The Hawkses enjoyed a glamorous, if
chilly, honeymoon crossing, and the newlyweds’ photo aboard ship appeared in newspapers around the world. Upon arriving in Paris, they took a sumptuous apartment at 3 Square Trocadero with a full view of the Eiffel Tower across the Seine. Hawks stressed to Feldman and everyone else that, after making four major features in quick succession, he was determined to relax with his bride and take a vacation.
In early April, they went to Italy, where Hawks hobnobbed with executives of Ferrari and other sportscar manufacturers and tried out the latest models on their private tracks. A few months later, he bought a Ferrari and, subsequently, an Alfa Romeo. By the time they arrived in Rome in midmonth, Hawks said he wanted to do a picture about cars, and in August he expressed an interest in Hans
Ruesch’s new novel,
The Racers
, which Julian Blaustein produced the following year, with Hawks’s friend Henry Hathaway directing.
Even while he was on his extended honeymoon, work and potential projects were never far from Hawks’s mind. Back in Paris, Hawks announced that his next picture would be the long-aborning
The Sun Also Rises
, with Gene Tierney as the besotted, adulterous Lady Brett Ashley,
Montgomery Clift as the American newspaperman Jake Barnes, and Dewey Martin as the Spanish matador. The prospect of Clift, at the height of his talent and beauty in the wake of
A Place in the Sun
and
From Here to Eternity
, as Barnes under Hawks remains one of the most tantalizing missed opportunities of both men’s careers, but Hawks still hadn’t cracked the censorable, unfilmable aspects of Hemingway’s
story.
Feldman set Hawks up with numerous top European producers, including Robert Haggiag and Angelo Rizzoli and the executives of Lux Films in Rome but warned him about the many hustlers and shysters who would surely try to sweet-talk him into shady business schemes, saying, “You will find that you will be giving all of your time listening to many and various promotions and then end up disregarding
ninety-eight percent of them.”
Hawks spent the spring and summer in the cafés, at late dinners, at the popular Fouquet’s on the Champs-Elysées, and at Alexandre’s, a favorite late-night spot among the international film crowd, including Vittorio De Sica and Hawks’s friends Anatole Litvak and Lewis Milestone. As he
strolled along the quais, he was almost certainly unaware that one of the little
magazines lining the book stalls,
Cahiers du Cinéma
, was at that very moment proclaiming him a genius. But, in fact, the concept of Howard Hawks as Great Artist was officially hatched with Jacques Rivette’s polemical piece “Genie de Howard Hawks” in the May 1953 issue. The article opened with an incredible statement: “The evidence on the screen is the proof of Hawks’s genius; you only have to
watch
Monkey Business
to know that it is a brilliant film. Some people refuse to admit this, however.” Rivette went on to compare Hawks favorably to Molière, Corneille, and Murnau. Rivette’s impassioned view was shared by other young cinemaniacs at the magazine, notably François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who published rapturous reviews of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
after its Paris opening. Truffaut’s
piece, published in
Arts
magazine, was entitled “The Professional Secret: Howard Hawks, Intellectual.”
Possibly through André Hakim, the Egyptian-born producer of
O. Henry’s Full House
, who was proposing another teaming, Hawks met some wealthy and well-connected Egyptians late in the summer. Most conspicuously of all, he met the deposed King Farouk of Egypt, a regular at Fouquet’s, who proposed
that Hawks make a film about his life. Hawks humored him and strung him along, going so far as to announce at one point that he would actually make such a film. Hawks also met other Egyptians interested in backing him to make a picture in their country, and these contacts started Hawks thinking about Egyptian subject matter; they also made it possible for Hawks to help arrange for his old friend
Gregory Ratoff to make
Abdulla the Great
, a dismal, forgotten film pertinent only in that it briefly introduced Hawks to his next leading lady, Joan Collins, who was considered for a role, and possessed plot elements strikingly similar to those of
Land of the Pharaohs
.
