AMERICAN CINEMA

To pursue the illusion, I've covered some 40 spawnings, not counting the ones I only wrote, and only acted in. A question I'm often asked is which of my films is my favorite. Like Otto Preminger, I affirm they are all one's children, none to be less loved because it has a hair lip or a club foot.

Actually, I feel a certain detachment towards my work, regardless of whether they're good pictures, or bad pictures. I rarely stay with them on TV, and I can not be dragged into a Huston retrospective.

But instances, things that happened during the making of the films, I live over and over. I remember the cameras turning for the first shot of my first picture. The actors were all in their places, and they were looking at me, expectantly. I had no idea what was required. Finally, my assistant, the splendid Jack Sullivan, whispered to me "Say action." I did so, and The Maltese Falcon was underway.

I remember shooting a scene in the Mexican jungle. The indians had come down from the mountains, two or three hundred of them, to watch. When the generator started, and the big arcs light up, there was a low murmur among them. An assistant who spoke their indian language told them they must be very quiet while the cameras were turning. After we got the shot, I looked around me, and men, women and children were holding their hands thusly (covers mouth with both hands) over their mouths, so that no sound could escape them.

I remember the dismasting of the Pequod during the shooting of Moby Dick and how that great sailor, the late Captain Alan Villiers, saved the ship and all aboard from going to the bottom by a miracle of seamenship.

I remember on the island of Tobago, Robert Mitchum, naked from the waist up, doing the Marine crawl on his belly through the grasses. He did it three times until I was satisfied with the take. Then, and only then, when he turned around, did I see that he was bleeding out of every pore. The grasses were stinging nettles.

I remember the Warner office in Tokyo, negotiating for a lovely little miko, a geisha in training, that is, to make a test for a picture I was about to start. The geisha house wanted three thousand dollars pillow money, which sum it reckoned to receive when it came time to auction off her virginity. In paying that sum, the office informed me, I would be entitled not only to make the test, but also the privilige of becoming her first lover. There was something about the transaction which disturbed me, so I called the whole thing off. I'm sure that there are those among you who will not believe this.

I remember the baboons lined up on the bank of the river below Merchanson Falls watching Bogie and Katie do a love scene onThe African Queen. They were as attentive as any theater audience. I half expected them to applaud when the scene was finished.

I remember the Congolese soldiers appearing one day at the compound we were building that was to lodge the company when it came. They arrested our native hunter who's task it had been to furnish the ever-bubbling pot with meat from the forest. It was some days before we learned why. Villagers had been missing. Along with the deer, guinea hen, and monkey, we had been eating what is euphemistically called 'long pig.'

I remember during The Night of the Iguana bringing my assistant, Tommy Shaw, back from the location to Puerta Vallerta with a broken back. Our boat had too deep a draft to get in close to the beach. It was late at night, and no canoes were about. A half dozen of the crew jumped overboard with the improvised stretcher and, standing on the sandy bottom, their heads below water, they held the stretcher up while Tommy was lowered into it. Then the disembodied forearms and hands carried him in. It was something out of Jean Coucteau.

I remember my continuity girl on The African Queen and I floating down the river below Merchanson Fallsin a flat bottomed row boat. The banks were lined with crocodiles which slid into the water at our approach. Hippos midstream submerged as we came near. One croc, who may have been the biggest croc in all Africa, did not dane to move, but simply lay there with some five feet of mouth agape, letting tick birds clean his teeth.

While I was marveling at the sight of him, and wondering how many centuries old he'd be, our boat scrapped over something, stopped, and then began quite slowly to rise until it was a good two feet out of the water. We were balanced on a surfacing hippo's back. After an interval of several years, during which I developed Parkinson's Disease, the hippo lowered us gently back into the water and we floated serenly on. I looked to see how Angie was taking it. She was making a note in her script.

I remember a native runner appearing out of the Uganda bush with a message sent on from the railroad terminal at Butiaba. It read "You have a daughter. Both she and Riki are doing well." Angelica is with me here tonight.

But I must stem this flow, lest it sweep me away from this splendid moment and out into the sea of rememberance, and the waters close over my head. Tell me, though, what other pursuit, what other occupation, could offer such a rich, wild, rushing variety of incident.

An avuncular figure in my youth passed on a piece of advice his father had given him. "Don't work at anything simply for the money. Choose your profession as you would choose a wife: for love and for money." I have faithfully abided by the first half of that dictum.

Indeed, I have a confession to make. I have been so enamored with my work that I always had a feeling of guilt about taking money for it. Maybe that's why I always got rid of it so quickly. It was like money you win at the races, not the rewards of honest toil.

So now, finally, like a guest entering a great hall, I bow to my predecesors: Willy, Frank, Jack, Hitch, Orson. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all for affording me the privilige of joining them.