inaugurated this period. and why

9:56

he couldn't seem to catch

9:59

a critical break through much of

10:01

the 60s, resulting in a

10:03

handful of films that basically don't

10:05

exist, including his daughter Angelica's

10:07

acting debut. We'll

10:09

discuss the film Houston released in

10:11

the early 1970s, which suggested, just

10:14

as Maltese Falcon had 30

10:16

years earlier, that

10:18

he had an innate understanding

10:20

of how to address the

10:22

decade to come. and Houston's

10:24

acting work in perhaps the

10:26

definitive American film of that

10:28

decade. Then in part

10:30

two, which comes out on Thursday, we

10:33

will pick up Houston's story

10:35

in 1975 and follow him

10:38

to the grave and beyond.

10:41

Join us, won't you? For

10:44

the first half of the

10:46

season finale of The Old Man

10:48

is still alive. Houston's

10:54

reputation had sunk so precipitously by

10:56

the end of the 60s that

10:58

when the University of Washington did

11:00

a retrospective of his films in

11:02

1977, the program

11:04

noted, quote, one of

11:06

the most fascinating features of John

11:08

Houston's directorial career is that, having

11:11

begun about as close to the pinnacle

11:13

of success as one can get, he

11:16

came, within a decade or so,

11:18

to be almost universally

11:20

regarded as a has

11:22

been who, After all, maybe

11:25

never had been in the first

11:27

place. Less than a

11:29

decade. In 1949, eight

11:32

years after the Maltese Falcon, critic

11:34

Manny Farber described Houston

11:36

as Hollywood's fair -haired

11:38

boy and assessed that,

11:41

quote, in terms of

11:43

falling into the Hollywood mold,

11:45

Houston is a smooth blend

11:47

of iconic class and sheep.

11:50

Ironically, the year that Farber wrote

11:52

this, Houston broke with the

11:55

flock, so to speak, by going

11:57

freelance, earlier than many directors

11:59

older than he, after

12:01

falling out with the Warner Brothers

12:03

brass. After the asphalt

12:05

jungle in 1950, it

12:07

would be 30 years before he made

12:09

a movie on a Hollywood studio

12:11

lot. Soon thereafter,

12:13

he moved to Ireland, purchasing

12:16

a stunning estate called

12:18

Sinclairans. Although this

12:20

was the era of Blacklist

12:22

refugees, Houston's fight was

12:25

more complicated. He

12:27

later talked about how his

12:29

1947 film noir, Key Largo,

12:32

was a reaction to the immediate

12:34

post -war climate. The

12:36

Roosevelt administration had dethroned

12:38

the hoodlumsars and brought the

12:40

country around to a

12:43

kind of idealism that hadn't

12:45

existed during Prohibition and

12:47

Al Capone. And now,

12:49

two years after World

12:51

War II, the signs

12:53

of corruption were reappearing.

12:56

Then came the committee for the First

12:58

Amendment. At the very

13:00

beginning of this season, we re

13:03

-ran an episode detailing the trip

13:05

this committee made to Washington DC

13:07

to protest what would soon be

13:09

called the Blacklist. Some of

13:11

the members of the committee turned

13:13

against their values when they became

13:15

worried about the personal consequences. of

13:18

protesting the government's

13:20

authoritarian actions. One

13:22

of those turncoats was

13:24

Houston's frequent star Humphrey Bogart.

13:28

I was a little surprised

13:30

by his behavior. Almost

13:32

everybody else did it too. He was

13:34

just the first in that group. Eventually

13:37

the whole fucking country got

13:39

into line. It got

13:41

pretty scary, I hope to

13:43

tell ya. The magazines that today

13:45

take such a high moral

13:47

tone were among the worst offenders.

13:50

I'm talking about time and

13:52

Newsweek. You know, they're all

13:54

scared. Despicably

13:56

so. While

13:58

he didn't leave the country because

14:00

of all this, Houston said in

14:02

1980, it probably

14:05

had something to do with deciding

14:07

not to come back. When I

14:09

heard what McCarthy was doing in

14:11

the United States, when I would

14:13

come back on brief visits after

14:15

making films, and when I saw

14:17

how the whole country submitted to

14:20

this, that I found

14:22

very difficult and couldn't tolerate.

14:26

Houston returned to the U .S.

14:28

in the early 60s to

14:31

make two wildly disparate westerns.

14:34

The Unforgiven is a

14:36

misbegotten racial panic melodrama.

