The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, losing to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948). Surprisingly, Humphrey Bogart was not even nominated for his electrifying performance as Fred C. Dobbs. However, Walter Huston won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and John Huston won Oscars® for Best Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay. Always a classy guy, Walter Huston thanked his son when the elder picked up his Academy Award at the podium. He said in his speech, "Many, many years ago, I raised a son, and I said to him, if you ever become a writer or a director, please find a good part for your old man. And he certainly did." This was the first time a father-son team won Oscars® for the same film. In 1985, John Huston directed his daughter Angelica in Prizzi's Honor, for which she won Best Supporting Actress.

The same year The Treasure of the Sierra Madre racked up three Oscars, Claire Trevor won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Key Largo (1948), also directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart. It was a very good year for Huston, Bogie, and Warner Bros. Studios.

Time called the film "one of the best things Hollywood has done since it learned to talk...Walter Huston's performance is his best job in a lifetime of acting." The Theatre Arts, one of the most respected critical publications of its day, called Walter Huston's portrayal as the grizzled Howard finest performance ever given on the American screen. Indeed, the tall and lanky actor so immersed himself in the role that he physically appeared to be short, stocky, and stooped over. Bosley Crowther, the critic for the New York Times, wrote, "Huston has shaped a searching drama of the collision of civilization's vicious greed with the instinct for self-preservation in an environment where all the barriers are down." Probably the most glowing praise for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre came from the critic over at The Nation, Mr. James Agee. In his January 31, 1948 review, he declared John Huston, next only to Charlie Chaplin, as "the most talented man working in American pictures..." Agee later collaborated with Huston on The African Queen (1951), the film in which Humphrey Bogart won his only Academy Award.

The most unexpected bit of praise came from Jack Warner himself in an August 1, 1947 telegram where he wrote that The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was nothing less than the "greatest motion picture we have ever made. It is really one that we have always wished for." Humphrey Bogart was equally enthusiastic. Bogie whetted a newspaper critic's interest in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre when he yelled to him outside a New York City club, "Wait till you see me in my next picture...I play the worst sh*t you ever saw!"

Humphrey Bogart had nothing but love and admiration for his good friend, John Huston. But Bogie also knew how to throw a backhanded compliment to Huston; he told an interviewer about Huston's exacting standards when shooting The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Bogie said, "John wanted everything perfect. If he saw a nearby mountain that could serve for photographic purposes, that mountain was not good; too easy to reach. If we could get to a location site without fording a couple of streams and walking through snake-infested areas in the scorching sun, then it wasn't quite right."

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre placed number thirty on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Best American Movies of All Time in 1998.

By Scott McGee