Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (118 page)

Four years later, Martin Scorsese, in his first feature, the low-budget
Who’s That
Knocking at My Door?
, devoted the first encounter between the central character, played by Harvey Keitel, and an attractive young woman, portrayed by Zina Bethune, to a protracted discussion of John Wayne and
The Searchers
. Later in the picture, Keitel and Bethune are seen emerging from a revival-house showing of
Rio Bravo
, discussing Angie Dickinson’s performance. Keitel says, “Well, let me tell
ya something. That girl in that picture was a broad.” “What do you mean, a broad?” “A broad! You know, there are girls, and then there are broads. A broad isn’t exactly a virgin.”

Elsewhere, Scorsese has evinced a special enthusiasm for the “guilty pleasure” of
Land of the Pharaohs
, and the critic David Ehrenstein, the author of a book on Scorsese, has argued that Sharon Stone’s character in
Casino
, aside from being based on an actual person, is drawn heavily from Joan Collins’s Princess Nellifer. Scorsese has also said that
Scarface
was a particularly important influence on him; speaking of
Scarface
and
Bonnie and Clyde
, he remarked, with interesting application to his own career, “It’s strange that we don’t normally like people who are killing other people, but the way they’re presented
in these films is extremely glamorous.”

Among other members of the late 1960s film school generation, Walter Hill, at his best, resembles Hawks in his proclivity for terse dialogue, lack of psychological orientation, taste for tough male characters, occasional bent for comedy, and definition of character through action. Although primarily a Fordian, John Milius also displays an affinity for Hawks,
as does Michael Mann. Robert Zemeckis is an enormous fan of
Rio Bravo
, and when he was a critic, Paul Schrader wrote knowledgeably about Hawks’s achievements.

John Carpenter, who was a student at the University of Southern California when Hawks spoke there, has said, simply, “I consider Howard
Hawks to be the greatest American director. He’s the only director I know to have made a great movie
in every genre. Critics mention the one-take, moving camera style of Ophüls and Welles but somehow never get around to the amazing one-take opening shot of the original
Scarface
, made in 1932. Hawks’s sense of comic timing is unsurpassed. Just take a look at
His Girl Friday
if you’re not convinced. In my opinion, the man literally invented American cinema. He showed us ourselves, the way we are,
the way we should be.” After his early success with
Halloween
, Carpenter announced that his dream was to do a remake of
Only Angels Have Wings
. Fortunately, he and everyone else who has considered this idea has dropped it, except for Jean-Jacques Annuad, whose medium-length IMAX 3-D venture,
Wings of Courage
, about real-life fliers in the Andes in the 1930s, draws heavily, and clumsily, upon Hawks’s
aviation classic. Equally unfortunate was a remake of
The Front Page
in 1988 called
Switching Channels
, which updated the story into the modern television age and reused Hawks’s innovation of turning Hildy Johnson into a woman. Even the special-effects extravaganza
Twister
lifted its basic romantic triangle directly from
His Girl Friday
, with the central characters, who are obviously meant for
each other, poised for a divorce, and Jami Gertz in the Ralph Bellamy part of the new fiancée who doesn’t fit into the professional group.

In ways that didn’t necessarily result in on-screen homages, some older directors had a keen appreciation of Hawks’s talents. Some years ago there was a revealing exchange between the late, great English director Michael Powell and a good friend, the old-time
Hollywood press agent Max Bercutt, also now gone:

B
ERCUTT

Hawks was a sour man, sour about himself and sour about other people.

P
OWELL

I think he had a very deep understanding of people, what was inside people.

B
ERCUTT

He was a mean man, he didn’t like his wives and they didn’t like him. He had some personality problem, which I think, frankly, concerned his libido. He couldn’t hold his wives.
He didn’t have a coterie around him, he didn’t have very close male friends.

P
OWELL

I think you have to dislike people in order to direct great comedy.

Not surprisingly, Clint Eastwood has named as his top three influences Ford, Hawks, and Anthony Mann, and two of his six favorite films of all time are by Hawks:
Red River
and
The Big Sky
. More surprisingly, Robert Benton, the cowriter of
Bonnie and Clyde
and the director of several films, including
Kramer vs. Kramer
, has also named Hawks as one of his decisive influences, noting, “I love Hawks. I don’t pretend he’s a greater director than Ford is, but I love who I love.”