14:38

tinged with incest vibes, starring

14:41

Audrey Hepburn as

14:43

Ikea Wasquaw. Then

14:45

came the misfits, perhaps

14:48

the greatest of revisionist

14:50

westerns, in that it so

14:52

definitively eulogizes the myth

14:54

of masculine heroism vis -a -vis

14:56

horses. In

14:58

1963, Houston, who

15:01

claimed he had never thought about

15:03

acting on screen before, earned

15:05

an Oscar nomination for

15:07

his first credited role in

15:09

Otto Preminger's The Cardinal. That

15:12

year, Houston directed the star -studded

15:14

murder mystery The List of

15:16

Adrian Messenger, which got some

15:18

of the worst reviews of his career. Then

15:22

came The Night of the Iguana, a

15:24

Tennessee Williams melodrama set in

15:26

Mexico starring Richard Burton as

15:28

an alcoholic defrocked priest. caught

15:31

between a nymphet, played by

15:33

Lolita Starr, Sue Lyon, a

15:35

chaste adult woman played by Deborah

15:37

Carr, and a blousy but

15:39

good -hearted one played by Eva Gardner. It

15:42

had been, as Houston wrote,

15:45

a long time since

15:47

stars like Gardner and

15:49

Carr, both of whom had

15:51

started in the 1940s and hit their

15:53

peak of fame in the mid -50s, had

15:55

been hot commodities. The

15:58

words Houston chooses here

16:00

suggest that he, and by

16:02

extension Hollywood, were

16:04

trying to reclaim a paradise

16:06

lost. The studio system

16:08

had been obliterated by monopoly

16:11

busting, by television, by

16:13

Elvis and the Beatles, by

16:15

the civil rights movement and the

16:17

assassination of JFK, by the influence

16:19

of European films which could be freer

16:21

in terms of sexuality. The

16:24

public was starting to move into the future. We

16:26

can see this by looking at the

16:28

top -grossing films of 1964, which

16:31

included throwbacks, such as My Fair

16:33

Lady, but also two James

16:35

Bond films, two Pink Panther films,

16:37

and A Hard Day's Night. The

16:40

Night of the Iguana was a

16:42

Tennessee Williams melodrama about a drunk middle

16:44

-aged man's battle to save his own

16:46

soul. It may have

16:48

been one of the better

16:50

vehicles for Eva Gartner's not

16:52

inconsiderable talents, but it was

16:54

not breaking new ground for

16:56

1964. And

16:59

then, Houston got

17:01

a chance to play God.

17:10

This episode is brought to you by

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17:46

his most ambitious movie

17:48

and his most notable

17:50

artistic failure. The

17:52

Bible is ambitious, even though it

17:55

only attempts to tackle a few

17:57

stories from Genesis, but

17:59

I would not call it an

18:01

artistic failure. It's highly

18:03

visually experimental, with gorgeous

18:05

special effects and underwater photography

18:07

to simulate the creation

18:09

of Earth. When

18:11

we are introduced to Adam,

18:14

the actor playing him, Michael

18:16

Parks, is nude and

18:18

posed like a Playboy -centered fold,

18:20

suggesting one body encompassing male

18:22

and female. In

18:24

its early sequences alone, the

18:27

Bible seems to anticipate 2001,

18:30

Avatar, and Terrence Malick.

