Howard Hawks Biography and List of Works

American film director, screenwriter, and producer, the supreme craftsman, whose works gained considerable stature first among French film cultist and then among American critics. 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). Hawks produced classical examples of film art within each genre he tackled.

"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."
(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 artist 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.

Although Hawks frequently was his own producer and wrote many of his stories, he collaborated with such authors as William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler and Ben Hecht. In Hollywood Hawks worked with its biggest stars (Bogart, Hepburn, Grant). He was a gambler, womaniser, and Hemingway's drinking buddy. Hawks had an unbroken string of 11 successful films between 1938 an 1951. While many other directors, who started in the 1930s, had problems regaining audiences after World War II, Hawks continued his career successfully into the1970s.

Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana, into a successful mid-western mercantile family. Having moved with his family to California at the age of 10, he 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 in Hollywood. At the age of 16 he was a professional car and plane racer. During WWI he served as a pilot with the Army Air Corps. After discharge he worked in an aircraft factory but returned in Hollywood.

Hawks began his cinema career as a props man with Mary Pickford Company, then went to the editing department, then to the script department. 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 . It started one of the most versatile and professional directorial careers in American films.

Hawks's best works are 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 with its newsreel quality. Howard Hughes, the producer, later kept the film out of distribution and it was only after his death in 1979 that it could be seen again. The film was an excellent example of studio teamwork. Warners combined the talents of producer Howard Hughes, scriptwriter Ben Hecht, cameraman Lee Garmes, and the director Howard Hawks. Paul Muni was 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 and presented the typical Howards Hawks world view where men are men and women have to be as tough as they are. Hawks based the script on one of 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. Cary Grant, who could combine in his role a strong physical presence with comedy-talents, became one of Hawk's favourite actors.

THE BIG SLEEP (1946), a richly textured film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, was based on Raymond Chandler's novel. The film followed Chandler's plot fairly closely until the book's last chapter, then suddenly opts for a different killer. Hawks combined realism with tough, sardonic dialogue, complex characters and multiple layers of meaning. He went into production with the temporary script, shot 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.

"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 virtually Mutiny on the Chisholm Trail, with John Wayne as Captain Blight and Montgomery Clift as Mr. Christian. MONKEY BUSINESS (1952) was a celebration of anti-social behaviour, in which Gary Grant reverts in the course of the film to childhood and back to the ape stage. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953) was a musical and updated version of the twenties satire, based on Anita Loos's novel, portraying a dumb blonde (Marilyn Monroe) and a showgirl (Jane Russell), who go to Paris in search of rich husbands. Rio Bravo (1959), intended by John Wayne and Hawks to counteract the pessimism of High Noon. It was followed by El Dorado (1967) and Rio Lobo (1970), which introduced variations on the formula.

"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 youthful unknowns that included a pre-stardom James Caan in the motor-racing yarn RED LINE 7000 (1965).

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'.

For further reading: Howard Hawks by Todd McCarthy (1997); Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich (1997); Howard Hawks American Artist, ed. by Jim Hillier (1997); Howard Hawks: A Jungian Study by Clark Branson (1987); Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride (paperback 1982); Howard Hawks by Robin Wood (1968); The Films of Howard Hawks by Donald C. Willis; Howard Hawks by Gerald Mast

THE ROAD TO GLORY, (1925)