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Howard Hawks (1896 - 1977)

 

American film director, screenwriter, and producer, the supreme craftsman, whose works gained acclaim first among French auteur theorists and then among American critics. Howard Hawks directed well over forty films, from gangster movies like Scarface (1932) to comedies like Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), and Westerns like Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959). His films have inspired, among others, John Carpenter, Brian De Palma, Walter Hill, Peter Bogdanovich, and John Milius. During his long career in Hollywood, Hawks collaborated with such writers as Jules Furthman, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler, Ben Hecht, Nunnally Johnson, and Leigh Brackett.

"I've always been rather mechanical-minded, so I tried a whole lot of mechanical things, and then gave them up completely. The best thing to do is to tell a story as though you're seeing it. Tell it from your eyes. Let the audience see exactly as they would if they were there. Just tell it normally. Most of the time, my camera stays on eye level now. Once in a while, I'll move the camera as if a man were walking and seeing something. And it pulls back or it moves in for emphasis when you don't want to make a cut. But outside that, I just use the simplest camera in the world." (Howard Hawks in Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich, 1997)

André Bazin (1918-1958), the editor of France's foremost film magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma, proclaimed Hawks one of the first and best American auteur directors. The auteur theory states that director is the sole creative artists responsible for the complete film, which reveal the director's personal touches and artistry. The theory burst on the scene with the nouvelle vague movement of the late 1950s. In Hollywood Hawks frequently was his own producer and worked with its biggest stars (Bogart, Hepburn, Grant). Among directors he was one of the tallest – six foot three – and he was a gambler, womanizer, and drinking buddy of Hemingway and Faulkner.

Between 1938 an 1951 Hawks had unbroken string of 11 box-office hits. While many other directors, who started in the 1930s, had problems to find again the audience after World War II, Hawks continued his career succesfully into the1970s.

Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana, into a wealthy midwestern mercantile family. His father was Frank W. Hawks and mother the former Helen Howard, the daughter of one of Wisconsin's leading industrialists.

Having moved with his his family to California at the age of 10, Hawks attended a school at Pasadena and studied at the Philips-Exeter Academy in Massachusetts. At Cornell he studied mechanical engineering. During summer vacations he worked at Famous Players-Lasky studios. During WW I he served as a pilot with the Army Air Corps. His rank upon his discharge was second lieutenant. For a short time he was employed by an aircraft factory but he then returned to Hollywood.

Hawks began his cinema career as a props man with Mary Pickford Company. From the editing department he moved to the script department. His personal advantage compared to other newcomers was the family money – Jack Warner was in debt to Hawks and he financed Associated Producers' films directed by Marshall Neilan, Allan Dawn, and Allen Holubar. In 1922 Hawks wrote and directed two comedy shorts, and in 1923 he wrote the screenplay for Jack Conway's feature Quicksands and another screenplay, Tiger Love  (1924). His first film as a director and writer was The Road to Glory, which started one of the most versatile and professional directorial careers in Hollywood.

Hawks's best achievements are an essential part of the film history. Bringing Up Baby, starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, Hawks come close to the unpredictable world of the Marx Brothers  Scarface (1932), obviously modelled on Al Capone, was more brutal than any of its predecessors and was released only after several changes were made. Howard Hughes, the producer, kept later the film out of distribution.  Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay, cameraman was Lee Garmes, Paul Muni played the egocentric killer and George Raft the coin-flipping "Little Boy." In his use of expressionistic sets and lightning, Hawks was influenced by German film techniques.

Extraordinary frenetic His Girl Friday (1940), remake of Lewis Milestone's The Front Page, with the lead journalist role switched from male to female, is a classic screwball comedy. Only Angels Have Wings (1939) depicted men who fly cargo planes over the Andes, somewhere in an indefinable no man's land. Hawks based the script on his own experiences as a flyer. He had known a pilot who parachuted from a burning plane, leaving his co-pilot behind to die in the crash. All the basic Hawksian themes are featured for the first time, and moreover, Only Angels Have Wings, contains the famous "Whos's Joe?" scene at the dinner table. It is Jeff Carter's (Gary Grant) reply to Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur), who begins to speak about Joe's death, that had happened an hour earlier. Jeff takes Joe's steek on the plate. "He just wasn't good enough."Grant combined in his role a strong physical presence with comedy-talents. He become one of Hawk's favorite actors.