18:33

Later, the production design of Sodom

18:35

and Gomorrah points toward the

18:37

films of Ken Russell. And,

18:39

like Russell's films, this

18:42

sequence tips over into camp, although

18:44

the design and costuming also seem like

18:46

a model for the club kids

18:48

of the 90s. In

18:50

explaining why he, not a religious

18:52

man, would accept an offer from

18:54

Dino De Laurentiis to make an epic

18:57

film of the Bible, Houston

18:59

knew better than to say,

19:01

the money, and instead

19:03

commented, We've all

19:05

believed we were gods at

19:07

one time or another. The

19:11

Bible allowed him to work out

19:13

his own god complex in multiple ways

19:15

beyond the usual for a film

19:17

director. Houston gave himself

19:19

a triple role. He would

19:21

appear onscreen as Noah and

19:23

on the soundtrack as both

19:25

the narrator and the voice

19:27

of God. 40

19:29

minutes into this movie, Houston

19:31

as Noah is addressed by Houston

19:33

as God and subsequently builds

19:35

an ark and loads a bunch

19:37

of animals on it. A

19:40

large portion of this

19:42

movie is essentially John Houston

19:44

talks to animals. And

19:46

to be honest, that part

19:48

rules. Houston's

19:51

quote unquote acting in

19:54

the Bible ranks with

19:56

Clint Eastwood's porch monologues

19:58

in Gran Torino. in

20:00

terms of directors filming themselves

20:02

performing feats of fourth wall

20:05

destroying lunacy. And

20:07

as if he hadn't put himself

20:09

in this movie enough, Houston

20:11

cast his former mistress, Zoe

20:13

Salas, as Hagar, the

20:15

handmaiden who bears Abraham's child in

20:17

place of his baron wife, Sarah,

20:20

played by Gardner. While

20:23

still married to Enrica

20:25

Soma, Angelica's mother, Houston

20:27

had impregnated Salas. who gave

20:29

birth to their son Danny

20:31

in 1962. For

20:33

what it's worth, Enrica also had a

20:36

baby with another man during her marriage to

20:38

Houston. Houston

20:40

supported Danny, although his

20:42

affair with Sally seems to have ended with

20:44

the pregnancy, making her

20:46

casting as a mother with

20:48

no romantic claim on her

20:51

baby's father to be appropriate,

20:53

to say the least. It

20:55

also adds another meaning to the

20:57

biblical phrase, heard in the film

20:59

uttered by Houston about the character

21:01

played by Houston, that

21:04

Noah was perfect in

21:06

his generations. As

21:09

far as weird old man movies

21:11

about biblical stuff made in the

21:13

mid -60s, the Bible is more

21:16

daring than the greatest story ever

21:18

told. Actress Evelyn Keyes,

21:20

Houston's third ex -wife,

21:22

once commented, that was

21:24

never anything kinky about John Houston. She

21:27

would know, I guess, but it

21:29

does seem like in dramatizing Genesis,

21:31

Houston was primarily interested in

21:34

weird sex vibes and the

21:36

sadism of a vengeful God. Again,

21:39

this was personal. Six

21:41

years later, John Milius asked Houston

21:43

what he thought the best part of

21:45

being a director was, and

21:47

he said, sagism,

21:50

and recommended the younger man read the

21:52

Marquis de Sade. But

21:55

where Stephen's movie improves

21:57

after intermission, Houston's falls

21:59

off in the second half, even

22:01

as it delves into Sodom and

22:03

Gomorrah. Much of this

22:05

has to do with George

22:07

C. Scott, who is extremely miscast

22:09

as Abraham, and comes

22:11

off like a soap actor doing

22:13

Shakespeare. While shooting, Scott

22:16

began an affair with costar

22:18

gardener that quickly became abusive.

22:21

Scott's a fool. Houston fumed

22:23

years later. I

22:25

wouldn't say a fool, he's a fine

22:27

actor, and that's all. He's not

22:30

a fine anything else that I know

22:32

of. He's a shit -heel, in fact. A

22:37

reporter who visited the set praised

22:39

Houston for looking 10 years younger

22:41

than he is. I

22:43

disagree. I think on

22:45

screen, Houston looks older than

22:47

60, significantly so. The

22:49

full two years that it took him

22:51

to make this movie perhaps showed on

22:53

his face. It didn't help

22:56

that he was directing himself. It

22:58

didn't help that after he

23:00

finished shooting his own scenes, he

23:02

became bored. One

23:04

observer noted that Houston kept his

23:06

cast and crew, which numbered almost

23:09

a thousand people, waiting while

23:11

he finished a crossword puzzle. But

23:14

biographer Myers suggests this was

23:16

Houston's way of buying time

23:18

to think, so that he

23:20

didn't waste valuable celluloid figuring

23:22

it out. Still,

23:24

as Houston himself joked, I

23:27

don't know how God

23:29

managed. I'm having a terrible

23:31

time. By

23:33

the end of this shoot, Houston

23:36

was diagnosed with emphysema, an

23:38

ailment that would stymie him for the rest

23:40

of his life. Here

23:42

is an excerpt from Angelica's memoir, a

23:45

story lately told, read

23:47

by the author. It was

23:49

when he was working on the Bible that

23:51

he had the first signs of emphysema and saw

23:53

a doctor. He was starting

23:55

to lose his oxygen and the doctor

23:57

said, you have to give up smoking.

23:59

It's enough now. So

24:01

dad went to Rome and found himself a

24:03

new doctor who said, yes, you have

24:05

to give up cigarettes, but you can have

24:08

a cigar once in a while. Dad

24:10

immediately interpreted this as an

24:13

invitation to chain smoke them. And

24:16

they were good cigars. But

24:18

nevertheless, I

24:20

like it better than any picture

24:22

I've had anything to do with.

24:24

Houston told the New York Times

24:26

of the Bible, the

24:28

LA Times called it,

24:31

magnificent, almost beyond cinematic belief.

24:33

And even Pauline Kale, whose negative

24:35

review of Night of the

24:38

Iguana impelled Houston to call her

24:40

a cunt, published a

24:42

mixed positive review determining the Bible

24:44

to be a triumph. Ranking

24:47

as the second biggest box

24:49

office hit of 1966, Bible

24:51

had been so expensive to make that

24:53

it still didn't turn a profit. Still,

24:56

all things considered, this

24:59

was Houston's greatest success of

25:01

the 60s. His next five

25:03

movies were all disappointments. The

25:05

only one of these, with any sort of

25:07

reputation today, is Reflections in

25:10

a Golden Eye. And that's only because

25:12

it stars Marlon Brando and Elizabeth

25:14

Taylor and is based on a Carson

25:16

McCulloch novel. Houston

25:18

believed that making bad movies was

25:20

part of life as a filmmaker.

