. . . idiocy, as Hollywood types--then and now--refuse to believe in the talents and accomplishments of anyone who is not a "larger-than-life" megalomaniac alpha male, like themselves. As THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE writer\director John Huston forced novelist B. Traven to cower In Cognito with the rest of the TREASURE film crew in a top Mexican luxury resort during this location shoot, the German socialist Traven no doubt could smell the coming storm of American McCarthyism and Witch Hunts. This 50-minute "Making of" notes that Huston proved he was tougher than Warner Brothers' "tough guy" shining star by reaching over a banquet table and almost literally twisting off Humphrey Bogart's nose one supper when Bogart renewed his yammering whine about "missing a yacht race" one time too many. In real life, Bogart always did his best Captain-Queeg-turning-yellow imitation from THE CAINE MUTINY whenever the chips were down. For instance, a few years after TREASURE he impulsively went to Washington, D.C., to stand up for a few outspoken American Patriots being snitched out for actually having brains by the likes of Reagan, Heston, Kazan, and Wayne. However, at the first whiff of blow-back from the wife-beaters club, Bogart rushed back to Hollywood with his tail between his legs, letting his publicist release a statement saying he'd been "duped and brainwashed" into swallowing the U.S. Constitution's BS about free speech, civil rights, and democracy. In DISCOVERING TREASURE, the producers put a flat-Earther Traven-denier on an equal footing with respectable film historians, such as Robert Osborne, Leonard Maltin, and director Martin Scorsese. Judy Stone makes her living by writing that B. Traven's "REAL" identity will NEVER be known, despite the obvious necessity for his temporary use of a pseudonym during the TREASURE shoot. Stone contends perhaps Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, a German Prince, or the Easter Bunny ACTUALLY wrote TREASURE, just as the movie ANONYMOUS posits that Queen Elizabeth I's secret elder son wrote ALL of Shakespeare's poetry and plays before QEI cut off the head of the secret son\grandson she Begat with her secret pen pal! John Huston cut B. Traven's "gentleman's" agreement pay in half and said he hated the little man by the end of the TREASURE shoot, though TRAVEN had been his boyhood idol and spending a whole summer with him on a "grown-ups" project should have seemed like dying and going to Heaven for John. But as Jesus said, it's easier for a camel to saunter through the eye of a sewing needle than it will be for a single rich person to get into Heaven.