The most famous of the latest generation of Hollywood directors feels the same way about Hawks. Quentin Tarantino has expressed his love for Hawks in numerous
ways. When asked to name his favorite director, the answer is always Hawks; identifying his favorite film, he has said that if he had one film with which to spend his last fifteen minutes on earth, it would be
Rio Bravo
, and he has insisted, “When I’m getting serious about a girl, I show her
Rio Bravo
, and she better fucking like it.” When he was in Amsterdam writing
Pulp Fiction
, he spent many
of his evenings attending a Hawks retrospective running at a local theater; he based the look of the giant restaurant-nightclub in his film partly on
Red Line 7000
, and he was inspired in writing his dialogue by
His Girl Friday
. Ultimately, he believes that “Howard Hawks is the supreme storyteller and entertainer. He’s just too damn enjoyable.”

One must not judge the master by the work of his
pupils. By and large, however, Hawks has attracted a high caliber of students, and it is difficult to agree with Bernardoni that Hawks’s lessons have been misunderstood, even if the salutes and imitations rarely measure up to the originals; after all, how could they? What Hawks achieved in the 1930s and 1940s, when the studio system was at full throttle and movie stars were designed to inhabit a
glamorous and rarified world of the imagination, is no longer terribly feasible or even applicable. More important, the way Hawks asserted his personality, his view of the world, and his fantasies was complex and unique; there is no victory to be gained in trying to reproduce it.

As for Hawks’s own thoughts of preserving his legacy, of ensuring that his accomplishments would live on, his vast,
proud ego would certainly relish the appreciation of his work that has continued unabated since his death. As for the rest, as highly as he thought of himself, he never considered writing an autobiography; the thought of immaculately preserving the record of his life and career, as Capra, Cukor, and many others did, couldn’t have
been further from his mind. Years after water and mud destroyed
many of his papers, scripts, and photographs in the barn at Hog Canyon, Hawks stashed the fraction that remained in his garage in Palm Springs, along with the cars, motorcycles, and tools. When James D’Arc, an enthusiastic young archivist from Brigham Young University, rang the great director’s doorbell in the mid-1970s and asked if he had any papers he would consider donating to a permanent collection,
Hawks said, “Sure. Whatever I’ve got is just sitting in the garage gathering dust. Take whatever you want.” For Hawks, a man who lived completely in the present and, in his work, excelled at expressing the living moment between characters and actors, the moments those papers represented were already past. He had already lived them, and posterity was welcome to them.

Films are listed in order of theatrical release, although some were shot in a different order
.

Hawks directed a few scenes of
The Little Princess
(Artcraft Picture Corp. for Famous Players–Lasky, 1917) during the absence of director Marshall Neilan. He also had a hand in directing, probably uncredited, between three and five one-reel comedies starring Monty Banks.
The first in the series was
His Night Out
(CBC Distributing Company, 1919), but documentation of titles and accurate credits is scant.

In 1919, Hawks became involved on the financial end of a company called Associated Producers with producer-directors Marshall Neilan, Allan Dwan, and Allen Holubar. Hawks was not a producer per se and exercised no control over the content or artistic aspects of
the pictures, but he was involved on the production side and was present during some of the filming. Again, credits are imprecise at best, but Hawks had a hand in the following productions:

1920:
Go and Get It
(Neilan),
Dinty
(Neilan),
The Forbidden Thing
(Dwan)

1921:
A Perfect Crime
(Dwan),
Man-Woman-Marriage
(Holubar),
Bob Hampton of Placer
(Neilan),
A Broken Doll
(Dwan),
Bits of Life
(Neilan),
The Lotus Eater
(Neilan)

1922:
Penrod
(Neilan),
Fools First
(Neilan),
Hurricane’s Gal
(Holubar)

1923:
Minnie
(Neilan),
Slander the Woman
(Holubar)

Quicksands
(Agfar Corp. for American Releasing Corp.)

Producer: Howard Hawks. Director: Jack Conway. Story and screenplay: Hawks. Cinematographers: Harold Rosson, Glen MacWilliams. Length: 6–7 reels. Filmed in Texas, late 1922. Released February
28, 1923. Subsequently acquired by Paramount Famous Lasky Corp., cut to 4,593 feet, rereleased May 21, 1927.

Cast: Helene Chadwick (girl), Richard Dix (1st lieutenant), Alan Hale (Ferrago), Noah Beery (“Silent” Krupz), J. Farrell MacDonald (Col. Patterson), George Cooper
(Matt Patterson), Tom Wilson (Sgt. Johnson), Dick Sutherland (Cupid), Hardee Kirkland (Farrell), Louis King (barfly), Jean
Hersholt, Walter Long, Jack Curtis, William Dyer, Frank Campeau, Edwin Stevens, James Marcus, Lionel Belmore (members of dope ring).