25:23

What can you do? He said

25:26

in 1978, surgeons operate when

25:28

they know the patient is going to

25:30

die. But he

25:32

was on a particularly bad run

25:34

in the 1960s, to the

25:36

point where even when he released

25:38

a film that did have

25:40

good things going for it, critics

25:42

and audiences had trouble recognizing

25:44

it. After

25:47

the break, reclaiming the

25:49

Houston film that has been

25:51

most maligned, not least by

25:53

the Houston's themselves. Spring

25:59

savings are in the air and at

26:01

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26:03

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26:05

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26:07

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26:09

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26:11

% off other retailers' prices on your

26:13

favorite spring finds. A

26:18

walk with love and death based

26:20

on a Dutch novel told the

26:22

story of two teenagers who fall

26:24

in love in a war zone

26:26

during the Middle Ages. Production

26:29

was set to take place in France

26:31

in the spring and summer of 1968.

26:34

For his male lead, Houston

26:36

selected Ossoff Diane, the

26:38

son of Israel's defense minister. For

26:41

his female lead, Houston was determined

26:43

to use this film to launch

26:45

the acting career of his 17

26:47

-year -old daughter, Angelica. Angelica

26:51

was cast under duress. She

26:53

wanted to be an actress. She wanted

26:55

to audition for Franco Zephyrelli's Romeo

26:57

and Juliet. But she didn't

26:59

want to make her acting debut for

27:01

her father for Fear It Would, as she

27:03

later wrote, to diminish my

27:06

power to self -invent on my own

27:08

terms. Before shooting,

27:10

she got a chic haircut at

27:12

Vidal Sassoon in emulation of hip

27:14

model Deborah Dixon. Not

27:16

exactly appropriate for the Middle Ages

27:18

period piece she was about to

27:20

start shooting. Her dad saw

27:22

this as the act of rebellion that it

27:24

was. Rebellion against

27:27

him. Angelica,

27:29

who was living in London with her

27:31

mother at the time, went to

27:33

Paris to do her costume fittings. It

27:36

was May 1968, and

27:38

the student uprisings began while she

27:40

was there. Though production

27:42

was scheduled to soon begin in

27:44

the countryside outside of the city,

27:46

Suddenly, France seemed to be on

27:48

the verge of another revolution. Shooting

27:51

was hastily moved to Vienna

27:53

and some surrounding areas, including

27:55

a portion of Czechoslovakia that

27:57

was soon thereafter invaded by

27:59

Russia. We can't

28:01

wait for the Russians to leave.

