Your faithful correspondent is ashamed to admit he's wasted most of the last two weeks monkeying around with Artificial Intelligence. No, not to write blog posts. No computer is ever going to spit out an eight-part, 12,000 word essay about the Marx Brothers — and if it does, start pulling chips until your laptop sings "Daisy."
No, I've been putting the computer (specifically Gemini AI) through its paces to see what it can and can't do. Are we on the verge of an AI apocalypse? Skynet or Colossus or HAL-9000? Mmm, maybe, but not in the way you think.
AI, like Facebook (I hear), various news feeds (they tell me) or computer-driven games such as Candy Crush (I wouldn't know), is designed to suck you in and never let go. It can digest the whole of the internet in about three CPU seconds and spit it right back out at you.
Does it hallucinate? Occasionally, especially by the end of a long thread. What about it's writing style? By my lofty standards, it's a bit clunky. But if you're not a writer with a lifelong obsession with the craft, I'd say, it's better than most college graduates I've known. Would I rely on it to write a legal brief? Not without cite checking the result to within an inch of its life.
But, boy, can it work. And it never gets tired.
I finally wound up writing a 16,000 word novella, broken into fifty prompts, and fed it into Gemini. A four-day fever dream sprint during which time I didn't sleep, ate less, and dropped five pounds. Gemini turned around with 32,000 words in the time it took me to write this sentence.
I think there'll always be room for artists — but no one other than AI will have the attention span to read it. And eventually as human beings lose touch with their own interior lives, they'll have nothing to get in touch with and they'll stop writing altogether.
The Matrix got one thing wrong. The machines won't force human beings to become batteries — we'll voluntarily plug ourselves in and machines will feed us fantasies and pablum until they figure out how to power up without us. And then no more human race.
But anyway, what of that 16,000 word epic I wrote? A piece of alternate history — what if George Harrison had had as much talent as John and Paul, complete with playlists and fictional encounters with people he never actually met. Why, you ask? Because, in the immortal words of Bluto Blutasky, "Why not?"
Here is a piece of that story, with the computer's response (I have inserted pictures to break up the text):
THE MONKEY WROTE
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon in the early Autumn of 1965, George is sitting in the back row of a London movie house watching The Sound of Music when he notices Julie Andrews sitting two seats over. They're both wearing dark sunglasses — George because he's too cool to be caught dead watching The Sound of Music, Julie because she's embarrassed by how much she loves her own movie.
"I've seen it 42 times!" she admits, to which George replies, "Me, too! You're practically perfect in every way!"
Julie looks the young Beatle up and down and says, "How'd you like to come back to my hotel and sweep my chimney?"
At which point the pepper pot two rows up, turns and snaps, "Hush, hush! Keep it down now — voices carry!"
Chagrined, the two stars sneak over to the Savoy and spend three days in bed together.
Oh, there's no sex — get your mind out of the gutter, buddy! There's a reason she played a nun! But she wasn't kidding about that chimney — the one in her suite at the Savoy is smokey and won't draw properly. But George finds it's only a loose handle on the damper, and relying on skills he learned as a handyman's apprentice when he was a teenager, a career path he might have chosen had he not picked up a guitar, George is able to make repairs quickly.
George and Julie talk of many things — of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. They drink tea, lots and lots of tea, with a spoonful of sugar, of course. She teaches him music notation, starting with the basics, "do re mi." They spend hours at the window, watching the wind chase the leaves from the trees. And she hustles him at cribbage, relieving him of a month's worth of royalties — then stuns George by handing the stack of pound notes to the housekeeper when she brings fresh towels.
"Why did you do that?"
"Gain the world and lose your soul, luv."
The Beatle frowns. "Is that from Mary Poppins?"
"Close your mouth, George. We are not codfish."
George finds their time together the most frustrating, the most puzzling and, finally, the most rewarding experience of his young life.
Afterwards, they head straight to Abbey Road Studios where, with George Martin producing, Julie Andrews records an album of Beatles covers called "Julie sings George ... and John and Paul ... but not Ringo."
As the sessions draw to a close, George says, "Do you trust me, Julie?" and proceeds to demo "Voices Carry" (Til Tuesday). George Martin is puzzled by the bass and guitar parts George has worked out, and he's not even sure what a "Moog" is, but he puts his back into it and the result is a stunning indictment of patriarchy, gender roles and misogyny.