Tiger Love
(Famous Players–Lasky/Paramount)

Producers: Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky. Director: George Melford. Screenplay: Howard Hawks, adapted by Julie Herne, from the opera
El Gato Montes
by Manuel Penella. Cinematographer: Charles G. Clarke. Length: 6
reels. Released June 30, 1924.

Cast: Antonio Moreno (The Wildcat), Estelle Taylor (Marcheta), G. Raymond Nye (El Pezuno), Manuel Camero (Don Ramon), Edgar Norton (Don Victoriano Fuentes), David Torrence (Don Miguel Castelar), Snitz Edwards (The Hunchback), Monte Collins (Father Zaspard).

The Dressmaker from Paris
(Famous Players–Lasky/Paramount)

Producers: Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky.
Director: Paul Bern. Screenplay: Adelaide Heilbron, from an original story by Heilbron and Howard Hawks. Length: 8 reels. Released March 30, 1925.

Cast: Leatrice Joy (Fifi), Ernest Torrence (Angus McGregor), Allan Forrest (Billy Brent), Mildred Harris (Joan McGregor), Lawrence Gray (Allan Stone), Charles Crockett (mayor), Rosemary Cooper (mayor’s daughter), Spec O’Donnell (Jim).

The Road
to Glory
(Fox)

Executive producer: William Fox. Director: Howard Hawks. Screenplay: L. G. Rigby, from an original story by Hawks. Cinematographer (tinted prints): Joseph August. Length: 6 reels (5,600 feet), approximately 60 minutes. Filmed in Hollywood, December 1925–January 1926. Released February 7, 1926. (No prints known to exist.)

Cast: May McAvoy (Judith Allen), Rockliffe Fellowes (Del
Cole), Leslie Fenton (David Hale), Ford Sterling (James Allen), Milla Davenport (Aunt Selma), John MacSweeney (butler), Hank (dog).

Honesty—the Best Policy
(Fox)

Producer: William Fox. Director: Chester Bennett, with additional sequences directed by Albert Ray. Screenplay: L. G. Rigby, from an original story by Howard Hawks. Cinematographer: Ernest G. Palmer. Length: 5 reels. Filmed in Hollywood,
spring 1926, additional sequences in July. Released August 8, 1926.

Cast: Rockliffe Fellowes (Nick Randall), Pauline Starke (Mary Kay), Johnnie Walker (Robert Dare and author), Grace Darmond (Lily), Mickey Bennett (freckled boy), Mack Swain (Bendy Joe), Albert Gran (publisher), Dot Farley (author’s wife), Heinie Conklin (piano player).

Fig Leaves
(Fox)

Producer: William Fox. Director: Howard
Hawks. Screenplay: Hope Loring, Louis D. Lighton, from an original story by Hawks. Cinematographer (with two fashion sequences in Technicolor): Joseph August. Editor: Rose Smith. Art directors: William S. Darling, William Cameron Menzies. Costumes: Adrian. Titles: Malcolm Stuart Boylan. Length: 7 reels (6,498 feet), approximately 68 minutes. Filmed in Hollywood, March 1926. Released August 22,
1926.

Cast: George O’Brien (Adam Smith), Olive Borden (Eve Smith), Phyllis Haver (Alice Atkins), André de Beranger (Josef André), William Austin (André’s assistant), Heinie Conklin (Eddie McSwiggen), Eulalie Jensen (Madame Griswald).

The Cradle Snatchers
(Fox)

Producer: William Fox. Director: Howard Hawks. Screenplay: Sarah Y. Mason, from the play by Russell Medcraft and Norma Mitchell.
Cinematographer: L. William O’Connell. Editor: Ralph Dixon. Art director: William S. Darling. Assistant director: James Tinling. Titles: Malcolm Stuart Boylan. Length: 7 reels (6,282 feet), approximately 59 minutes. Filmed in Hollywood, January–February 1927. Released May 28, 1927.

Cast: Louise Fazenda (Susan Martin), Ethel Wales (Ethel Drake), Dorothy Phillips (Kitty Ladd), J. Farrell MacDonald
(George Martin), Franklin Pangborn (Howard Drake), William Davidson (Roy Ladd), Joseph Striker (Joe Valley), Nick Stuart (Henry Winton), Arthur Lake (Oscar), Dione Ellis (Ann Hall), Sammy Cohen (Ike Ginsberg), Tyler Brook (osteopath), Sally Eilers, Arthur Walis.