28:04

Houston said, announcing that production

28:06

would move to Italy. Just

28:09

as the Bible became an unlikely

28:12

movie about John Houston as God the

28:14

Father, Now he was

28:16

making a movie that reflected not

28:18

only the cultural divide of the

28:20

late 60s, but also the disconnect

28:22

between he and his own offspring. Angelica

28:25

would play Claudia, the

28:28

daughter of a nobleman who is

28:30

slaughtered by peasants during the 100 Years

28:32

War. Houston cast himself

28:34

in a one -scene part as

28:36

Claudia's uncle, who decides the

28:38

peasants are on the right side of

28:40

history and explains to his bereft

28:42

niece that he's giving up his rank

28:44

to join the fighters who killed

28:46

her father. Claudia

28:48

cannot fathom this, and she

28:50

flees the safety of her

28:52

uncle's castle to make love

28:54

rather than war. Houston

28:56

mused that the film dealt with

28:59

how youth has to find its way

29:01

through the establishment. The

29:03

time seems to be in the

29:05

middle of the 14th century, but it's

29:07

just as much now, today, this

29:10

moment. Young people of

29:12

today think that their problems

29:14

are unique, but the facts are

29:16

that there has always been

29:18

a generation gap. When

29:21

asked about casting his daughter,

29:24

Houston made an odd quip. She

29:27

can act, she does it all

29:29

the time. Houston was

29:31

known to be a hands -off director of

29:33

actors, the kind who thought that most of

29:35

the work was accomplished in the casting. But

29:38

when it came to Angelica, he

29:40

made an exception. Houston

29:42

was afraid of appearing to give

29:44

his daughter special treatment, so instead, he

29:47

constantly berated her, leaving

29:50

her frequently in tears. This

29:53

movie has vanished into

29:55

obscurity because, as biographer Myers

29:57

put it, for both

29:59

father and daughter, walk

30:01

was a personal and

30:03

professional disaster. Box

30:05

Office was nil, but the

30:07

reviews were not all negative. Saris

30:10

considered it and Butch Cassidy

30:12

in the same column, and allowed

30:15

that Houston's film was more

30:17

honest and vulnerable, but

30:19

it bored him while the

30:21

other film was dishonest,

30:23

but entertaining. Cale

30:26

wrote that it lacks

30:28

urgency, and still, I

30:30

rather like it. I

30:32

do too. Angelica has

30:34

zero range at this age, but

30:36

her father knows how to light

30:38

and film her so that occasionally

30:40

her face itself is haunting. And

30:43

when you think about the fact

30:45

that this movie was released in 1969,

30:47

when, for years, young people had

30:49

been sent halfway around the world to

30:52

Vietnam to kill for reasons they

30:54

didn't understand, and Americans

30:56

were just starting to wake up

30:58

to this war's horrors, Houston's

31:00

movie becomes a moving story

31:02

of kids caught up in a

31:04

violent uprising that they want

31:07

no part of. Certainly

31:09

Houston was thinking about Vietnam,

31:11

as became clear when Look

31:13

magazine profiled him a few

31:15

months later. Houston's

31:17

passion for horse races,

31:20

times when he wanders off to

31:22

read tombstones while a cruise sets

31:24

up, and other digressions suggest to

31:26

some that perhaps he no longer

31:28

cares about films. Gerald Astor

31:31

wrote, The question is

31:33

whether Houston can make the kind

31:35

of film that fits the late

31:37

1960s. Houston wasn't sure he

31:39

wanted to. My

31:41

kids kept telling me

31:43

to see 2001, he said.

31:46

I was disappointed. Too

31:49

much technology, not enough

31:51

character. The

31:53

film he was being interviewed about,

31:55

the Kremlin letter. would turn

31:57

out to be another failure, a

32:00

Cold War thriller that got made,

32:02

strictly because of the success of the

32:04

James Bond franchise. But

32:06

Houston spoke with urgency about

32:08

how his spy movie reflected

32:11

the era's geopolitics. Kremlin

32:13

was about the

32:15

tasteless immorality and senseless

32:17

violence in our

32:19

world today. What's

32:21

needed in Vietnam is

32:23

a moral statement. We

32:26

have no business there. If

32:28

we slip into peace there, we'll be

32:30

missing the whole point. Aster

32:33

didn't buy this. The

32:35

directors convinced that both the US

32:37

and Soviet agents in the film

32:39

behave so badly that the audience

32:42

must reject both sides, he

32:44

wrote. But during the recent

32:46

Green Beret case in Vietnam, most Americans

32:48

agree that you must play tough and

32:50

dirty to win. In the

32:52

Kremlin letter, after all, our spies are on the

32:54

side of America, the beautiful, even

32:56

if they do stoop to rape, torture,

32:58

and murder. Aster

33:00

is offering the equivalent

33:02

of MAGA talking points for

33:04

1970 here. The idea

33:06

that most Americans supported the

33:09

Green Berets committing war

33:11

crimes did not age well.

33:13

Aster then compared Houston's attitude

33:15

and his movie to a

33:17

few films that, quote, fit

33:20

the late 1960s. His

33:22

rather clumsy argument seems to be

33:24

that movies can't help but glorify

33:26

what they depict, and so Bonnie

33:28

and Clyde is read as being

33:30

about, quote, a slightly

33:32

vicious, fun couple done in by

33:34

some oafish squares. And

33:37

subsequently, viewers will watch the Kremlin

33:39

letter and, thanks to the production

33:41

design that Houston approved, covet

33:43

the luxury of a Soviet

33:45

bigwig's mansion instead of deploring the

33:47

violence perpetrated on both sides

33:50

of the Iron Curtain. There

33:52

may be a kernel of truth

33:54

to this argument, but with the

33:56

benefit of 55 years of hindsight, Aster

33:59

is the one who comes off

34:01

as the Ophish Square, thanks to his

34:03

attitude toward both Vietnam and the

34:05

New Hollywood. While

34:10

making this movie, Houston told

34:12

gossip columnist Sheila Graham that he

34:14

was through with acting. But

34:17

on set, one of Houston's

34:19

actors, Orson Welles, convinced his

34:21

director to take the biggest on

34:23

-screen role of his career. We

34:26

talked about the production of The Other Side

34:28

of the Wind in an episode of our

34:30

season on Polly Platt. If you

34:32

listened to that, it won't

34:34

be a surprise to you that John

34:36

Houston did not recognize this set.

34:38

as being anything like any he had

34:41

presided over. For one

34:43

thing, there was no real script, just

34:45

pages containing suggestions of

34:47

speeches, which Wells

34:49

wanted his actors to internalize

34:52

and then regurgitate in their

34:54

own words. Once Houston

34:56

got lost and called out, Orson,

34:59

what page are we on?

35:02

When the director responded, what the

35:04

hell difference does it make? Houston

35:06

fired back. I want to

35:08

know how drunk I'm supposed to

35:10

be. He was well

35:12

equipped to perform a wide range of

35:14

drunkenness, though he described his

35:16

own drinking as moderate, saying, I

35:19

get a little cock -eyed before dinner,

35:21

but always go to bed sober. His

35:24

son Tony remembered things

35:26

differently. Quote, every

35:29

single night he had eight vodka martinis.

