The Directors: Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks was one of my prized directors.  I looked forward to his next film because he consistently entertained... he was someone I could count on.  I was only mildly disappointed once.  I must admit I caught on to him because he seemed to make films with actors whose worked I rarely missed... Grant, Wayne, Bogie, Bacall, Monroe, Cooper, Hepburn. 


He could never be pinned down to any particular genre... he just seemed to have a talent for all of them.  His mark came through on three of my favorites... westerns, film noirs and musicals but he also managed screwball comedies, war films, romantic adventures, historical epics and gangster sagas.  It's fair to say a few of his films are masterpieces.  He was deeply concerned about character (oh thank you) and story.  On the latter he said I'm such a coward that unless I get a good writer I don't want to make a picture.

He worked with some of the best writers... novelist William Faulkner, among them.  Oddly, he was never attached to any one studio so he was free to roam and collect people for his pictures as he saw fit.  His films would become known for their rapid-fire, often overlapping dialogue.  His male characters were usually fearless souls who were more than capable of getting the job done.  His female characters were usually strong, considered one of the boys, and were referred to around town as Hawksian women.

Hawks was born into a wealthy family of early American pioneers in 1896 Indiana, the eldest of five children.  They soon moved to Wisconsin and then to Southern California.  He was known far and wide as a risk-taker which enabled an early interest in piloting, car-racing and motorcycles, all of which would flourish throughout his life.  He developed a propensity for telling tall tales with a straight face.  Practically from birth he was accustomed to getting what he wanted which would ultimately work well for him in the movies.

He was sent east to attend the prestigious Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, nabbing some attention as quite the tennis ace, and later signed up at Cornell University.  A short stint in WWI saw him train navigators how to fly.  Back at school, his interest in the arts took flight as a result of his heavy play-going in Boston.  During a summer vacation when he was 20, through some influential acquaintances, he began working on films.  He was a jack-of-all-trades but did get a turn at directing (filling in for a director who became ill) and Hawks knew he'd found his niche.

It took him about 15 minutes to decide to return to California.  Not only was his family mainly still there, but no fool he, the film industry and Southern California had begun its long, long marriage and he wanted to be in the heart of it.  

He did everything he could in early movies, wanted to learn it all.    He and his brother, Kenneth, both knew how to fly and shared a love of photography so they combined the two and did aerial photography on several films.  A sad note was that Kenneth was killed during one such assignment.  He left actress Mary Astor a widow.

Neither he nor anyone he knew had any doubt that he would become a film director.  He had already bought some stories that he wanted to film.  It was just getting the right break.  He was hired at Famous Players (later Paramount) to work in their story department.  Soon he oversaw some 40 productions.  It wasn't long before Fox Studios wanted him for a directing job.  He wanted to jump up and click his heels.  He was on his way.

He made eight silents before he got his first talkie with The Dawn Patrol (1930) about an air squadron in WWI France.  Hawks' own military experiences generated his excitement in making this film and its aerial sequences have always been lauded.  Unfortunately this film has been lost to dust and decay.

Scarface (1932) remains one of Hawks' most renowned early movies.  Paul Muni is exquisite as a thinly-disguised Al Capone (who apparently loved the flick).  

Twentieth Century (1934) features John Barrymore as a flamboyant (could he be anything else?) Broadway impresario who has fallen on hard times and tries to persuade his former lover (Carole Lombard, a distant Hawks cousin), a Hollywood star, to help resurrect his career.  It is a very funny film, thanks largely to Lombard, in which Hawks first introduced his overlapping dialogue and slapstick timing.  It is largely a forgotten film which is too bad.

Come and Get It (1936) is the earliest Hawks film with which I formed an attachment.  The Pacific Northwest logging drama is based on an Edna Ferber novel which means we look into the long lives of her characters.  Edward Arnold and Joel McCrea are father and son leads but the film will always be remembered fondly for the dual performances of the luminous Frances Farmer as a mother and daughter.  Hawks would say in later years that she was the best actress he ever worked with.  Given the actresses he's worked with, that's quite a mouthful.  Hawks was fired in the middle of the production because he couldn't get on with studio head, Sam Goldwyn.  He was replaced by William Wyler and both men share directing credit.

Hawks and his Bringing Up Baby stars

Bringing Up Baby (1938) would fully establish the director's talent with screwball comedy, this one arguably being the best there ever was.  If you missed it, we did a posting on this film earlier.  This is the first of five films Hawks would make with Cary Grant.  He would also come to make five films with John Wayne and six with Walter Brennan.  Ironically, this classic was a bomb when it was first released.

Only Angels Have Wings is one of those pictures that made 1939 the most famous year for movies.  Hawks cooked up a romantic adventure about mail pilots working at some remote South American outpost.  Grant gets the lovesick blues when Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth complicate his life.

The madcap comedy His Girl Friday (1940) is a reworking of the The Front Page by its authors, Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer.  Grant and Rosalind Russell play a once-married newspaper editor and reporter who spar using some of the most delicious and fast-paced language ever put to film.  Everyone on this film was such a pro that I'm not sure Hawks had a lot to do.

Hawks would make three movies with Gary Cooper with the two 1941 releases being the best.  Sergeant York (1941) was perhaps Hawks finest work.  Cooper would win his first Oscar for portraying Alvin York, who resisted raising a gun in WWI despite being a sharpshooter from the mountains of Tennessee.  He changed his mind and went on to win great acclaim as a soldier and one of the biggest heroes of the war.  Hawks would nab his only Oscar nomination in his long and storied career which seems impossible when one peruses his impressive body of work.

