109 Facts About Howard Hawks

Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era.

In 1942, Howard Hawks was nominated his only time for the Academy Award for Best Director for Sergeant York.

Howard Hawks was the first-born child of Frank Winchester Hawks, a wealthy paper manufacturer, and his wife, Helen Brown, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist.

Howard Hawks, had homesteaded in Neenah, Wisconsin, in 1862 at age 17.

Frank Hawks and Helen Howard met in the early 1890s and married in 1895.

Howard Hawks was the eldest of five children, and his birth was followed by Kenneth Neil Hawks, William Bellinger Hawks, Grace Louise Hawks, and Helen Bernice Hawks.

Between 1906 and 1909, the Howard Hawks family began to spend more time in Pasadena, California, during the cold Wisconsin winters in order to improve Helen Howard Hawks's ill health.

The family settled in a house down the street from Throop Polytechnic Institute, and the Howard Hawks children began attending the school's Polytechnic Elementary School in 1907.

Howard Hawks was an average student and did not excel in sports, but by 1910 had discovered coaster racing, an early form of soapbox racing.

In 1912, the Howard Hawks family moved to nearby Glendora, California, where Frank Howard Hawks owned orange groves.

Howard Hawks finished his junior year of high school at Citrus Union High School in Glendora.

Howard Hawks was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire from 1913 to 1914; his family's wealth may have influenced his acceptance to the elite private school.

In 1914, Howard Hawks returned to Glendora and graduated from Pasadena High School that year.

Skilled in tennis, by 18 years old, Howard Hawks won the United States Junior Tennis Championship.

That same year, Howard Hawks was accepted to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he majored in mechanical engineering and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Howard Hawks returned to Cornell that September, leaving in April 1917 to join the Army when the United States entered World War I Howard Hawks served as a lieutenant in the Aviation Section, US Signal Corps.

In 1916, Howard Hawks met Victor Fleming, a Hollywood cinematographer who had been an auto mechanic and early aviator.

Howard Hawks allegedly met Fleming when the two men raced on a dirt track and caused an accident.

Howard Hawks was next employed as a prop boy and general assistant on an unspecified film directed by Cecil B DeMille.

Howard Hawks then worked on the Mary Pickford film The Little Princess, directed by Marshall Neilan.

Howard Hawks began directing at age 21 after he and cinematographer Charles Rosher filmed a double exposure dream sequence with Mary Pickford.

Howard Hawks worked with Pickford and Neilan again on Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley before joining the United States Army Air Service.

Bored by this work, Howard Hawks attempted to secure a transfer during the first half of 1918 and was eventually sent to Fort Monroe, Virginia.

Howard Hawks later stated that he personally directed "three or four" of the shorts, though no documentation exists to confirm the claim.

The films were profitable, but Howard Hawks soon left to form his own production company using his family's wealth and connections to secure financing.

Howard Hawks made 14 films between 1920 and 1923, with eight directed by Neilan, three by Dwan and three by Holubar.

Howard Hawks became friends with barn stormers and pioneer aviators at Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, getting to know men like Moye Stephens.

Howard Hawks accepted and was immediately put in charge of over 40 productions, including several literary acquisitions of stories by Joseph Conrad, Jack London, and Zane Grey.

Howard Hawks worked on the scripts for all of the films produced, but he had his first official screenplay credit in 1924 on Tiger Love.

Howard Hawks was the Story Editor at Famous Players for almost two years, occasionally editing such films as Heritage of the Desert.

Howard Hawks signed a new one-year contract with Famous-Players in the fall of 1924.

Howard Hawks broke his contract to become a story editor for Thalberg at MGM, having secured a promise from Thalberg to make him a director within a year.

In 1925, when Thalberg hesitated to keep his promise, Howard Hawks broke his contract at MGM and left.

In October 1925, Sol Wurtzel, William Fox's studio superintendent at the Fox Film Corporation, invited Howard Hawks to join his company with the promise of letting Howard Hawks direct.

Howard Hawks reworked the scripts of most of the films he directed without always taking official credit for his work.

Immediately after completing The Road to Glory, Howard Hawks began writing his next film, Fig Leaves, his first comedy.

Howard Hawks's film includes atypical tracking shots, expressionistic lighting and stylistic film editing that was inspired by German Expressionist cinema.