35:32

It was sheer hell. As

35:35

chaotic as this production was,

35:38

Wells wouldn't come close to finishing

35:40

the movie in his own

35:42

lifetime or Houston's. Houston took

35:44

some inspiration from it. Peter

35:47

Viertel, who in 1953

35:49

wrote a novel about Houston,

35:51

White Hunter Blackheart, described

35:53

the shoot as, the

35:56

kind of perilous undertaking John

35:58

enjoyed, an adventure shared

36:00

by desperate men that finally came

36:02

to nothing. This

36:05

would be a fair summary of

36:07

several films Houston had already made. But

36:10

the experience of making Other Side

36:12

of the Wind seems to have encouraged

36:14

Houston to make his own gamble

36:16

of low -budget filmmaking. And

36:18

in so doing, he started

36:20

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the world by storm. Yes! There's

36:59

some people right out there, and you're gonna

37:02

help us stop it. Us? Why, you got

37:04

some place to be? On me second. Avengers,

37:06

you're gone. No one's coming to save the

37:08

day. They're time. I think we could be

37:10

the people that are coming. Has come. Being

37:13

the hero, there is no higher calling. Let's

37:15

do this. In

37:29

1970, Houston left Ireland,

37:31

his home of 18 years. In

37:34

interviews, he claimed that he never got

37:36

to spend as much time at St.

37:38

Clarence as he would have liked because

37:40

the property was so expensive to maintain

37:42

that he was constantly having to go

37:44

away to work. But also,

37:46

his emphysema forced a major

37:49

change in lifestyle. He

37:51

couldn't fox hunt anymore, so

37:53

his big Irish castle became a reminder

37:55

of a great love that he had been

37:57

forced to give up. And

37:59

then a great love, Olivia

38:02

de Havilland, encouraged him to give

38:04

it up and move to a

38:06

warmer climate for his health. In

38:08

1971, he put St. Clarence

38:11

on the market. Angelica

38:13

saw this as a major turning

38:15

point for her family and her father.

38:18

She wrote, as the Irish

38:20

say, dad gave up the ghost

38:22

when he let go of St. Clarence.

38:25

Houston left Ireland and made his

38:27

first American film in over

38:29

a decade. The

38:31

story of two small time boxers,

38:33

one a teenager just getting

38:35

started, the other a generation older

38:37

and essentially washed out on

38:39

booze. Houston initially saw Fat City

38:41

as a vehicle for Marlon

38:43

Brando, who was still Houston's favorite

38:45

living actor, even after the

38:47

failure of reflections in a golden

38:49

eye. But after

38:52

making the godfather and last

38:54

tango back -to -back, Brando

38:56

was focusing on activism. So

38:58

Houston cast the far lesser

39:00

known Stacey Keech as the older

39:02

man, and Jeff Bridges, a

39:05

breakout star after Last Picture

39:07

Show, as the kid. This

39:09

gave Fat City a lower profile

39:11

than any Marlon Brando movie, but

39:14

also lower expectations. And

39:17

working with non -stars, Houston

39:20

was able to give direction along the

39:22

lines of, all right, boys,

39:24

now we're just going to have two

39:26

minutes of boxing. Just go out there and

39:28

fight. In one

39:30

scene, the bridge's character loses

39:32

a fight he's expected to win. According

39:35

to the actor, none

39:37

of this was faked, quote, Real

39:39

blood was coming out. Fat

39:43

City is one of my favorite

39:45

Houston films and definitely my pick

39:47

for his best of the 70s.

39:49

A decade in which he seemed

39:52

to rediscover his passion and genius

39:54

for making movies about male rivalries.

39:57

We'll talk about two other films in

39:59

this vein in part two. For

40:01

me, the magic of Fat City

40:03

is how it sets two men

40:05

who are essentially fighting for the

40:07

same dream. on completely opposite paths.

40:10

And when they do cross, their relationship

40:12

is one of mutual respect,

40:14

even as the other is making

40:16

choices that they themselves would

40:18

never make. Fat City

40:20

also has two juicy roles

40:23

for actresses, an anomaly for Houston

40:25

at this point in his

40:27

career. Candy Clark makes

40:29

her film debut as Bridges' girlfriend. And

40:32

Susan Terrell, who we

40:34

last saw in Henry Hathaway's

40:36

shootout, was nominated for

40:38

an Oscar for playing the

40:40

barfly who Keatsch's character

40:42

becomes codependently involved with. The

40:45

last scene was shot in a real diner

40:47

in the middle of the night. The call

40:49

time for the actors was 2 a .m. When

40:52

he arrived, Bridges recalled, John

40:55

was there with his oxygen tank.

