The Falcon Is Hungry

Now Paul O’Connor’s photo on the right depicts one of my favorite Taos characters, Tony Huston. The photo also awakens memories of The Maltese Falcon from the novel by Dashiell Hammett, a film directed by Tony’s dad, John Huston. Father John also directed, among many fab films, The Dead, a short story, maybe James Joyce’s most accessible piece, for which Tony wrote the screenplay. It was John’s last movie and quite wonderful.

Despite his rather eccentric attachment to Falcons and airstreams, and given Tony’s pedigree, as well as his lively intelligence and humor, I don’t think he’s all mixed up about art and life, appearance and reality the way some Hollywood folk get confused, say our beloved Dennis (RIP), whose Last Movie’s episodes of “life imitating art” are legend. Tony did mention once that it was not so simple, growing up the grandson of Walter and son of John. But if you think of Walter and John coming back to earth as Falcons, well, Tony’s on top of his game.

Tony’s grandfather Walter (below) starred in one of John’s (left) more famous films, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948, along with Humphrey Bogart for which Walter won an Oscar for supporting actor award and John, the director, an Oscar for writing the screenplay.

Certainly the Huston family can be seen as artists who made their chops in the cinema. Sister Anjelica was featured in Vanity Fair last month and I love this

charming family picture, which I grabbed off the website from PHOTOFEST. See Tony as a child on John’s left. Apparently, Anjelica, sitting on her mother’s lap, has written a book about her life, following in the footsteps of her less famous sister, Allegra (Love Child), who also, like Tony lives here in Taos. Though I don’t really know Allegra I admire her grit, typing up her manuscripts in various coffee shops, and living the life of a madrecita to river runners.

Humphrey Bogart, shown here with the black bird in The Maltese Falcon, represents detective Sam Spade in the highly stylized or artistic representation of Hammer’s hard-boiled novel, who, along with Raymond Chandler, was responsible for the genesis of a peculiarly American literary form, a form that entertained even as it investigated the dark side of political corruption and seductive social forms, tempting damsels, murder and mayhem, especially in urban American.

Sam Spade in Falcon ultimately turns away from Brigid (Mary Astor), the seductress, and says, “I won’t play the sap for you.” As Raymond Chandler said about the private detective, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.” The hard-boiled detectives followed in the footsteps of western anti-heroes, the good bad guys and they revealed the corruption at the core of American society—even as you or I identified with gunsels and molls. Hard-boiled heroes still romance America.

During a UNM upper division class on adapting novels into film, Tony joined our seminar and I asked him about Falcon’s witty screenplay, full of quips and Hammett quotables, pouring out of Spade-Bogart’s mouth. “I think Dad had his secretary type up the dialogue,” he said. John Huston was famous for adapting a number of famous novels to the screen without violating the letter and spirit of the text.

Since we’re talking about film and family here, I highly recommend New Yorker Writer Lillian Ross’s book, Picture, a film bio about John Huston’s making of Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, wherein she meets Huston and the kids, Tony, Anjelica, etc. In the early 2000s Ross contributed a “casual” to The New Yorker, as I remember, about a a brief afternoon spent with Tony in his pickup truck bouncing round the back roads of Taos.

Tony told me how Agnes Martin once worked for the family. In about 1939 or 1940, Agnes quit school, gave up her swimming scholarship, and went looking for a job in Los Angeles. A temp agency told her John Huston needed a cook. Agnes said she could cook. As it turned out, she became John’s driver. When I asked Tony what she was like then, he looked at me quizzically but kindly. “Bill, I wasn’t born then.”

I didn’t hit myself in the head because like many Taosenos I get confused about which decade or century I’m living in, what with this new book about local history or the recent stories about Ernie Blake and TSV, whom I first encountered in 1965. One of the interesting things about Taos, which along with a few dollars will get you a cup of coffee or a latte, is that, despite our isolation, we’re only removed by one degree of separation from what goes on among the characters in the outside world. Indeed, someone saw Jean Mayer skiing with the Billionaire the other day.

Now here’s O’Connor showing up with Tony and the Falcon (above), a wonderful photo,  second only  to the smoky image of Saki Karavas ( left), published in Paul’s Taos Portraits. About Hotel La Fonda Saki said, “Every spider has its web, buddy.” You could say the same about the omnipresent Sacred Mountain.  Tony is in good company what with the Greek, here, giving him the once over and no doubt discussing the charms of beautiful women.

Tony Huston by Paul O’Conno

Tony Huston by Paul O’Connor