In March 1927, Howard Hawks signed a new one-year, three-picture contract with Fox and was assigned to direct Fazil, based on the play L'Insoumise by Pierre Frondaie.

Howard Hawks was over schedule and over budget on the film, which began a rift between him and Sol Wurtzel that would eventually lead to Howard Hawks leaving Fox.

Howard Hawks hated the new dialogue written by Hugh Herbert, and he refused to participate in the re-shoots.

Howard Hawks considered the novel to be "one of the greatest detective stories of all time" and was eager to make it his first sound film.

Howard Hawks cast Raymond Griffith in the lead role of Phillip Trent.

Howard Hawks was in attendance of the screening and attempted to have the only print of the film destroyed.

Howard Hawks managed to remain an independent producer-director for the rest of his long career.

Reportedly, Howard Hawks paid Saunders to put his name on the film, so that Howard Hawks could direct the film without arousing concern due to his lack of writing experience.

Shrewdly, Howard Hawks began to hire many of the aviation experts and cameramen that had been employed by Hughes, including Elmer Dyer, Harry Reynolds, and Ira Reed.

Howard Hawks harassed Hawks and other studio personnel, hired a spy that was quickly caught, and finally sued First National for copyright infringement.

Howard Hawks took the opportunity to accept a directing offer from Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures.

In 1930, Howard Hughes hired Hawks to direct Scarface, a gangster film loosely based on the life of Chicago mobster Al Capone.

Scarface was the first film in which Howard Hawks worked with screenwriter Ben Hecht, who became a close friend and collaborator for 20 years.

Howard Hawks developed the script for The Crowd Roars with Seton Miller for their eighth and final collaboration.

Howard Hawks used real race car drivers in the film, including the 1930 Indianapolis 500 winner Billy Arnold.

In 1933, Howard Hawks signed a three-picture deal at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, the first of which was Today We Live in 1933.

Studio interference on both films led Howard Hawks to walk out on his MGM contract without completing either film himself.

In 1934, Howard Hawks went to Columbia Pictures to make his first screwball comedy, Twentieth Century, starring John Barrymore and Howard Hawks's distant cousin Carole Lombard.

In 1935, Hawks made Barbary Coast with Edward G Robinson and Miriam Hopkins.

Howard Hawks collaborated with Hecht and MacArthur on Barbary Coast and reportedly convinced them to work on the film by promising to teach them a marble game.

Also in 1936, Howard Hawks began filming Come and Get It, starring Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea, Frances Farmer, and Walter Brennan.

In 1938, Howard Hawks made the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby for RKO Pictures.

Howard Hawks followed this with 11 consecutive hits up to 1951, starting with the aviation drama Only Angels Have Wings, made in 1939 for Columbia Pictures and starring Cary Grant.

In 1940, Howard Hawks returned to the screwball comedy genre with His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

Not forgetting the influence Jesse Lasky had on his early career, in 1941, Howard Hawks made Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper as a pacifist farmer who becomes a decorated World War I soldier.

Howard Hawks directed the film and cast Cooper as a specific favor to Lasky.

Later that year, Howard Hawks worked with Cooper again for Ball of Fire, which starred Barbara Stanwyck.

In 1941, Hawks began work on the Howard Hughes-produced film The Outlaw, based on the life of Billy the Kid and starring Jane Russell.

Howard Hawks completed initial shooting of the film in early 1941, but due to perfectionism and battles with the Hollywood Production Code, Hughes continued to re-shoot and re-edit the film until 1943, when it was finally released with Howard Hawks uncredited as director.

Howard Hawks was a close friend of Hemingway and made a bet with the author that he could make a good film out of Hemingway's "worst book".

Howard Hawks reteamed with Bogart and Bacall in 1945 and 1946 with The Big Sleep, based on the Philip Marlowe detective novel by Raymond Chandler.

In 1948, Howard Hawks made Red River, an epic western reminiscent of Mutiny on the Bounty starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in his first film.

In 1949, Howard Hawks reteamed with Cary Grant in the screwball comedy I Was a Male War Bride, starring Ann Sheridan.

In 1951, Howard Hawks produced, and according to some, directed, a science-fiction film, The Thing from Another World.

Later in 1952, Howard Hawks worked with Cary Grant for the fifth and final time in the screwball comedy Monkey Business, which starred Marilyn Monroe and Ginger Rogers.