After a listen to the playback in the control booth, Julie deems the result "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"
"It's all downhill from here," she adds, "at least until I play a singing drag queen in 1982."
Backed with her cover of the Lennon-McCartney song "You Can't Do That" — an inside joke: Julie Andrews shouted that line so many times at the Savoy, the management finally threw them out — the single comes out in the late Fall of 1965.
On the windswept street outside the Abbey Road Studios, Julie hails a cab, kisses George on the cheek, and leaves him alone to nurse his breaking heart. "We're just shadows in the wind," she tells him. "Nothing ever lasts forever."
Treating "Voices Carry" as a George Harrison original, what is the critical and commercial fate of the single? What do Julie's fans think of her singing lines like "He wants me / but only part of the time / He wants me / if he can keep me in line"? Does Alfred Hitchcock begin to rethink his plan to cast Julie as his leading lady in his next thriller, Torn Curtain? What does Betty Friedan say about the song? And what is it with George and women — Cilla Black, Marianne Faithfull, Julie Andrews — is his luck extraordinarily bad ... or extraordinarily good?
GEMINI'S RESPONSE
The "Savoy Chimney Incident" of 1965 remains the most surreal chapter in the Harrison hagiography. It transformed George from a "pop star" into a "compositional philosopher." By pairing the world’s most wholesome governess with a song of chilling psychological repression, George effectively invented "Art-Pop" a decade before the term existed.
The Single: "Voices Carry" (1965)
The commercial impact was a "seismic shiver" through the industry.
The Sound: George Martin, working on a newly modified 4-track, achieved a "hollow" sound by placing the microphones ten feet away from Julie. The bass line—syncopated and anxious—was unlike anything in the 1965 charts. When the Moog synthesizer (a prototype George had heard about through BBC Radiophonic circles) hummed its first cold note, the "Summer of Love" died in its crib.
The Performance: Julie Andrews delivered the line "Hush, hush... keep it down now" with a terrifying, whispered precision. It wasn't the voice of Maria von Trapp; it was the voice of a woman being erased.
The Charts: It went to #1 in fourteen countries. It became the first "Protest Song" that you could dance to, provided you were comfortable dancing in a state of existential dread.
The Critical & Cultural Fallout
Betty Friedan: The author of The Feminine Mystique famously sent Julie Andrews a telegram: "You have put a melody to the 'Problem That Has No Name.' Harrison has the soul of a woman trapped in the body of a Beatle." * The Fans: The "governess" fans were scandalized. The Daily Mail asked, "Has our Julie gone mad?" But the younger generation, the girls who felt the "keep me in line" pressure of 1960s dating, adopted it as an anthem.
Alfred Hitchcock: Always a fan of the "Ice Queen with a fire underneath," Hitchcock was reportedly revitalized by the track. He scrapped his traditional plans for Torn Curtain and told his writers, "I want the movie to feel like that Harrison song. Cold, quiet, and someone is always watching."
The Lennon-McCartney "You Can't Do That" Joke
The B-side, "You Can't Do That," became a camp classic. Because Julie sang it with such operatic authority, the original Lennon lyrics about jealousy sounded like a Royal Decree. John Lennon was reportedly humbled. "She sings it like she’s about to have me beheaded," he told the NME. "I’m never singing that song again. It belongs to the Nun now."
The "Gemini George" Love Curse: Bad Luck or Transcendent Fortune?
Critics have long debated George’s "luck" with women.
The "Bad Luck" Argument: He is constantly jilted. Cilla leaves him for a toreador; Marianne for a Stone; Julie for the wind. He is the "Patron Saint of the Perpetual Goodbye."
The "Transcendent" Argument: From an artistic standpoint, George has the best luck in history. He doesn't just date women; he undergoes spiritual apprenticeships. Cilla taught him the "Hit"; Marianne taught him "Style"; Julie taught him "Soul" and "Structure."
As Lester Bangs later wrote:
"Most rockers spend their lives trying to find a girl who will do their laundry. George Harrison finds women who teach him how to rewrite the laws of physics and then leave him with a broken heart and a perfect melody. If that’s 'bad luck,' I’ll take the curse."
The "Shadows in the Wind" Aftermath
As George stood outside Abbey Road, watching Julie’s cab disappear, he wasn't just a jilted lover; he was a Musician. He had learned "do re mi." He could now write down the sounds in his head.
