Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks (
May 30,
1896 –
December 26,
1977) was an American
film director,
producer and
writer of the
classic Hollywood era.
He was born Howard Winchester Hawks in
Goshen,
Indiana. Hawks graduated from Cornell University in 1918. At Cornell he was a member of
Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He died in
Palm Springs,
California, from the aftermath of a fall.
Hawks was known for his versatility as a director, filming comedies, dramas, gangster films, sci-fi, pulp noir, and Westerns with equal ease and skill. Hawks' own functional definition of what constitutes a "good movie" is revealing of his no-nonsense style: "Three great scenes, no bad ones."
Hawks was in many ways ahead of his time. While, being of his generation, not politically
feminist or even, to his own mind, sympathetic to their goals, he popularized the
Hawksian woman archetype, which could be considered a
prototype of the modern
post-feminist movement.
Critic
Leonard Maltin has labelled Hawks "the greatest American director who is not a household name," noting that, while his work may not be as well known as
Ford,
Welles, or
Hitchcock, he is no less a talented filmmaker.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Howard Hawks has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street.
Hawks was notorious for fabricating stories about the movie business, usually in a way which inflated his already considerable contributions to it. One such story has it that Hawks told
Ernest Hemingway that he could make a good movie out of the worst thing that Hemingway had ever written, at which point Hemingway challenged him to make a movie out of
To Have and Have Not.
Hawks' unpretentious and straightforward directorial style and the use of natural, conversational dialogue in his films have subsequently been a major influence on many noted filmmakers, including
John Carpenter and
Quentin Tarantino.
Although originally dismissed by the more intellectual critics in the English-speaking world (especially in the
United Kingdom, where his work was virtually ignored by
Sight and Sound), Hawks was idolised and taken very seriously indeed by the
French critics associated with
Cahiers du Cinéma in the
1950s, and this spread to the
United Kingdom where Hawks became an icon for
Ian Cameron,
Robin Wood and the other critics associated with
Movie.
Hawks was married three times, to
Athole Shearer (a sister of movie actress
Norma Shearer),
Nancy Gross (better and later known as
Slim Keith, she was the mother of his daughter,
Kitty Hawks, a noted interior designer), and
Dee Hartford (an actress whose real name was Donna Higgins).
The Road to Glory (
1926)
Fig Leaves (
1926)
The Cradle Snatchers (
1927)
Paid to Love (
1927)
A Girl in Every Port (
1928)
Fazil (
1928)
The Air Circus (
1928)
Trent's Last Case (
1929)
The Dawn Patrol (
1930)
The Criminal Code (
1931)
La Foule hurle (
1932)
Scarface (
1932)
The Crowd Roars (
1932)
Tiger Shark (
1932)
Today We Live (
1933)
The Prizefighter and the Lady (
1933) (uncredited)
Viva Villa! (
1934) (uncredited)
Twentieth Century (
1934)
Barbary Coast (
1935)
Ceiling Zero (
1936)
Sutter's Gold (
1936) (uncredited)
The Road to Glory (
1936)
Come and Get It (
1936)
Bringing up Baby (
1938)
Only Angels Have Wings (
1939)
His Girl Friday (
1940)
Sergeant York (
1941) (Received his one and only Oscar nomination)
Ball of Fire (
1941)
Air Force (
1943)
The Outlaw (
1943) (uncredited)
To Have and Have Not (
1944)
The Big Sleep (
1946)
Red River (
1948)
A Song Is Born (
1948)
I Was a Male War Bride (
1949)
The Thing from Another World (
1951) (uncredited)
The Big Sky (
1952)
Monkey Business (
1952)
O. Henry's Full House (segment "The Ransom of Red Chief") (
1952)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (
1953)
Land of the Pharaohs (
1955)
Rio Bravo (
1959)
Hatari! (
1962)
Man's Favorite Sport? (
1964)
Red Line 7000 (
1965)
El Dorado (
1966)
Rio Lobo (
1970)
*
Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood,
Todd MacCarthy (Grove Press, 1997)
*
Howard Hawks: American Artist,
Jim Hillier,
Peter Wollen (British Film Institute, 1997)
*
Hawks on Hawks,
Joseph McBride (University of California Press, 1982)
*
Focus on Howard Hawks, Joseph McBride (ed), Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1972
*
Howard Hawks, Robin Wood, Secker & Warburg, 1968
*
Howard Hawks, Robin Wood,
British Film Institute, 1981, revised with addition of chapter "Retrospect".
*
Howard Hawks, A Jungian Study, Clark Branson, Garland-Clarke Editions, 1987
*
Red River, Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues, bfi Publishing, 2000
*
Rio Bravo, Robin Wood, bfi Publishing, 2003
*
IMDB: Howard Hawks*
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database*
Other notable figures in Western films*
List of film collaborations
