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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
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