THE LEGENDARY VOICE

How to have your TV studio visited by a wrathful spirit: The local KNBC news portion of NBC’s “Today Show,” covering the facts of Huston’s death, mentioned that in his last years the director had problems with emphysema, even appearing in public using his breathing apparatus.

Next there was a clip, without sound, of the director at a televised public speaking appearance with his oxygen tank. Then a clip from “The Maltese Falcon”-- colorized. In fact, what Huston had been speaking about in the preceding clip, with as much power and venom as he was capable, was colorization, which he called, among other things, “a mindless insipidity.”

Having watched, “as much as I could bear” of the colored “Maltese Falcon,” Huston commented that “it almost seems as though a conspiracy exists to degrade our national character.”

He was a big man with an enormous laugh and a flair for irony, but this seems even a little too ironic for him.