When John Huston first read the novel in 1936, he hoped some day he could film it with his father Walter in the lead role as Fred C. Dobbs. As the years passed, John realized that his father would no longer fit the part, but that he might be perfect as the grizzled prospector, wizened from years of experience with human nature. Once it came time for Huston to actually make the film, he had a hard time convincing his father, a matinee idol for 20 years, to take on the uncharacteristic role. Walter was concerned about his image, even though he said he'd do anything for his son's career. The veteran eventually agreed to the role, but his commitment was soon tested. When he first arrived on the set, John asked him to remove his false teeth and gum his way through the role. Now John had subjected Walter to practical jokes before on the set of The Maltese Falcon (1941), so Walter undoubtedly figured John was up to another one. But he wasn't. John actually did want Walter to remove his false choppers, a move virtually unheard of among image-conscious movie actors. Walter refused, and John and Humphrey Bogart literally held him down and pulled the teeth from his mouth. Walter stood up sputtering, angry at being forced to appear so undignified but also laughing at the way he sounded. John reasoned, "That's what I want for this role." The teeth stayed out.

As with most of the Mexican actors selected from the local population, Alfonso Bedoya's atrocious pronunciation of English proved to be a bit of a problem. Example: "horseback" came out as "whore's back." And speaking of language barriers, there were scenes in which Walter Huston had to speak fluent Spanish, a language he did not know off camera. To fill this need, John Huston hired a Mexican to record the lines, and then the elder Huston memorized them so well that many assumed he knew the language like a native. This is but one reason why Walter Huston was long regarded as an "actor's actor." Meanwhile, Humphrey Bogart only knew of two Spanish words, "Dos Equis," a Mexican beer.

John Huston and Humphrey Bogart did have a high old time playing practical jokes on the set of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. One of their favorite victims was Alfonso Bedoya, the Mexican actor who played the villainous bandit in the picture. Bedoya seemed to have a hollow leg when it came time for meals, gorging himself at every occasion with the food that Warner Bros. provided for the cast and crew. Bedoya took his meals very seriously, always being first when it came time to eat. Huston and Bogart took notice of this and decided to fix Bedoya by affixing strong glue to his saddled and stationary stuffed horse. Just before the lunch bell rang, Huston called Bedoya over to shoot some close-up takes. He hopped into the saddle, Huston shot a few scenes, and dinner was called. Everyone but Bedoya hit the food spread. Bedoya struggled to get off the horse but was held firmly in place by the glue. Bedoya's subsequent barrage of frantic sobbing and caterwauling so annoyed Huston that he soon ordered Bedoya's pants cut away from the saddle and the actor rushed off to stuff his face.

But Bedoya was not the only victim. Huston pulled a good one on Bogart in a scene where he has to reach under a rock for hidden gold and is told by another character that an extremely venomous Gila monster had crawled there. Little did Bogie know that Huston had put a mousetrap where he had to reach. Bogie, acting appropriately as if a Gila monster actually was under the rock, jumped several feet backwards when the mousetrap snapped on his finger.

Though the daily rushes impressed Warner Bros. studio mogul Jack Warner, he nearly went berserk with the weekly expenditures. After viewing one scene, Warner threw up his hands and shouted to producer Henry Blanke, "Yeah, they're looking for gold all right - mine!" During another screening of rushes, Warner watched Bogart stumble along in the desert for water. Warner jumped up in the middle of the scene and shouted to a gaggle of executives, "If that s.o.b. doesn't find water soon I'll go broke!" Warner had reason to be upset. Huston and Blanke led him to believe that The Treasure of the Sierra Madre would be an easy picture to make and that they would be in and out of Mexico in a matter of weeks. Because Warner was notorious for not actually reading scripts, he assumed the film was a B-movie Western. As the full extent of Huston's plans became apparent, Warner nearly blew a gasket. He was especially unhappy with the way the film ended, arguing that audiences wouldn't accept it. Ironically, Warner was correct, since the initial box office take was as impressive as fool's gold. But the film was a huge critical success and, in its many re-releases, it more than earned its original investment of $3 million.

Author B. Traven, AKA Hal Croves, did not agree with John Huston's decision to cast his father as Howard, the grizzled prospector. He originally envisioned MGM contract star Lewis Stone in the role, but he eventually came to see the wisdom behind the director's choice to put Walter Huston in the role.

Just as Huston was starting to shoot scenes in Tampico, Mexico, the production was shut down inexplicably by the local government. The cast and crew were at a complete loss to understand why, since the residents and government of Tampico had been so generous in days past. It turns out that a local newspaper printed a false story that accused the filmmakers of making a production that was unflattering to Mexico. Huston soon found out why the newspaper skewered him and his production in the funny papers; when you wanted to do anything in Tampico, it was customary to slide a little money toward the editor of the newspaper, something the crew failed to do. Fortunately, two of Huston's associates, Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias, went to bat for the director with the President of Mexico. The libelous accusations were dropped, and a few weeks later, the editor of the newspaper was caught in the wrong bed and shot dead by a jealous husband.

While on location, John Huston took a little Mexican boy named Pablo under his wing. The child ran errands for Huston and generally acted like the crew mascot. When it came time for Huston to close up shop in Mexico, he chose to adopt Pablo and brought him back to the United States to live with him and his second wife, actress Evelyn Keyes. You would think that Huston would have prepared Keyes for their new family member, but he didn't. That oversight precipitated their divorce a short time later. (There were a lot of other problems too. For details, read Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister: My Lively Life In and Out of Hollywood by Evelyn Keyes). Pablo was educated in the United States and eventually got married and had three children. But later Pablo deserted his family, returned to Mexico City, and became a used-car salesman.

The close friendship between John Huston and Humphrey Bogart was put to the test during the on-location shooting of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Eager to get back to his precious yacht "Santana" for a boat race, Bogart grew very impatient and very vocal with Huston's directorial decisions. Bogart's rants got to be quite obtrusive, until one night over dinner Huston put a stop to them. Bogie leaned over the table to make a point, and Huston reached out and took his nose between his first two fingers and closed them in a tight fist. Huston held the wincing Bogart's nose for a few moments, and then gave it one final twist before releasing it. Huston's point was made, Bogart learned his lesson, and the two resumed their close friendship as it once was.

By Scott McGee