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Scene/Unseen: Mining for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’s Critique of American Capitalist Exploitation in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2019

Abstract

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Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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References

1 Cohen, Allen and Lawton, Harry, John Huston: A Guide to References and Resources (New York, 1997), 32Google Scholar; Behlmer, Rudy, Inside Warner Bros. (1935–1951) (Hollywood, CA, 1987), 287Google Scholar.

2 Brown, Jonathan C., Oil and Revolution in Mexico (Berkeley, CA, 1993)Google Scholar.

3 Research Record, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Feb. 13, 1948, folder Treasure of the Sierra Madre #680, box 1, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA [hereafter WBA].

4 “Conference Notes,” Script, 1–3, folder The Treasure of the Sierra Madre–script notes undated, John Huston Papers, Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA [hereafter JHP].

5 “Conference Notes,” JHP.

6 Huston, John, An Open Book (New York, 1980), 42–7Google Scholar and 143–8. On the cultural front, see Denning, Michael, The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1996)Google Scholar. For a window onto leftists and artists in Mexico after the Mexican Revolution, see Delpar, Helen, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920–1935 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1995)Google Scholar, especially Ch. 5. On Huston's ties to this network, see Adriana Williams's and Doris Ober's biography of the renowned and well-networked cartoonist Miguel Covarrubias, Covarrubias (Austin, TX, 1994).

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8 On Huston's interest, see Huston, An Open Book, 143. On B. Traven's biography, see Engell, John, “Traven, Huston, and the Textual Treasures of the Sierra Madre,” in Studlar, Gaylyn and Desser, David, eds., Reflections in a Male Eye: John Huston and the American Experience (Washington, DC, 1993), 7996Google Scholar; Ginna, Robert Emmett Jr., “In Search of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” The American Scholar 71, no. 4 (Autumn 2002): 7589Google Scholar. On Traven's interest in the historical exploitation of the U.S.–Mexico border region for its mineral wealth, see Taylor, Lawrence D., “B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the Continuing Allure of ‘Gold Glitter’ in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands Region,” Journal of the Southwest 60, no. 3 (Autumn 2018): 678–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For correspondence between Huston and Traven speaking to the similarities and differences in their visions, see Cohen and Lawton, John Huston, 279–83.

9 Huston, An Open Book, 143.

10 Herman Lissuer to John Huston, “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” May 13, 1946, WBA. On the revisions to the Mexican Constitution in the Venustiano Carranza administration, see Meyer, Lorenzo, Mexico and the United States in the Oil Controversy, 1917–1942 (Austin, TX, 1977)Google Scholar.

11 This casting possibility is mentioned in correspondence between Huston and Traven in December 1946. See Cohen and Lawton, John Huston, 283.

12 John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre script, 1–2, 1945, folder The Treasure of the Sierra Madre–script 1945, JHP.

13 John Huston, Conference Notes, undated, folder The Treasure of the Sierra Madre–script notes undated, JHP.

14 Gardner, Gerald C., The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office 1934–1968 (New York, 1987), xxiiGoogle Scholar.

15 Lillian Ross, “Come in, Lassie,” The New Yorker, Feb. 21, 1948, 40–2. The explanation, moreover, conforms to Marx's definition of the commodity, an “external object” that is put to use for various human purposes, but which can only be brought into relation with other objects of differing use-values through a comparison of the labor-power required to produce each object. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, trans. Ben Fowkes (London, 1990), 125–8.

16 Henry Blanke to Geoffrey Sherlock, June 26, 1942, folder The Treasure of the Sierra Madre–John Huston 1948, Motion Picture Association of America and Production Code Administration Records, JHP.

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