40:57

He looked like he was asleep or

40:59

dead. Nobody had the balls to

41:01

go to him and say, we're ready, Mr. Houston. All

41:04

of a sudden, his eyes bolted open

41:06

and he said, I've got

41:08

it. What Houston suddenly

41:10

got was the notion that Keech

41:12

would turn to look behind him

41:14

and realize that everyone else had

41:17

suddenly frozen, that time had

41:19

stopped and he was the only one who

41:21

could see it. It was

41:23

a fitting way to end a picture

41:25

that seemed to take place in a

41:27

70s in which Despite its Chris Christofferson

41:29

theme song, the Great Depression

41:31

had never ended. The

41:34

production, too, was a meeting of past

41:36

and present. Margaret Booth,

41:38

an MGM stalwart who had worked

41:40

with Houston on his disastrous red

41:43

badge of courage, was the

41:45

editor. The production designer

41:47

was Dick Silbert, who bridged

41:49

the generation gap between Elia

41:51

Kazan and Mike Nichols, and

41:53

would soon replace Robert Evans

41:55

as head of Paramount. Silbert

41:58

brought his second wife, writer

42:00

Susanna Moore, with him

42:02

to the Stockton location. In

42:04

her book Misaluminum, she recalled that

42:07

Houston did not seem to be

42:09

able to command much at this

42:11

point, other than a quasi -consensual

42:13

daily trist with Terrell. She

42:15

visited Houston above the river each

42:17

afternoon to give him a blowjob.

42:20

It's not as bad as you

42:22

think, she said. Except for his

42:24

fucking oxygen tank, which bangs against

42:26

my head. Here, feel the lumps. There

42:29

were other complaints about Houston as

42:31

he was old and tired. Although

42:34

he appeared each day on the set, it

42:37

was Duke and Conrad Hall

42:39

who directed the movie, making the

42:41

necessary decisions as to lighting

42:43

and editing and even the performances.

42:47

Moore's allegations do not appear in

42:49

other accounts of this production. But

42:52

that doesn't mean that there's no truth to them. Houston

42:55

was famous for his sexual

42:57

appetite and was also known to

42:59

defer to Kraft's people on

43:01

set. As producer

43:03

Michael Fitzgerald put it, he

43:05

chose his collaborators and then

43:07

trusted them. He

43:09

may have had a God

43:12

complex, but he was the opposite

43:14

of a Preminger -esque dictatorial director.

43:17

Critics raved for a fat city like they

43:20

hadn't for a Houston film in years. Roger

43:23

Ebert gave it four stars and called

43:25

it one of Houston's best films. Vincent

43:27

Canby called it one of the

43:29

three or four most beautifully acted

43:32

films seen so far this year.

43:34

Life Magazine reported that fat

43:37

city, quote, was widely

43:39

applauded in Cann, impressed such viewers

43:41

as Muhammad Ali. and had the

43:43

critics wondering whether Houston might be

43:45

back on the road to making

43:47

important movies, like the Maltese Falcon. He

43:50

was definitely on the road to making a

43:52

film that he had been thinking about almost

43:55

as far back as Falcon, but

43:57

we'll get to that in part two. In

44:00

August 1972, Houston

44:02

married for the last time.

44:04

In an interview that

44:06

year, he described Cecile, nicknamed

44:08

Cece, as... A horse

44:10

woman, young, 35, I think that's

44:12

how old she is. I also think

44:14

she has read a book. I'm

44:16

not absolutely certain about it. Black

44:19

beauty or something. Long

44:22

after this marriage ended, Houston

44:24

said it happened because of alcohol. Because

44:26

he got drunk at a dinner party

44:28

hosted by Jennifer Jones and announced that

44:30

he and CeCe were engaged. And then

44:32

he couldn't go back on it when

44:35

he was sober. According

44:37

to William Weiler's wife, Tally, who

44:39

was also at this party, quote,

44:42

he was so drunk that he fell

44:44

forward and his face landed in his

44:46

soup. They lifted him up and he

44:48

said, I'm engaged to be married. He

44:51

already knew it was a terrible

44:53

idea, and he was sorry ever

44:55

afterward. Houston

44:58

moved into Sisi's house in

45:00

the Palisades, and soon Angelica

45:02

did too. Her

45:04

mother, Enrica, had died in a

45:06

car crash in 1969, and

45:09

Angelica soon thereafter became a top

45:11

model and the girlfriend of

45:13

photographer Bob Richardson, father

45:15

of Terry. Bob

45:17

was schizophrenic and abusive,

45:19

and Angelica moved to LA

45:21

to escape him. Days

45:23

after her arrival, Angelica

45:25

fell in love with Jack

45:28

Nicholson, beginning an on -again -off -again

45:30

romance that would last for 17

45:32

years. Angelica's

45:34

relationship with Jack led directly

45:36

to her father's most

45:38

iconic on -screen role in

45:40

Chinatown. Sure,

45:42

Houston was reminiscent of screenwriter

45:44

Robert Towns' dad, a

45:46

bigger -than -life man who had made

45:48

his money subdividing the West Valley. And

45:51

in making this neo -noir,

45:53

director Roman Polanski was inspired

45:55

by Houston's Maltese Falcon. But

45:58

once Polanski had the idea,

46:01

Nicholson sealed the casting deal.

