Howard Hawks
Encyclopedia
Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896–December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era
Classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...

. He is popular for his films from a wide range of genres such as Scarface
Scarface (1932 film)
Scarface is a 1932 American gangster film starring Paul Muni and George Raft, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, and written by Ben Hecht based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail...

(1932), Bringing Up Baby
Bringing up Baby
Bringing Up Baby is an American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and released by RKO Radio Pictures....

(1938), Only Angels Have Wings
Only Angels Have Wings
Only Angels Have Wings is a movie directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. It is generally regarded as being among Hawks' finest films, particularly in its portrayal of the professionalism of the pilots, its atmosphere, and the flying sequences.It inspired the 1983 television...

(1939), His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur of the play The Front Page by Hecht and MacArthur...

(1940), Sergeant York
Sergeant York
Sergeant York is a 1941 biographical film about the life of Alvin York, the most-decorated American soldier of World War I. It was directed by Howard Hawks and was the highest-grossing film of the year....

(1941), To Have and Have Not
To Have and Have Not (film)
To Have and Have Not is a 1944 romance-war-adventure film. The movie was directed by Howard Hawks and stars Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, and Lauren Bacall in her first film...

(1944), The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep (1946 film)
The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead in a film about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its...

(1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Rio Bravo (1959), and El Dorado (1967).

In 1975, Hawks was awarded the Honorary Academy Award as "a master American filmmaker whose creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema," and in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Sergeant York
Sergeant York
Sergeant York is a 1941 biographical film about the life of Alvin York, the most-decorated American soldier of World War I. It was directed by Howard Hawks and was the highest-grossing film of the year....

.

Early life

Born in Goshen
Goshen, Indiana
Goshen is a city in and the county seat of Elkhart County, Indiana, United States. It is the smaller of the two principal cities of the Elkhart-Goshen Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in turn is part of the South Bend-Elkhart-Mishawaka Combined Statistical Area. It is located in the northern...

, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

, Hawks was the first-born child of Frank W. Hawks and the former Helen Howard. After the birth of his brother, Kenneth Neil Hawks, on August 12, 1899, the family moved to Neenah, Wisconsin
Neenah, Wisconsin
Neenah is a city on Lake Winnebago in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, United States. Its population was 24,507 at the 2000 census. The city is bordered by, but is politically independent of, the Town of Neenah. Neenah is the southwestern-most of the Fox Cities of Northeast Wisconsin...

. Shortly afterward they moved again, to Southern California.

Hawks attended high school in Glendora, and then moved to New Hampshire to attend Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...

 from 1912-1914. After graduation, Hawks moved on to Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 in Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...

, where he majored in mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...

 and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon
Delta Kappa Epsilon
Delta Kappa Epsilon is a fraternity founded at Yale College in 1844 by 15 men of the sophomore class who had not been invited to join the two existing societies...

. During the summers of 1916 and 1917, Hawks worked on some early movies, interning for the Famous Players-Lasky Studio. After graduation he joined the United States Army Air Service
United States Army Air Service
The Air Service, United States Army was a forerunner of the United States Air Force during and after World War I. It was established as an independent but temporary wartime branch of the War Department by two executive orders of President Woodrow Wilson: on May 24, 1918, replacing the Aviation...

 after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. After the service, he worked at a number of jobs: race-car driver, aviator, designer in an aircraft factory.

Film career

By 1924 he had returned to Hollywood and entered the movie industry. He chummed with barn stormers and pioneer aviators at Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, getting to know men like Moye Stephens. Hawks wrote his first screenplay, Tiger Love (1924), was editor for some Paramount films such as Heritage of the Desert
Heritage of the Desert (1924 film)
__notoc__Heritage of the Desert is a Western film based on the novel by Zane Grey, and starring Bebe Daniels, Ernest Torrence, and Noah Beery....

(1924), and directed his first film, The Road to Glory (1925). Hawks reworked the scripts of most of the films he directed without taking official credit for his work. Howard Hawks directed a total of eight silent films, including Fazil in 1928.