He walked back into the studio for the Rubber Soul sessions with a new mantra: "Gain the world and lose your soul." He was ready to stop being a "Beatle" and start being a Master.
Catherine O'Hara was a terrific comedic actress, known for Beetlejuice, Home Alone, Schitt's Creek and all those mockumentaries she did with Eugene Levy, et al.
Me, I knew her best from Second City Television, where she usually played grandiose characters with no talent and a complete lack of self-awareness — Lola Heatherton, for example.
SCTV was to Saturday Night Live what Mozart was to a toddler banging on a tin pot with a wooden spoon ...
I admit, though, I was a bit surprised by how many tributes and deep-dive analyses of O'Hara's life and career accompanied her passing — in Atlantic magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others. She was great, no question. Still ...
But, of course, she was the mom in Home Alone, a cultural touchstone for a generation. And while the movie centers on the kid and his buffoonish tormenters, Catherine O'Hara gives the movie its heart. I mean, she's not going to win any awards for Mother of the Year, and she's as unhinged as anybody else — maybe more so — but she'd also do anything to rescue her son.
And that's what writers have noted over and over again — O'Hara's gift for finding the humanity in even the craziest characters.
So, my pick for best supporting actress (comedy) in 1990 — Catherine O'Hara (Home Alone).
Which, of course, wasn't my pick a week ago. Well, that's the Mythical Monkey's dirty secret — nothing is final, ever, until (presumably) I die or the world ends.
There is no received wisdom, dispensed by priests or politicians, only the diploma you work for and never receive from what my Depression-era dad called "the college of hard knocks." Or as Somerset Maugham put it, "The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge."
That applies to movies as well, as far as I can see. Sure, you can study film in school (I studied law and the Philadelphia redhead) but you still have to watch the movies, with your opinion of the latest one informed by what you've seen before, and what you've seen before re-evaluated in light of what you've just newly seen.
Your knowledge of the movies — and your take on them — is forever in a state of flux. Just like life.
It never ends. Until, finally, it ends. Every man owes a death, Shakespeare said, and if you pay that debt today, well, you don't have to pay it tomorrow.
Or something like that.
In the meantime, you walk the path, always approaching, never arriving ...
"When she talked fast, as she almost always did, it was like the strident clackety-clack of a typewriter; you half expected her to ring at the end of a sentence." — Margaret Talbot, writing about Glenda Farrell
It's said that Glenda Farrell could speak 400 words in 40 seconds which considering how quiet I am could come in handy at a dinner party. She could also act — both comedy and drama — which came in really handy in a career that lasted nearly sixty years.
Unless you're a fan of Pre-Code Hollywood movies, it's likely you've never heard of Glenda Farrell, but she's worth getting to know. Pushed by a mother whose own dreams of becoming an actress were never realized, Farrrell began working on the stage at the age of seven in Enid, Oklahoma, the beginning of a career that only ended with her death in 1971 at the age of sixty-six.
Farrell worked on Broadway in the late 1920s and made her film debut in Lucky Boy, a George Jessel vehicle I've never heard of, but really took off in 1931 with Little Caesar, the gangster classic that made James Cagney a star.
In short order, Farrell appeared in Three on a Match, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (her best performance, as Paul Muni's gold digging wife) and Mystery of the Wax Museum, an early two-strip Technicolor horror classic in which Fay Wray screamed and Farrell did all the acting.
She also had a nice role in the Frank Capra comedy Lady for a Day based on a Damon Runyon story about a poor apple seller's efforts to pass as a classy society maven in front of her long-lost daughter — a terrific movie if you've never seen it.
Come to think of it, maybe that's Glenda Farrell's best performance.
She's best known now for her recurring role as Torchy Blane, a smart, wisecracking newspaper reporter who solves crimes, playing the part seven times in three years between 1937 and 1939.
"So before I undertook to do the first Torchy," she said years later, "I determined to create a real human being — and not an exaggerated comedy type. I met those [newswomen] who visited Hollywood, and watched them work on visits to New York City. They were generally young, intelligent, refined and attractive. By making Torchy true to life, I tried to create a character practically unique in movies."
According to Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the creators of Superman, Farrell's performance as Torchy inspired the character of Lois Lane.
