Howard Hawks
May 30 marks the birthday of
filmmaker Howard Hawks. Born in Goshen, Indiana, in 1896, he is best
known for directing westerns such as Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959), but he made more than 40 other films, including science
fiction movies (The Thing, 1951), gangster movies
(Scarface 1932), screwball comedies
(Bringing Up Baby and
His Girl Friday 1940), and detective movies
(The Big Sleep 1946).
He was a friend of Ernest Hemingway, and he became known for shooting movies
in the same clear and simple way that Hemingway wrote sentences. He
almost always shot scenes at eye level, because, he said, "That's the way a
man sees it." He never used camera tricks and he rarely even moved the
camera. When asked about his style as a filmmaker, he said, "I just
aim ...at the actors."
Hawks was born into a wealthy Midwestern mercantile
family. His father was Frank W. Hawks and his mother, the former Helen
Howard, was the daughter of one of Wisconsin's leading industrialists. Having
moved with his family to California at the age of 10, Hawks attended school
at Pasadena and later studied at prep school Philips-Exeter Academy in
Massachusetts. At Cornell, he studied mechanical engineering.
During summer vacations, he worked at the Famous Players-Lasky studios in
Hollywood.
When World War One broke out, he served as a pilot with the Army Air Corps,
gaining the rank of second lieutenant. He worked for a short time in
an aircraft factory before returning to Hollywood.
Hawks began his cinematic career as a props man with the Mary Pickford Company. Then
he worked as an editor. From editing, he moved to the script department. His
great advantage over other industry newcomers was his family's money.
He loaned cash to Jack Warner and financed several Associated Producers' films
directed by Marshall Neilan, Allan Dawn, and Allen Holubar. In 1922,
Hawks wrote and directed two comedy shorts, and in 1923 he wrote the
screenplay for Jack Conway's feature, Quicksands, as well as the
screenplay, Tiger Love (1924). His first film as a director and
writer was The Road to Glory, marking the beginning of the most successful and
versatile careers in American film history.
Hawks's best works are part of filmmaking history. In Bringing Up Baby,
starring Gary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, the director unleashes impeccable
dialogue coupled with unimpeachable acting. Grant's first comedic role
proved him the equal of anyone working in Hollywood and a perfect match for
Hepburn's zany antics.
Scarface (1932), with its newsreel
quality, was modeled after the life of Al Capone and more brutal than any of
its predecessors. Howard Hughes, the producer, kept the film out of
distribution, and it was only after his death in 1979 that the movie could be seen
again.
The film combined the talents of producer Howard Hughes,
scriptwriter Ben Hecht, cameraman Lee Garmes, and 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 impressionistic film techniques gaining popularity at the time.
The frenetic dialogue and non-stop action of His Girl Friday
(1940), a remake of Lewis Milestone's The Front Page, with the lead
journalist role switched from male to female, is a classic screwball comedy.
It is a comedy to which all comedic directors aspire and one of Hollywood's
finest classics. Only Angels Have Wings (1939) depicted men who fly cargo planes over the Andes and
presented a typical Howard Hawks' view of the world where men are men and
women have to be as tough as their sexual counterparts.
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.
With Only Angels Have Wings, Gary Grant, who could combine in his role a strong
physical presence with matchless comedic talents, become one of Hawk's favorite actors.
To Have and Have Not (1944) is
one of the best film adaptations
based on Hemingway's books. It united Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and includes one of the most famous invitations in film history,
when Marie Browning (Bacall) tells Harry Morgan (Bogart): "You don't have to
say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh,
maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?
Just put your lips together and blow."
The Big Sleep (1946), a Raymond Chandler
Whodunnit starring
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, followed a contorted plot fairly closely
until the book's last chapter. 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
(running an already long screenplay into far too much footage), and then
turned to screenwriter Jules Furthman to cut the remaining un-shot portions
of the film into a manageable length. Faulkner, who had written the
script with Leigh Brackett, was drinking heavily and anxious to return home
to Mississippi. He had told one of his friends: "Sometimes I think if
I do one more treatment or screenplay, I'll lose whatever power I have as a
writer."
Despite its rambling and at times incoherent ending, the film remains
today yet another Hawks classic.
Hawks
maintained tight artistic control of his films and was known to walk off a
set when the studio or its producers interfered. Like many independent
producers, he viewed himself as a hit-maker, creating films that pleased
himself while entertaining the masses. He couldn't consider
himself a success unless his tastes were in synch with those of the public.
By carefully selecting his own projects and methodically reworking them on
the set, Hawks slowly gravitated toward a position where he could be his own
boss and call his own shots.
Hawks never received an Oscar for his work until he was awarded an
honorary prize in 1975 for being a "giant of the American cinema whose
pictures taken as a whole represent one of the most consistent, vivid, and
varied bodies of work in world cinema." It was an understatement.
Howard Hawks died in Palm
Springs, California, on December 12, 1977.

Discover Howard Hawks
at Amazon.com
Indulge
Yourself - Check Out Today's Best-Selling
Fiction -
Nonfiction -
DVDs |