He made the transition to sound without difficulty. During the 1930s he freelanced and was not contracted to a studio. For Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

 he directed Scarface
Scarface (1932 film)
Scarface is a 1932 American gangster film starring Paul Muni and George Raft, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, and written by Ben Hecht based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail...

(1932); for RKO
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...

, Bringing Up Baby
Bringing up Baby
Bringing Up Baby is an American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and released by RKO Radio Pictures....

(1938) and for Columbia
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...

, Only Angels Have Wings
Only Angels Have Wings
Only Angels Have Wings is a movie directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. It is generally regarded as being among Hawks' finest films, particularly in its portrayal of the professionalism of the pilots, its atmosphere, and the flying sequences.It inspired the 1983 television...

(1939) and His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur of the play The Front Page by Hecht and MacArthur...

(1940).

His film, Sergeant York
Sergeant York
Sergeant York is a 1941 biographical film about the life of Alvin York, the most-decorated American soldier of World War I. It was directed by Howard Hawks and was the highest-grossing film of the year....

(1941), starring Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

, was the highest-grossing film of its year and won two Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

 (Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...

 and Best Editing).

In 1944, Hawks filmed the first of two films starring Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....

 and Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...

, To Have and Have Not
To Have and Have Not (film)
To Have and Have Not is a 1944 romance-war-adventure film. The movie was directed by Howard Hawks and stars Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, and Lauren Bacall in her first film...

, which was the first film pairing of the couple. He followed that with The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep (1946 film)
The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead in a film about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its...

(1946).

In 1948, he filmed Red River, with John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...

 and Montgomery Clift
Montgomery Clift
Edward Montgomery Clift was an American film and stage actor. The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men"....

. In 1951, he produced - and, reputedly, also directed (without credit) - The Thing from Another World
The Thing from Another World
The Thing from Another World , is a 1951 science fiction film based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell . It tells the story of an Air Force crew and scientists at a remote Arctic research outpost who fight a malevolent plant-based alien being...

. In 1953, he filmed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which featured Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

 singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend."

1959's Rio Bravo, starring John Wayne, Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...

, Ricky Nelson
Ricky Nelson
Eric Hilliard Nelson , better known as Ricky Nelson or Rick Nelson, was an American singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, and actor...

 and Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most wins.-Early life:...

, was remade twice by Hawks - in 1967 (El Dorado) and again in 1970 (Rio Lobo
Rio Lobo
Rio Lobo is a 1970 Western movie starring John Wayne. The film was the last film directed by Howard Hawks, from a script by Leigh Brackett. The film was shot in Technicolor with a running time of 114 minutes...

). Both starred John Wayne.

Personal life

Hawks was married three times:
  • to Athole Shearer
    Athole Shearer
    Athole Shearer was an actress most noted as the sister of motion picture star Norma Shearer and film sound engineer Douglas Shearer....

     (1928–1940), sister of movie actress Norma Shearer
    Norma Shearer
    Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...

    , mother of his daughter Barbara Hawks and son David Hawks;
  • to Slim Keith
    Slim Keith
    Nancy "Slim" Keith, Lady Keith was a New York socialite and fashion icon during the 1950s and 1960s, exemplifying the American jet set...

     (1941–1949), who was the mother of his daughter, Kitty Hawks, a noted interior designer; and
  • to Dee Hartford
    Dee Hartford
    Dee Hartford is a retired American television actress. She was married to Howard Hawks from 1953 to 1959....

     (1953–1959), an actress whose real name was Donna Higgins.


His brothers were director/writer Kenneth Neil Hawks and film producer William Bettingger Hawks.

Style

Hawks was versatile as a director, filming comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir, and Westerns. Hawks's own functional definition of what constitutes a "good movie" is revealing of his no-nonsense style: "Three great scenes, no bad ones."
Hawks also defined a good director as "someone who doesn't annoy you".