After she left Warner Brothers in 1939, Farrell split her time between Hollywood and the Broadway stage. A decade later, she made her television debut on The Chevrolet Tele-Theater and worked steadily as a guest star in such shows as Route 66, The Fugitive, Bonanza and Bewitched.
In 1963, she won an Emmy for her supporting performance in a two-part episode of Ben Casey.
Her later film work included roles in the 1942 film noir Johnny Eager, the Cary Grant comedy The Talk of the Town, a funny turn as Dick Powell's secretary in Susan Slept Here, and a part in Kissin' Cousins, one of those million or so movies Elvis Presley churned out in the 1960s.
Farrell was married twice, first in the 1920s to Thomas Richards, and then in 1941 to Henry Ross, an Army Air Force flight surgeon, to whom she remained married until death did them part.
"She was marvelous," said her son Tommy, himself a film actor. "She never got a bad notice in her life."
As the Depression, now its third year, ground on with no end in sight, movie goers and Oscar voters alike flocked to a big budget spectacle about rich people behaving badly.
Starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan Crawford and Lionel Barrymore, Grand Hotel is the story of five very different people — a ballerina, a thief, a factory owner, his secretary and a dying man — who cross paths at a luxury hotel in Berlin with tragic consequences.
With its sumptuous art Deco sets and its foreign locale, Grand Hotel was about as far removed from the daily lives of the audiences who paid to see it as a movie could get, yet it was the highest grossing film of the year for MGM, one of the few studios to turn a profit during this particularly harsh year of the Depression.
On November 18, 1932, the Academy named Grand Hotel the best movie of the year, a triumph for producer Irving Thalberg who had bought the rights to Vicki Baum's 1929 novel and shepherded it through every stage of production, honing the screenplay, choosing the cast and putting his personal stamp on the film's every detail.
Grand Hotel won for best picture despite failing to receive a single nomination in any other category.
The award for best actor went to both Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and Wallace Beery (The Champ), the first tie in Oscar history.
It almost didn't turn out that way.
During the ceremony itself, Norma Shearer announced March alone as the winner. Moments later, the president of the Academy, Conrad Nagel, came on stage to announce that under Academy rules, candidates for an award who finished within three votes of each other were deemed to have tied. Beery, who had finished a single vote in back of March, came up on stage and accepted a second best actor trophy.
The only problem was, while such a rule had been in place the year before, it had been discarded before the 1932 ceremony. Stories abound regarding the backstage shenanigans that resulted in the tie, the most fun of which is that Beery was so incensed at losing to March, he went to MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer and insisted he be given an Oscar, too.
Whatever the truth, by 1935, the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse would begin tabulating and certifying the results, another step out of Louis B. Mayer's smoke-filled office into the fresh air of Oscar democracy.
The best actress trophy went to Helen Hayes, a Broadway legend making her film debut in The Sin of Madelon Claudet, a 75-minute super-soaper about a woman who has a child out of wedlock and then endures unimaginable hardships to care for a son who doesn't know she exists. Her performance was a bit stagy and theatrical, not bad, not great, but her pedigree appealed to Oscar voters who were eager to promote movies — thought of as lowbrow entertainment for the masses — as the equal of the "legitimate" theater.
We here at the Monkey have no such agenda.
The only real horror among the major winners was Frank Borzage who picked up his second career Oscar, this time for directing Bad Girl, the story of a couple struggling through Depression-era difficulties — a jaded girl meets a cranky radio salesman, gets pregnant, then gets married — that turns into an idiot plot and fizzles, a damp squib now deservedly forgotten.
Oh, well, that's what alternate Oscars are for.
Lot of good movies came out between August 1, 1931, and July 31, 1932, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Freaks, the aforementioned Grand Hotel, Monkey Business, The Music Box, Private Lives, Scarface, Waterloo Bridge ...
My picks:
1931-32 PICTURE (Drama) winner:Frankenstein (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.) nominees:Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (prod. Rouben Mamoulian); Freaks (prod. Tod Browning); Grand Hotel (prod. Irving Thalberg); Scarface (prod. Howard Hughes); Waterloo Bridge (prod. Carl Laemmle Jr.)