To Have and to Have Not (1944) is perhaps the best film adaptation based on Hemingway's books – because it was unaithful to the original work. It united Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and includes one of the most famous invitations in the films history, when Marie Browning (Bacall) tells Harry Morgan (Bogart): "You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow."

The Big Sleep (1946), starring again Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, was based on Raymond Chandler's first  novel. The film followed Chandler's complicated plot fairly closely until the book's last chapter. Hawks united realism with tough, sardonic dialogue, complex characters and multiple layers of meaning. He went into production with the temporary script, shoot a lot of material ad lib which ran an already long screenplay into far too much footage. Jules Furthman was called in for a rewrite to cut the remaining or unshot portion into a manageable length – Faulkner who had written with Leigh Brackett earlier versions of the script was drinking heavily and anxious to return to home to Mississippi. He had told one of his friends: "Sometimes I think if I do one more treatment or screenplay, I'll lose whatever poerr I have as a writer."

"Most producers breathe constantly down a writer's neck. Howard Hawks sits down with you for a series of chats, giving you all his thoughts on what kind of story he wants, how it ought to go, etc., and then retires to Palm Springs and the golf course, leaving you to come up with a script the best way you can." ("From The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye" by Leigh Brackett, 1973)

Red River (1948) was about rebellion, with John Wayne as Captain Blight and Montgomery Clift as Mr. Christian. Monkey Business (1952) celebrated anti-social behaviour. Gary Grant reverts in the course of the film to childhood and back to the ape stage. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) was a musicalized and updated version of the twenties satire, based on Anita Loos's novel. It portrayed a bumb blonde (Marilyn Monroe) and a showgirl (Jane Russell), who go to Paris in search of rich husbands. After the failure of Land of the Pharaos (1955) it took four years before Hawks sat again on a director's chair.

Rio Bravo (1959) was an answer to the pessimism of Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, an allegory for the McCarthy era. Behind the script of this production was the blacklisted writer and director Carl Foreman, who went into self-imposed exile to England. Hawks objected Zinnemann's film because he didn't think "a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help..." In addition, John Wayne said he did not regret helping run Foreman out of the country. In the film Wayne, cast as Sherriff John T. Chance, is a professional who refuses help from other people, but is time and time again saved by a drunk (Dean Marrtin as Dude), a lame-legged old man (Walter Brennan as Stumpy), a young gunfighter (Ricky Nelson as Colorado Ryan), and a woman gambler (Angie Dickinson as  Feathers).

Two veterans from Hawks's The Big Sleep, Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, cooperated on the screenplay. Some of Feathers' lines were lifted in a modified form from To Have and Have Not (Brennan's "I'm hard to get – you're going to have to say you want me" recalls Bacall's "I'm hard to get, Steve – all you have to do is ask me.") The musical score, composed by Tiomkin, included the haunting 'El Degüello' theme, and 'My Rifle, My Pony, and Me,' lyrics by Paul Francis Webster and performed by Martin, accompanied by Nelson. Noteworthy, Tiomkin also scored High Noon and its famous theme song, lyrics were by Ned Washington.

In El Dorado (1967) and Rio Lobo (1970) Hawks recycled ideas, themes, and characters from Rio Bravo – in the former Robert Mitchum played the Dean Martin role and James Caan the Ricky Nelson role. Hatari! (1962) was filmed in Tazania near the Lake Manyara. Henry Mancini's theme "Baby Elephant Walk" became hugely popular. Hatari!, the title referring to the swahili word "danger," was especially popular in Japan. But it was not until the 1970s, with television sales, when the film started to generate residuals.

After Rio Lobo Hawks planned for a short time a war film set in Vietnam but abandoned the idea. He didn't want it to become a statement: "I never made a statement," he said once. "Our job is to make entertainment. I don't give a God damn about taking sides."

"Nowhere in Hawk's work does he show any interest in Ideas, abstracted from character, action, and situation: he has never evinced any desire to make a film on a given moral or social theme. He has always been quite free of the kind of ambitions or pretensions that most often bring directors into conflict with the commercial interests of production companies. The significance of his films never arises from the conscious treatment of a Subject." (Robin Wood in Howard Hawks, 1968)

Hawks's pictures display a remarkable organic quality, typified by their spare, well-oiled dialogue. According to film critic Robin Wood in Howard Hawks (1968), his classic analysis of the director, Hawks's method of work was consistently concrete. His raw materials were not only the story and the characters, but also the players. Dialogue and situation were often modified during the filming as the personality of the actor becomes fused with the character he is playing. Themes of male camaraderie recur in his films but his notion of a male hero is epitomized by the wise-cracking eccentricity of Gary Grant. Towards the close of his career, Hawks worked with a cast of aspiring actor's that included the young James Caan in the motor-racing melodrama Red Line 7000 (1965). However, Hawks considered the film failure, only Robin Wood has stated that it is possibly "the most underestimated film of the sixties."