Late that summer, Hawks bumped into Jack Warner in the lobby of the Georges V Hotel, and again on the Riviera. In the course
of just a couple of meetings, the two men sketched out the sort of deal no studio head would have dreamed of offering a director just a few years before, quite like the one George Stevens had just made to produce and direct
Giant:
complete financing from Warner Bros., $100,000 plus 50 percent of the profits for Hawks, and a $35,000 advance for an optional second picture. On such an arrangement,
the studio normally insisted on a provision stipulating that for every $10,000 the film went over budget, the producer would lose one percent of his profit share. Hawks’s attorney Gregson Bautzer was able to whittle his client’s loss down to half that and
also excised a clause that would have permitted the studio to take over the production if it exceeded its budget by 10 percent. Hawks also obtained
possessive billing above the title, à la Alfred Hitchcock, $1,000 in weekly living expenses, a car, and a secretary.
Warner and Hawks didn’t agree upon a project immediately. Feldman had been telling his old client for months that, with the industry currently in such disarray, a man with such a distinguished and successful record as Hawks was in a position to make a killing. Big films on the
wide screen seemed to be the ticket, a suspicion confirmed on September 16 when the first CinemaScope production, 20th Century–Fox’s
The Robe
, debuted. In its opening week at the Roxy in New York, it grossed $264,500, far more money than any film had ever made at any theater in a single week in the history of the medium. Suddenly, of course, everyone rushed to imitate it, and Feldman just happened
to own a script that Hawks and Warner could move on immediately. “Song of Ruth” was a Biblical screenplay by Maxwell Anderson and Noel Langley, and Hawks was tempted to do it on the basis of
The Robe
’s success. Feldman also had a “Solomon” project in the works with, of all people, John Wayne interested in the part of the wise Hebraic leader. Warner was lukewarm on both proposals but was interested
in another epic idea Hawks had mentioned, one about an Egyptian pharaoh and his obsessive construction of the first pyramid. Such a film wouldn’t be “Biblical” per se, but Fox was already going ahead with its CinemaScope production
The Egyptian
, so perhaps the lack of a Judeo-Christian religious theme didn’t matter.
Hawks’s idea at that point amounted to no more than a vague notion, but it was
enough for Warner to immediately advance him money. According to Noël Howard, Hawks’s new right-hand man in France, the director got the final go-ahead from Warner while staying at the luxurious Eden Roc in the South of France. “Where is Egypt?” Hawks asked Howard, looking out over the Mediterranean. When Howard pointed to the horizon, Hawks stared out across the dark blue sea for the longest time,
then drawled, “Nooooël, I’m going to build a pyramid.”
Hawks went right to work in September, setting up a new production firm, the Continental Company, and looking for a writer. He first approached Anthony Veiller, who had recently worked for John Huston on
The African Queen
and
Moulin Rouge
, and then tried to recruit Ben Hecht, a rather unlikely choice for a story about the glory days of Egypt.
Feldman kept pushing “Song of Ruth,” telling Warner, “Hawks feels it can outgross any De Mille film and can be made in Egypt immediately while he is preparing
the pyramid story.” Backing off “Ruth” entirely, Warner instructed Hawks to get on with building his pyramid.
To this end, Hawks made it his first order of business to hire the great Hungarian-French art director Alexandre Trauner, who
had designed
Le Jour Se Leve, Children of Paradise
, and Orson Welles’s
Othello
. The impish, cherublike Trauner was Hawks’s precise physical opposite, and the two were to make an amusing-looking pair throughout production as they traipsed around the desert, with Hawks calling his new friend Troy instead of his usual nickname, Trau. Hawks hired Noël Howard as his second-unit director. An American
expatriate and bon vivant, Howard was an aspiring director who had worked for Victor Fleming on
Joan of Arc
and got the best tables in restaurants by deliberately slurring his name when phoning for reservations: “A table for two for this evening for Monsieur Noël C-h-oward, s’il vous plaît.”
