The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

A decisive portrait of avarice and a bona fide American classic, Huston’s adaptation of B. Traven’s 1927 novel earned him Oscars as both writer and director. Two down-and-out Americans (Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt) team up with an aged but wily prospector (Best Supporting Actor winner Walter Huston) to mine for gold in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains. Discovering the treasure brings out latent greed and suspicion, especially in Bogart’s paranoid and unsympathetically portrayed Fred C. Dobbs. John rated his father’s turn as the finest acting in any of his films, and indeed the character has taken on iconic dimensions, in part because of his impromptu jig (a skill he learned from Eugene O’Neill decades earlier). Preserved by the Library of Congress.