Huston directed acclaimed films such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), The Misfits (1961), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Annie (1982), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987).

[2] He also engaged in many interests, including ballet, English and French literature, opera, horseback riding, and studying painting at the Art Students League of Los Angeles.

At Universal, he got a job in the script department, and began by writing dialogue for a number of films in 1932, including Murders in the Rue Morgue, A House Divided, and Law and Order.

There is a rumor that actor Clark Gable was responsible for the accident, but that MGM general manager Eddie Mannix paid Huston to take the blame.

[5] For his first directing assignment, Huston chose Dashiell Hammett's detective thriller, The Maltese Falcon, a film which failed at the box office in two earlier versions by Warners.

The supporting cast included other noted actors: Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet (his first film role), and his own father, Walter Huston.

"[8]: 177  Huston achieved that effect by giving "deep attention" to the plot, involving a large jewelry theft, by examining the minute, step-by-step details and difficulties each of the characters had of carrying it out.

"[8]: 177  Monroe said Huston was the first genius she had ever met; and he made her feel that she finally had a chance of becoming a professional actress:[12]: 336 Even though my part was a minor one, I felt as if I were the most important performer in the picture—when I was before the camera.

For the starring role, Huston chose World War II hero Audie Murphy to play the young Union soldier who deserts his company out of fear, but later returns to fight alongside them.

Hepburn wrote about her experiences shooting the film in her memoir, The Making of the African Queen: Or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and almost lost my mind.

[17] In 1952 Huston moved to Ireland as a result of his "disgust" at the "witch-hunt" and the "moral rot" he felt was created by investigation and hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), which had affected many of his friends in the movie industry.

Huston had, with friends including director William Wyler and screenwriter Philip Dunne, established the "Committee for the First Amendment", as a response to the ongoing government investigations into communists within the film industry.

It was not until after he read Katharine Hepburn's memoir, The Making of the African Queen, that he decided that he could write "a book which is fair, which presents the Huston that I loved along with the one that I began to fear on occasion."

The fishing village of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was recreated along the waterfront; the sailing ship in the film was fully constructed to be seaworthy; and three 100-foot whales were built out of steel, wood, and plastic.

Film historian Stuart M. Kaminsky notes that Huston presents Sigmund Freud, played by Montgomery Clift, "as a kind of savior and messiah", with an "almost Biblical detachment."

The production attracted intense worldwide media attention, due to Burton bringing his celebrity mistress, actress Elizabeth Taylor (who was still married to singer Eddie Fisher at the time) to Puerto Vallarta.

In 1967, Huston gave Taoiseach Jack Lynch a tour of Ardmore and asked to form a committee to help foster a productive Irish film industry.

[27] Lynch also ultimately agreed to offer tax breaks to foreign production companies if they shot on location in Ireland, and signed the Film Act of 1970.

Under the Volcano, Huston's last film set in Mexico, stars Albert Finney as an alcoholic ambassador during the beginnings of World War II.

In 1963, director Otto Preminger asked if he would portray a Boston prelate in The Cardinal, and, writes author Philip Kemp, he "virtually stole the picture.

Huston is famous to a generation of fans of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories as the voice of the wizard Gandalf in the Rankin/Bass animated adaptations of The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980).

Huston spent long evenings carousing in the Nevada casinos after filming, surrounded by reporters and beautiful women, gambling, drinking, and smoking cigars.

[6] As a result, his best films, according to Flint, "have lean, fast-paced scripts and vibrant plots and characterizations, and many of them deal ironically with vanity, avarice and unfulfilled quests".

In many of his films, therefore, he tried to express his interest by developing themes involving some of the "grand narratives" of the twentieth century, such as "faith, meaning, truth, freedom, psychology, colonialism, war and capitalism".

"[5] In any case, notes Flint, Huston took "uncommon care to preserve the writer's styles and values ... and sought repeatedly to transpose the interior essence of literature to film with dramatic and visual tension", as he did in Red Badge of Courage, Moby Dick, and Under the Volcano.

"[33] After an interview a few years before he died, the reporter writes that "Huston said he missed the major studio era when people savored making movies, not just money.

Marlon Brando's career Army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye, even Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen – they all fall short of their plans.

About six months prior to this accident, while driving drunk, Huston crashed into a parked car injuring his passenger and his partner at the time, actress Zita Johann.

[50] He also has the unique distinction of directing both his father Walter and his daughter Anjelica in Oscar-winning performances (in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Prizzi's Honor, respectively), making the Hustons the first family to have three generations of Academy Award winners.

[51] In addition, he also directed 13 other actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Sydney Greenstreet, Claire Trevor, Sam Jaffe, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, José Ferrer, Colette Marchand, Deborah Kerr, Grayson Hall, Susan Tyrrell, Albert Finney, Jack Nicholson and William Hickey.