While Howard and Trauner launched into research as to how the pyramids might have been constructed, Hawks
flew from Paris to Rome on October 17 to join Jerry Blattner, assigned by Warner to look after the studio’s interests in the production. The next day, they flew to Egypt, where they met with Wing Commander Waguih Abaza of the Ministry of National Guidance. Advised that the short-lived Naguib government was determined to abolish graft, Warner had warned them against making any payoffs. After another
meeting, with Abaza and heads of various other administrative departments, Blattner told Warner, “It is obvious that they are bending over backwards to have a big production made in their country.” On the downside were the tiny Egyptian studios, with their limited equipment and power, and the fact that the authorities were very clear about not wanting anyone “directly concerned on the side of
Israel” to be brought in to work on the production. Hawks was inspired by seeing the actual pyramids and settings for his epic, telling Warner, “The more I go into the story and conditions of making it the more sure I am we’ve got a big one, real big.” Privately, Blattner, whom Hawks liked—surprising, given his customary disdain for middle-level functionaries and yes-men—cabled Warner, saying that
while Hawks was “enthusiastic,” he suspected the director was “lacking experience how organize energetic company away from America,” and he recommended appointing a strong producer. Knowing Hawks’s position as actual producer could not be encroached upon, Warner determined to select a reliable unit manager and assemble as much of the company as he could himself. “This has to be this way,” Warner
advised Blattner, “otherwise Hawks not only slow but may never finish picture.”
After being accompanied on an exploratory trip to Upper Egypt by Dr. Mohamed Anwar Shoukri, a historian assigned to the picture, Hawks brought Noël Howard to Egypt, where for a few days they scouted around, admired the gold relics at the Cairo Museum, and were outfitted by tailors for the most fashionable desert
wear. But what most excited Hawks was the unexpected opportunity to take the inaugural flight of BOAC’s jet service between Cairo and Paris. Howard said that Hawks, who had never flown in a jet, was so delighted he jumped for joy like a little boy, exclaimed, “Gee whiz! A jet!” and actually slapped him on the back.
Soon thereafter, Hawks and Dee took a villa near Cannes, where he began assembling
a team of collaborators. Art Siteman, last with Hawks on
The Big Sky
, became associate producer; Paul Helmick, assistant director on
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, would work again in that capacity, and Hawks had no problem with Warner assigning Chuck Hansen, who had been unit production manager on
The Big Sleep
, as unit manager. In his biography of Robert Capa, Richard Whelan claims that Hawks made
an offer to the celebrated still photographer to codirect the picture, but this is a highly unlikely prospect for which there isn’t a shred of evidence in any of Hawks’s or Warner Bros.’ documents relating to the film.
By mid-November, Hawks still had not signed his contract. Blattner signaled his concern to Warner, fearing that Hawks might be thinking of taking the deal elsewhere. While he shared
Blattner’s anxieties, Warner was nevertheless proceeding with the financing. Based on Hawks’s reports of how cheaply everything could be done in Egypt, Warner initially fixed the budget at an absurdly low $1.36 million, not including a fee for a leading actor, and allocated the use of blocked funds in several European nations, South Africa, and possibly other countries as well, payable in Egyptian
pounds through a special account. Warners actually became the first American company to receive a financial concession from Egypt under which the government would not insist upon payment in U.S. dollars but would accept the importation of unlimited amounts of foreign currencies. Blattner predicted “a considerable book profit on such transfers.” Warner Bros. had so many frozen lire in Italy
that Warner decided to make two films in Rome at the same time,
Helen of Troy
, directed by Robert Wise, and the interiors on
Land of the Pharaohs
.
Now installed with Dee at the luxurious Plaza Athenée Hotel in Paris at Warner Bros.’ expense, Hawks was finally forced to confront the fact that he still had no story, much less a script. Unable to engage Veiller or Hecht, Hawks pursued the august
historical poet and novelist Robert Graves, but
this went nowhere, so Hawks turned to his old friend Faulkner. Despite the thirty thousand dollars that had come with winning the Nobel Prize, the writer was still far from flush, admitting a need to do “hack work of some sort,” so the fifteen thousand dollars plus living expenses to work for Hawks again were enticing. He by no means felt like taking
off and spending months in Europe and Africa, but, he took the job because “Hawks asked me.”
Faulkner had always worked with other writers on any of his scripts for Hawks that got produced, and the director knew that the plot needed any help it could get. Hawks made a last-ditch effort to get Hecht, but when that proved impossible, he hired someone he had never worked with but who came highly
recommended: Harry Kurnitz, a sophisticated screen-writer, playwright, and novelist who, plagued by political suspicion and memories of a painful divorce, was living in Europe at the time. Rangy, bespectacled, very funny, and a close friend of Hawks’s future brother-in-law Groucho Marx, he had a reputation for great facility and productivity, which, in the end, proved to be lifesaving qualities.