Lawrence Grobel - The Hustons: The Life and Times of a Hollywood Dynasty

A Masterpiece of Hollywood reportage that shall reverberate for years.

James A. Michener

The best book of the year, Grobels writing is quite marvelous. The Hustons reads vividly, just like one of John Hustons great films.

J. P. Donleavy

Biography writing at its absolute best.

Larry King, USA Today

A feast of a book.

David Thomson, The New Republic

The Hustons reads like a gutsy movie that might have been made by Huston himself: lots of melodrama, traumas and triumphs, womanizing and affairs, demons and ambitions. And always life carried on with flair.

Robert Osborne, The Hollywood Reporter

An engrossing study in family dynamics... Marvelous... This is one of the best biographies of a Hollywood personality sinceactually, I cant recall since when.

Alyn Brodsky, The Miami Herald

An immensely enjoyable read. The Hustons is fact but it reads like a romantic, exciting and compelling novel.

Frank Thompson, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Hustons is a delicious, wicked guide to the delicious, wicked life of a sly, sadistic scoundrel who, for all his boozing, bullying, braggadocio, was equaled only by Byron in the sentimental cynicism and fecund carelessness with which he played the worlds game.

Frederic Raphael, The London Sunday Times

Grobel has written a brilliant book: it moves like a montage train that knows where to stop to tell you the salient facts and then catches speed so that the reader is magnetized to this book, which I predict will win awards for biography.

Connie Martinson, Talks Books

A sprawling dramatic tapestry of a life lived to the fullest.

Digby Diehl, Playboy

Huston was one of the characters Americans always need for our praise, scorn, and titillationthe royalty the Constitution forces us to seek outside of government. Lawrence Grobels The Hustons is of that fine, American myth-making tradition, and... though its hefty, its excellent. Its a superb book... an engaging, well-drawn portrait, not only of a show business family dynasty, but of modern American culture.

Steven Kane, L.A. Reader

The best biography to date of John Huston... this 800 page book is the work to which all future biographers and critics must turn... Grobel writes lucidly and brightly... a first-class story about a personality more curious and fascinating than most characters in fiction.

Kirk Honeycutt, Daily News

... Extensive and often fascinating....Huston instructed Mr. Grobels interviewees to hold nothing back.

The New York Times

Marvelously alive. Huston was one of the most fascinating characters ever to tread the earth. Grobels book takes us through Hustons evolution from scrawny, sickly kid to boxer to Mexican cavalry rider to writer to director to country squire to legend.

Los Angeles magazine

This is John Hustons story, and there is not another like it in the history of the cinema.

The Cincinnati Enquirer

A fascinating story for anyone who loves the movies. Moving from dramatic chapters about Walters rise as a character actor to interviews with John, Anjelica and seemingly hundreds of friends, the stories are rich and thoroughly captivating, firmly establishing the clan as a towering Hollywood presence.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

A marvelous, intimate, perceptive, colorful biography, and Grobel is a first-class writer. There arent many who could capture the strange Huston ways, and make them real and understandable to the reader. Grobel manages it... The Hustons is a distinguished and utterly readable book, a must for the library of anyone who cares about Hollywood and the art of film.

Video Age International

Serious, engaging, informative, gossipy... colored by wonderful anecdotes and dignified by what seems to be an authentic understanding of John Hustoncomplicated, deviled by death, a deeply romantic figure, at once terrible and irresistible. It is a sensitive, intelligent portrait of a family hanging on the door of the American dream. An impressive biography.

Woman

The detailed study of Walters career from vaudeville to motion picture stardom is a book in itself, but serves in this instance as a prelude to the perceptive study of John Hustons brilliant and trouble-prone career as a filmmaker, adventurer, and satyr.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Intricate and monumentally detailed, almost continuously entertaining and informative, it is also something of a capsule overview of American entertainment, from Vaudeville and Broadway theater through silent cinema to cinemascope... Grobel sees his cantankerous subject starkly and without illusion. The portrait, as a result, is dazzlingly complex.

William Novick, Datebook

The book packs the punch of a spectacular mini-series that disappoints only because it ends.

Joyce Persico, The Times

Not only is this the book on John Huston, it is also a gripping read whose flood of family anecdotes and movie-making lore keeps the reader pinned.... A tremendous spellbinder.

Kirkus Reviews

A stunning portrait of an entire family... Grobels book is undoubtedly one of the best biographies to come out this year.

Chattanooga Times

A sprawling saga that richly details the lives of Huston, his father Walter, and his offspring, Anjelica, Tony and Danny.

Los Angeles Times

Grobel has written a book of overbrimming fascination, a flood tide of stories and anecdotes... all the Hustons have their innings in this world series of a book; Walter dominates the early games, until John takes over like DiMaggio.... The Hustons traces the weaving of a rich and thorny tapestry.

The San Diego Union

Gripping from first to last page. It is, at one and the same time, a study of a family, a history of the film industry, and an unflinching look at John Huston, a man of genius and, like so many talented people, a human being capable of great generosity and equally great cruelty.

Hudson Daily Sun

This detailed book will no doubt stand for many years as the definitive biography of one of the most influential and entertaining filmmakers of our time.

Weekend , Australia

Grobel has written a peeping-over-the-shoulder, peeking-through-keyholes showbiz story, full of razzmatazz, anecdotes and back-biting... guaranteed to keep the reader engrossed over many a chuckling hour.

The Irish Times Limited

Copyright Lawrence Grobel 1989, 2014

Postscript Lawrence Grobel 2014

First published by Scribner in 1989

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-62914-237-1
eISBN: 978-1-62914-289-0