1896-1977
Born in Goshen, Indiana, 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. 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 from 1912-1914. After graduation, Hawks moved on to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he majored in mechanical engineering. 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 during World War I. After the war, he worked at a number of jobs: race-car driver, aviator, designer in an aircraft factory.
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, in 1924 and he directed his first film,
The Road to Glory, in 1925. Hawks reworked the scripts of most of 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 he directed
Scarface (1932); for RKO,
Bringing Up Baby (1938) and for Columbia,
Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and
His Girl Friday (1940).
His film,
Sergeant York (1941), starring Gary Cooper, was the highest-grossing film of its year and won two Academy Awards (Best Actor and Best Editing).
In 1944, Hawks filmed the first of two films starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall,
To Have and Have Not, which was the first film pairing of the couple. He followed that with
The Big Sleep (1946).
In 1948, he filmed
Red River, with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. In 1951, he directed (but declined credit for)
The Thing from Another World.[1] In 1953, he filmed
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which featured Marilyn Monroe singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend."
1959's
Rio Bravo, starring John Wayne, Dean Martin and Walter Brennan, was remade twice by Hawks - in 1967 (
El Dorado) and again in 1970 (
Rio Lobo). Both starred John Wayne.
Hawks was married three times, to Athole Shearer (a sister of movie actress Norma Shearer), Nancy Gross (later and better 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). His brothers were director/writer Kenneth Neil Hawks and film producer William Bettingger Hawks.
Hawks was known to make anti-semitic comments, including in front of Jewish actress Lauren Bacall, who kept her Jewish identity a secret from Hawks and who did not call him on his hateful comments, which she now regrets.
Hawks was versatile as a director, filming comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir, and Westerns. Hawks' 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, he popularized the Hawksian woman archetype, which could be considered a prototype of the modern post-feminist movement.
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, John Carpenter, and Quentin Tarantino.
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 Cinema, 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 and, to a lesser extent, Raymond Durgnat.
Critic Leonard Maltin 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, Welles, or DeMille, he is no less a talented filmmaker.
He was nominated for Best Director in 1942 for
Sergeant York, but he received his only Oscar in 1975 as an Honorary Award from the Academy.
Scarface (1932), was rated "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress.
Bringing up Baby (1938), listed number ninety-seven on American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies,
His Girl Friday (1940), and listed #19 on American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Howard Hawks has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street.
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