46:04

Nicholson's embrace by the Houston

46:06

family felt fated. Angelica talked

46:09

about falling in love with Jack

46:11

four years before they even met,

46:13

when she saw him on screen an

46:15

easy writer. Likewise,

46:18

Angelica's father had been Jack's personal

46:20

icon before he ever knew

46:22

he had a beautiful, glamorous daughter.

46:25

I consciously knew for a certain

46:27

period with John that the

46:29

greatest guy alive was a friend

46:31

of mine, Nicholson said. But

46:34

five years after her screen debut,

46:37

Angelica, not yet a full -time

46:39

actress, was still wary

46:41

of her father. The

46:43

fact that her boyfriend was now

46:45

playing the lover of her father's

46:47

character's daughter, and that her

46:49

father was playing an incestuous

46:51

rapist, didn't help. Angelica

46:53

visited the Chinatown set a

46:55

couple of times and recalled that

46:58

she felt that her dad

47:00

was, quote, practicing

47:02

on me by being

47:04

abusive, verbally, not sexually.

47:07

At one point, all three were

47:09

having lunch together. As Angelica

47:11

recalled in her second memoir, Watch

47:14

Me, I

47:23

hear you were sleeping with my daughter.

47:26

Long pause. Mr.

47:28

Gitz. I went bright

47:30

red and then I realized

47:32

they were rehearsing. Everyone burst out

47:34

laughing. Houston's

47:37

living legend ways were trying

47:39

for Polanski. Sometimes he'd

47:41

show up on set, drunk from the Stoly

47:43

he kept in his trailer. Other

47:46

times he'd hold court as a rock

47:48

and tour, distracting the other actors and

47:50

crew members. At one

47:52

point, Polanski felt the need to

47:54

give the following piece of direction,

47:56

addressed to the whole cast, but

47:58

intended for an audience of one. Actors,

48:01

you must prepare before

48:03

the scene. I want you

48:05

not wandering off telling stupid anecdotes. I

48:07

don't tell you this again. Houston

48:11

was very unhappy at the

48:13

time, Angelica recalled. Perhaps

48:15

this fed the performance. Houston's

48:17

Noah Cross. is perhaps

48:20

the most chilling embodiment of

48:22

moral rot that I've ever

48:24

seen on film. Though

48:27

a box office success, Chinatown

48:29

won only one of the 11

48:31

Oscars it was nominated for. The

48:34

Towering Inferno, the year's

48:36

biggest hit, won three. By

48:39

1974, any vestiges of

48:41

the studio system that Houston had

48:43

come up in were gone. But

48:45

the system had reconstituted itself

48:48

in a new form. The

48:50

generation known as the movie Bratz

48:52

were still making hits like American

48:54

Graffiti and The Godfather Part II.

48:56

But the new trend was

48:58

big budget mega productions like

49:00

Inferno. You can probably

49:03

guess which side of the fence

49:05

Houston felt more affinity for. But

49:07

in case there was any doubt, he

49:09

told an interviewer, Earthquake.

49:12

towering inferno, et cetera, I

49:14

haven't seen them. And

49:16

I'm not drawn to them because they

49:19

seem to contain a formula. What

49:21

I hear about them doesn't sufficiently

49:23

attract me. I'd rather read a

49:25

book. To

49:28

prefer personal enrichment over

49:30

financial enrichment was a kind

49:32

of growth for Houston. This

49:35

was a man who had kept

49:37

working compulsively because, as he once

49:39

quipped, I thought it was better

49:41

to do a picture than rob

49:44

a bank." He acknowledged that he

49:46

made the Macintosh Man in 1973

49:48

for the money, but

49:50

justified it by saying, simply

49:52

because you're doing it for the money

49:54

doesn't mean that you aren't making every effort

49:56

to make it a better picture. Now,

49:59

he felt called to do something

50:01

meaningful. Something, he

50:04

said, we could hold our

50:06

heads up about afterward. We

50:09

will talk more about that

50:11

something in the finale of our

50:13

finale, coming in two

50:15

days. Join us then,

50:17

won't you? Thanks

50:24

for listening to You Must Remember

50:27

This. The show is

50:29

written, produced, and narrated

50:31

by Carina Longworth.

50:34

That's me. This season

50:36

is edited and mixed

50:39

by Evan Viola. Our

50:41

social media research and production

50:43

assistant is Brendan Whalen. And

50:46

our logo was designed by

50:48

Teddy Blanks. If

50:50

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51:07

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51:10

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which include lists of our

51:16

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51:29

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52:09

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52:11

from the secret and or

52:13

forgotten histories of Hollywood's first

52:15

century. Join us then,

52:17

won't you? Good

52:20

night.