While Hawks was not sympathetic to feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

, he popularized the Hawksian woman
Hawksian woman
The "Hawksian woman" is, in film theory, a character archetype of the tough-talking woman, popularized in film by director Howard Hawks through his use of actresses such as Katharine Hepburn, Ann Dvorak, Rosalind Russell, and Angie Dickinson...

 archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...

, which has been cited as a prototype of the post-feminist movement.

Legacy

His directorial style and the use of natural, conversational dialogue in his films were cited a major influence on many noted filmmakers, including Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...

, John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...

, and Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...

.

Although his work was not initially taken seriously by British critics of the Sight and Sound circle, he was venerated by French critics associated with Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...

, who intellectualised his work in a way Hawks himself was moderately amused by, and he was also admired by more independent British writers such as Robin Wood
Robin Wood (critic)
Robert Paul "Robin" Wood was a Canada-based film critic and educator. He wrote books on Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, and Arthur Penn and was a member, until 2007, of the editorial collective that publishes the magazine CineACTION!, a film theory collective founded by Wood and...

 and, to a lesser extent, Raymond Durgnat
Raymond Durgnat
Raymond Durgnat was a distinctive and highly influential British film critic, who was born in London of Swiss parents...

.

Critic Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

 labeled Hawks "the greatest American director who is not a household name," noting that, while his work may not be as well known as Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

, Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

, or DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...

, he is no less a talented filmmaker.

Hawks was nicknamed "The Gray Fox" by members of the Hollywood community.

Awards

He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director in 1942 for Sergeant York, but he received his only Oscar in 1975 as an Honorary Award
Academy Honorary Award
The Academy Honorary Award, instituted in 1948 for the 21st Academy Awards , is given by the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to celebrate motion picture achievements that are not covered by existing Academy Awards, although prior winners of...

 from the Academy.

Scarface
Scarface (1932 film)
Scarface is a 1932 American gangster film starring Paul Muni and George Raft, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, and written by Ben Hecht based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail...

(1932), was rated "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

.

Bringing Up Baby
Bringing up Baby
Bringing Up Baby is an American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and released by RKO Radio Pictures....

(1938) was listed number ninety-seven on American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...

. His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur of the play The Front Page by Hecht and MacArthur...

(1940) was listed #19 on American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs is a list of the top 100 funniest movies in American cinema. A wide variety of comedies were nominated for the distinction that included slapstick comedy, screwball comedy, romantic comedy, satire, black comedy, musical comedy, comedy of...

.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Howard Hawks has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...

 at 1708 Vine Street.

Further reading

  • Clark Branson, Howard Hawks, A Jungian Study, Garland-Clarke Editions, 1987
  • Jim Hillier, Howard Hawks: American Artist, Peter Wollen
    Peter Wollen
    Peter Wollen is a film theorist and writer. He studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. Both political journalist and film theorist, Wollen's Signs and Meaning in the Cinema , helped to transform the discipline of film studies by incorporating the methodology of structuralism and...

     (British Film Institute, 1997)
  • Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues, Red River, bfi Publishing, 2000
  • Joseph McBride, Hawks on Hawks, (University of California Press, 1982)
  • Joseph McBride (ed), Focus on Howard Hawks, Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1972
  • Todd McCarthy
    Todd McCarthy
    Todd McCarthy is an American film critic. He wrote for Variety for 31 years as its chief film critic before being fired in 2010. He is currently a critic for The Hollywood Reporter....

    , Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, (Grove Press, 1997)
  • Pippin, Robert B. Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy (Yale University Press, 2010) 208 pp.
  • Robin Wood, Howard Hawks, Secker & Warburg, 1968
  • Robin Wood, Howard Hawks, British Film Institute
    British Film Institute
    The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...

    , 1981, revised with addition of chapter "Retrospect".
  • Robin Wood, Rio Bravo, (BFI Publishing, 2003)
  • Robin Wood, Howard Hawks (New Edition), (Wayne State University Press, 2006)

External links

  • Bibliography of books and articles about Hawks via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center
  • Profile at Senses of Cinema
    Senses of Cinema
    Senses of Cinema is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Senses of Cinema publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career overviews of the works of key directors, and coverage of many...

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