Hawks was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1975. He died in Palm Springs, California, on December 12, 1977. Two of the director's brothers, producer William Hawks, and director Kenneth Hawks (killed in a plane crash in 1930), were also in films. Hawks was never nominated for an Acedemy Award. In 1974 Hollywood finally gave him one as "a giant of the American cinema whose pictures takes as a whole represent one of the most consistent, vivid and varied bodies of work in world cinema." However, music in Hawks's film's has always been a very important, yet mostly neglected subject until the publication of Howard Hawks: Music as Communication in Film by Gregory Cam (2020). The first three of the director's Westerns (Red River, The Big Sky, and Rio Bravo) were scored by Dimitri Tiomkin, who introduced Russian ballet themes in mainstream Hollywood scoring. Red River by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra is the only Hawks score that has been re-recorded in full.

Hawks was married three times. His first wife, Athole (née Shearer) Hawks, suffered from mental problems. After divorce in 1940 he married Nancy Raye Gross (called 'Slim'), whom he had met already in the late 1930s. During the eighth years Hawks was involved with Slim he directed several of his best films. Hawks's third wife was Donna (Dee) Hartford (originally Higgins). They married in 1953 – she was twenty-four and Hawks fifty-six. The marriage ended in 1959.

For further reading: Howard Hawks: Music as Communication in Film by Gregory Cam (2020); 'Howard Hawks' Idea of Genre,' in The Off-screen: An Investigation of the Cinematic Frame by Eyal Peretz (2017); 'Howard Hawks's Red River,' in Cowboy Classics: the Roots of the American Western in the Epic Tradition by Kirsten Day (2016); Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: the Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy by Robert B. Pippin (2010); Howard Hawk's Red River, in  Howard Hawks: Interviews, edited by Scott Breivold (2006); Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood by Todd McCarthy (1997); Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich (1997); Howard Hawks American Artist, edited by Jim Hillier (1997); Howard Hawks: A Jungian Study by Clark Branson (1987); Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride (1982); Howard Hawks by Robin Wood (1968); The Cinema of Howard Hawks by Peter Bogdanovich (1962)

Selected films (as director, producer or scripwriter):