Cooper linked up with the director, again in 1941, and a frequent costar, Barbara Stanwyck, for the comedy Ball of Fire.
Cooper played a stuffy linguist who learns how to add some slang to his repertoire courtesy of a stripper/moll.  Its Achilles Heel is its length but the snappy dialogue and the host of character actors along with the engaging leads make it a fun romp.  

Hawks' ultra-fashionable second wife, Slim, discovered a young Lauren Bacall on the cover of a glamour magazine and brought her to the attention of her husband who was just about to start production on To Have and Have Not (1944) with Humphrey Bogart.  The Hemingway story's title was kept but much was changed in the film.  Instead we have Bogie in WWII Martinique using his boat to help resistance fighters.  Bacall plays a sexy lounge singer in one of the most iconic film debuts ever.  

Often confusing but utterly compelling is the film noir, The Big Sleep (1945), done mainly to capitalize on the real-life romance of Bogart and Bacall.  He smashingly plays Raymond Chandler's crafty private eye, Philip Marlowe, who is hired to investigate a rich man's daughter's gambling debts.  Marlowe rightly thinks there's more to the case.  There is never a dull moment.. an exquisite example of film noir. 

On Red River with John Wayne & Joanne Dru

Hawks' first film with John Wayne was their best, Red River (1948).  This is such a great western that it's often thought to have been directed by a Hawks' rival John Ford.  Without a doubt Ford made classic westerns, but his career didn't come close to being as varied as Hawks' was.  Red River concerns a long cattle drive led by a stubborn man who becomes embittered when his stepson usurps his tangled authority.  The film contains one of Wayne's best performances and introduces a dazzling Montgomery Clift to the movies. 

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) is another excellent screwball comedy with Grant, as a French army officer, who poses as a WAC to get back to America with his WAC wife, Ann Sheridan.  It is a nonstop laugh riot that perhaps has never completely gotten its due.

Hawks was always fond of the pioneer spirit and one of his best films in this regard is the often overlooked The Big Sky (1952).  It dealt with fur trappers on the Missouri River and the perils they encountered.  It stars the engaging twosome of Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin, the latter Hawks saw as someone with star potential.

Monkey Business (1952) is another uproarious screwball comedy from the directing, writing (Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer) and star team that gave us His Girl Friday.  At its core is a lab chimpanzee who dumps a youth serum into the water cooler and causes havoc for all concerned.  Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Coburn lent able support to Grant in his final role for the director.

With that blonde on the set of Blondes

Hawks stepped into a musical with the staggeringly popular Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).  Other than keeping a check on Monroe, it must have been an easy enough assignment since it was an established commodity as a stage play and all the musical numbers were handled by Jack Cole and Gwen Verdon.  It is the second film of Hawks' that I wrote about in a prior posting.

Land of the Pharaohs (1955) is a handsome but cumbersome look at the building of a pyramid.  Joan Collins is wicked and luscious and Dewey Martin was back trying his best but Jack Hawkins was never appealing to American audiences as a lead.  

Pharaohs was considered a flop, something the great auteur was clearly not used to.  So taken aback was he that he didn't work for another four years and in that period turned down the opportunity to direct The Bridge on the River Kwai.  That picture would win an Oscar for best picture as would its eventual director, David Lean.

In the great western pantheon, for many, Hawk's Rio Bravo (1959) stands among the greats.  In some respects I've seen this story in a dozen westerns but it is done especially well here with its crisp characterizations and bawdy humor.  John Wayne saddles up again with Hawks to play a sheriff trying to hold in jail the brother of the town's meanest bad guy.  Excellent support comes from the eclectic trio helping Wayne... a drunk played by Dean Martin, a young gunfighter courtesy of Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan as a crippled deputy.

Hatari (1962) is by no means a great Hawks film but it is a very comfortable and entertaining one.  Wayne stars as the head of a group of people who capture African animals for zoos.  It is colorful, lightweight fare with much comedy and costars Elsa Martinelli, Hardy Kruger and Red Buttons.

Five years later Hawks resurrected the basic same story for El Dorado (1967) and with the same success.  Hawks apparently liked it more than Rio Bravo because he claimed the mistakes of the former were cleaned up.  Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan aided in the fun.

Rio Lobo (1970) is the third script on the Rio Bravo theme.  Was Hawks in a rut or what?  It was a resounding flop and ended Hawks' superlative career.  Hawks blamed its failure on Wayne being too old and fat.  Wayne wasn't getting the girl too much anymore.  The romantic leads were Jorge Rivero and Jennifer O'Neill, two gorgeous but rather vapid actors.  Hawks didn't like either one of them or the film.

Duke Wayne presenting Hawks with his Oscar

The celebrated director never won a competitive Oscar and he was  nominated only once, for Sergeant York, which in retrospect, at least, seems astonishing.  He was, however, given an honorary Oscar in 1974, in recognition of his extraordinary body of work. 

He also wrote or supervised the writing of most of his films.  Rightfully, he was always passionate about good writing, knowing it was at the heart of any movie.  He also produced a number of his films and also some films he didn't direct.

He is considered to be the discoverer of at least 11 actors... Paul Muni, Frances Farmer, George Raft, Carole Lombard, Ann Dvorak, Jane Russell, Joanne Dru, Montgomery Clift, Angie Dickinson and James Caan.  Well, okay, Lauren Bacall is number 11 but shouldn't that credit really go to Hawks' wife?

Hawks died in Palm Springs at the age of 81 due to complications from a stroke in 1977. 

His films stand the test of time and nearly all of them are as vibrant today as when they were first released.  He was recognized early on as a top-notch craftsman, a true professional and a real gentleman.  It has long been said that if Mt. Rushmore had the faces of four movie directors rather than presidents, Howard Hawks would be among them.


Next posting:
A sad life