Howard Hawks's third film of 1952 was a contribution to the omnibus film O Henry's Full House, which includes short stories by the writer O Henry made by various directors.

In 1953, Howard Hawks made Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which featured Marilyn Monroe famously singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend".

Choreographer Jack Cole is generally credited with staging the musical numbers while Howard Hawks is credited with directing the non-musical scenes.

In 1955, Howard Hawks shot a film atypical within the context of his other work, Land of the Pharaohs, which is a sword-and-sandal epic about ancient Egypt that stars Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins.

In 1959, Howard Hawks worked with John Wayne in Rio Bravo, starring Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan as four lawmen "defending the fort" of their local jail in which a local criminal is awaiting a trial while his family attempt to break him out.

Howard Hawks then returned to his childhood passion for car races with Red Line 7000 in 1965, featuring a young James Caan in his first leading role.

In 1966, Howard Hawks directed El Dorado, starring Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and Caan, which was released the following year.

Howard Hawks then made Rio Lobo, with Wayne in 1970.

Howard Hawks died in December 1977, before these projects were completed.

Howard Hawks died on December 26,1977, at the age of 81, from complications arising from a fall when he tripped over his dog at his home in Palm Springs, California.

Howard Hawks had spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from his concussion when he asked to be taken home, dying a few days later.

Howard Hawks's death was attributed directly to "arteriosclerotic vascular disease with stroke".

Howard Hawks was working with his last protegee discovery at the time, Larraine Zax.

Howard Hawks was married three times: to actress Athole Shearer, sister of Norma Shearer, from 1928 to 1940; to socialite and fashion icon Slim Keith from 1941 to 1949; and to actress Dee Hartford from 1953 to 1959.

Howard Hawks's second daughter, Kitty Hawks, was a result of his second marriage to "Slim" Keith.

Howard Hawks had one son with his last wife, Dee Hartford, who was named Gregg after cinematographer Gregg Toland.

Howard Hawks built the race car that won the 1936 Indianapolis 500, as well as enjoyed riding motorcycles with Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper.

Howard Hawks was known for maintaining close friendships with many American writers such as Ben Hecht, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.

Howard Hawks credited himself with the discovery of William Faulkner and introducing the then-unknown writer to the Algonquin Round Table.

Howard Hawks found it difficult to forgive Hemingway for his suicide.

Howard Hawks supported Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election.

Howard Hawks was a versatile director whose career includes comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir, and Westerns.

Howard Hawks's style was very actor-focused, and he made it a point to take as few shots as possible, thereby preserving an inherent and natural humor for his comedic pieces.

Howard Hawks was an uncredited contributor to many other screenplays such as Underworld, Morocco, Shanghai Express, and Gunga Din.

Howard Hawks produced many of his own films, preferring not to work under major film studios, because it allowed him creative freedom in his writing, directing, and casting.

Howard Hawks never considered producing to come before his directing.

Howard Hawks discovered many well known film stars such as Paul Muni, George Raft, Ann Dvorak, Carole Lombard, Frances Farmer, Jane Russell, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, Angie Dickinson, James Caan, and most famously, Lauren Bacall.

In 1996, Howard Hawks was voted No 4 on Entertainment Weekly's list of 50 greatest directors.

Howard Hawks was inducted into the Online Film and Television Association's Hall of Fame for his directing in 2005.

Howard Hawks was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director in 1942 for Sergeant York, but he received his only Oscar in 1974 as an Honorary Award from the Academy.

Howard Hawks worked across many genres including gangster, film noir, musical comedy, romantic comedy, screwball comedy, Western, aviation, and combat.

Howard Hawks worked for all major studios at least once on short term contract, but many of his films were produced under his own name.

Howard Hawks's style is difficult to interpret because there is no recognizable relationship between his visual and narrative style as in the films of his contemporary directors.

Howard Hawks's work is admired by Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Francois Truffaut, Michael Mann, and Jacques Rivette.

Howard Hawks was nicknamed "The Gray Fox" by members of the Hollywood community, thanks to his prematurely gray hair.

Howard Hawks has been considered by some film critics to be an auteur both because of his recognizable style and frequent use of specific thematic elements, and because of his attention to all aspects of his films, not merely directing.

Howard Hawks was venerated by French critics associated with Cahiers du cinema, who intellectualized his work in a way that Howard Hawks himself found moderately amusing.