  • Quicksands, 1923 (only sc., prod.)
  • Tiger Love / Villikissan häät, 1924 (only sc.)
  • The Dressmaker from Paris / Kauneusparaati, 1925 (only sc.) 
  • The Road to Glory, 1926 (also story, starring May McAvoy, Leslie Fenton and Ford Sterling) 
  • Fig Leaves / Viikunanlehti , 1926 (also story; George O'Brien, Olive Borden and Phyllis Haver)
  • The Cradle Snatchers, 1927 (starring Louise Fazenda, Ethel Wales and J. Farrell MacDonald)
  • Paid to Love, 1927 (starring George O'Brien, Virginia Valli and J. Farrell MacDonald)
  • A Girl in Every Port, 1928 (also story; starring Victor McLaglen, Robert Armstrong and Louise Brooks)
  • Fazil / Prinssi Fazil, 1928 (starring Charles Farrell, Greta Nissen and John Boles)
  • The Air Circus, 1928 (co-dir. with Lewis Seiler; starring Arthur Lake, David Rollins and Sue Carol)
  • Trent's Last Case, 1929 (based on the novel by E.C. Bentley; starring Donald Crisp, Raymond Griffith, Marceline Day, Raymond Hatton)
  • The Dawn Patrol / Öinen eskaaderi , 1930 (also co-script; starring Richard Barthelmess, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Neil Hamilton)
  • The Criminal Code, 1931 (uncredited; starring Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes and Constance Cummings)
  • The Crowd Roars / Huimapäitten kuningas / Yllätysten ottelu , 1932 (also story; starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak)
  • Scarface: The Shame of Nation / Arpinaama, 1932 (starring Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak and Karen Morley)
  • La Foule Hurle, 1932 (with John Daumery, also story; starring Jean Gabin, Hélène Perdrière and Francine Mussey )
  • Tiger Shark / Tiikerihai, 1932 (starring Edward G. Robinson, Richard Arlen and Zita Johann)
  • Today We Live / Hänen suuri rakkautensa, 1933 (story by William Faulkner; starring Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper and Robert Young)
  • The Prizefighter and the Lady, 1933 (dir. with W.S. Van Dyke; starring Myrna Loy, Max Baer, Primo Carnera, Jack Dempsey)
  • Viva Villa!, 1934 (script Ben Hecht, dir. credited to Jack Conway; starring Wallace Beery, Fay Wray and Leo Carrillo)
  • Twentieth Century / Kahdeskymmenes vuosisata , 1934 (co-script Ben Hecht; starring John Barrymore, Carole Lombard and Walter Connolly)
  • Barbary Coast / Barbaarirannikko , 1935 (co-script Ben Hecht; starring Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson and Joel McCrea)
  • Ceiling Zero, 1936 (starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and June Travis) - Kuolemanlentäjät
  • The Road to Glory / Teräskypärän miehet , 1936 (co-script William Faulkner; starring Fredric March, Warner Baxter and Lionel Barrymore)
  • Come and Get It / Tukki-kuningas / Tukkipomo , 1936 (co-dir. with William Wyler, based on a novel by Edna Farber; starring Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea and Frances Farmer)
  • Bringing up Baby / Hätä ei lue lakia , 1938 (starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Charles Ruggles)
  • Indianapolis Speedway, 1939 (story only)
  • Only Angels Have Wings / Vain enkeleillä on siivet , 1939 (also story, screenplay by Jules Furthman; starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth)
  • His Girl Friday / Meidän vastaeronneiden kesken , 1940 (original play Ben Hecht; starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell)
  • Sergeant York /  Kersantti York , 1941 (starring Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan and Joan Leslie)
  • Ball of Fire / Jään tänne yöksi, 1942 (starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck and Oskar Homolka)
  • The Outlaw / Lainsuojaton, 1943 (removed in mid-production by Howard Hughes; starring Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell and Jane Russell)
  • Air Force / Ilma on kohtalomme , 1943 (starring John Garfield, John Ridgely and Gig Young)
  • Corvette K-225 / Merten sissit , 1943 (only prod.; starring Randolph Scott, James Brown and Ella Raines)
  • To Have and Have Not / Kirjava satama , 1944 (co-script William Faulkner, novel Ernest Hemingway; starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Walter Brennan)
  • The Big Sleep / Syvä uni , 1946 (script by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman, novel Raymond Chandler; starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and John Ridgely)
  • Red River / Punainen virta , 1948 (starring John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and Joanne Dru)
  • A Song is Born / Professori , 1948 (starring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo and Benny Goodman)
  • I Was a Male War Bride / Olin mies-sotamorsian , 1949 (starring Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan and Marion Marshall) 
  • The Thing From Another World / 'Se' toisesta maailmasta , 1951 (prod., co-script only; starring Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan and James Arness) 
  • The Big Sky / Korkean taivaan alla , 1952 (starring Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin and Elizabeth Threatt)
  • O. Henry's Full House / Neljä helmeä, 1952  (episode The Ransom of Red Chief, 1952, script by Nunnally Johnson)
  • Monkey Business / Rakas, minä nuorrun , 1952 (co-script Ben Hecht; starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe) 
  • Gentlemen Prefer Blondes / Herrat pitävät vaaleaverisistä , 1953 (starring Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Coburn)
  • Land of the Pharaoh / Faaraoitten maa, 1955 (co-story, co-script William Faulkner; starring Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins and Dewey Martin; see also Mika Waltari's bestseller novel The Egyptian; film 1954, dir. by Michael Curtiz ) 
  • Rio Bravo, 1959 (screenplay by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, from a short story by B.H. McCampbell; starring John Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson) 
  • Hatari!, 1962 (screenplay by Leigh Brackett; starring John Wayne, Elsa Martinelli and Hardy Krüger)
  • Man's Favourite Sport / Miehen lempiurheilu? , 1964 (starring Rock Hudson, Paula Prentiss and Maria Perschy) 
  • Red Line 7000 / Vauhtihurjat , 1965 (co-script, screenplay by George Kirgo; starring James Caan, Laura Devon and Gail Hire)
  • El Dorado, 1967 (screenplay by Leigh Brackett, based loosely on the novel The Stars in Their Courses by Harry Brown; starring John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and James Caan) 
  • Rio Lobo, 1970 (screenplay by Leigh Brackett, Burton Wohl; starring John Wayne, Jorge Rivero and Jennifer O'Neill) 


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