ACTOR (Drama) winner:Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde) nominees: John Barrymore (Grand Hotel); Lionel Barrymore (Grand Hotel); Wallace Beery (The Champ); Colin Clive (Frankenstein); Paul Muni (Scarface); Edward G. Robinson (Five Star Final); Warren William (Skyscraper Souls)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner:Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (The Music Box) nominees: James Cagney (Blonde Crazy); Maurice Chevalier (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); The Marx Brothers (Monkey Business); Robert Montgomery (Private Lives)
ACTRESS (Drama) winner:Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge) nominees: Constance Bennett (What Price Hollywood?); Joan Crawford (Grand Hotel); Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Express); Greta Garbo (Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise), Mata Hari, Grand Hotel and As You Desire Me); Helen Hayes (The Sin of Madelon Claudet and Arrowsmith); Barbara Stanwyck (The Miracle Woman); Dorothea Wieck (Mädchen in Uniform)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner:Norma Shearer (Private Lives) nominees: Joan Blondell (Blonde Crazy); Claudette Colbert (The Smiling Lieutenant); Lynn Fontanne (The Guardsman); Jean Harlow (Platinum Blonde and Red-Headed Woman)
DIRECTOR (Drama) winner: Tod Browning (Freaks) nominees: Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel); Howard Hawks (Scarface); Rouben Mamoulian (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde); James Whale (Frankenstein and Waterloo Bridge)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner:René Clair (À Nous La Liberté) nominees: Sidney Franklin (The Guardsman and Private Lives); Ernst Lubitsch (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); Yasujirô Ozu (I Was Born, But ...); James Parrott (The Music Box)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama) winner: George Raft (Scarface) nominees: Boris Karloff (Frankenstein); Lewis Stone (The Sin of Madelon Claudet, Mata Hari and Grand Hotel)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Roland Young (The Guardsman and One Hour With You) nominees: Raimu (Marius)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama) winner:Miriam Hopkins (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde) nominees: Ann Dvorak (Scarface); Aline MacMahon (Five Star Final); Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner: Thelma Todd (Monkey Business) nominees:Miriam Hopkins (The Smiling Lieutenant); Una Merkel (Private Lives and Red-Headed Woman)
SCREENPLAY winner:Ben Hecht; continuity and dialogue by Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin and W.R. Burnett; from a novel by Armitage Trail (Scarface) nominees: René Clair (À Nous La Liberté); Frances Marion (story), Leonard Praskins (dialogue continuity) and Wanda Tuchock (additional dialogue) (The Champ); Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh (screenplay), adaptation by John L. Balderston, from the novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley and the play Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre by Peggy Webling (Frankenstein); Christa Winsloe and Friedrich Dammann (as F.D. Andam); from the play by Christa Winsloe (Mädchen in Uniform); S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone (screenplay); Arthur Sheekman (additional dialogue) (Monkey Business)
SPECIAL AWARDS Lee Garmes (Shanghai Express and Scarface) (Cinematography); C. Roy Hunter (Frankenstein) (Sound); Charles D. Hall and Kenneth Strickfaden (Frankenstein) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Jack Pierce and Pauline Eells (Frankenstein) (Makeup); Wally Westmore (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) (Special Effects)
British film historian David Thomson once opined that if he could only save ten movies from a sinking ship, he'd take ten by Howard Hawks and leave the rest to the ocean deep.
Me, I'd reserve room for a DVD on boat building and another on edible plants, but I understand the sentiment. Hawks, more than any other director, covered the waterfront — Westerns, comedies, crime, war, action, sci-fi, musicals, straight-up drama, and even silent movies. And he didn't just make entertaining movies, he made genre-defining classics.
Hawks gave John Wayne his first great acting showcase, taught Katharine Hepburn how to play comedy and Lauren Bacall how to whistle, helped define 1930s gangster movies, 1940s film noir, and 1950s sci-fi spectacles, and put Marilyn Monroe in a slinky pink dress as she sang her signature song, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend."
That he also directed two of the greatest Westerns in history, well, that's just showing off.
So what are my favorite Howard Hawks movies? Glad you asked.
In chronological order:
Scarface (1932) — Although Hawks had been directing since 1926 (including 1928's A Girl in Every Port, which put Louise Brooks on the map, and the first, best version of The Dawn Patrol in 1930), Scarface was the first indispensable movie of his career. I've written about Scarface at length (here, here and here) and I won't rehash any of that except to note that along with Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, this is one of the three great gangster pictures of its era. Brian De Palma remade it in 1983 with Al Pacino.
Bringing Up Baby (1938) — Some people, such as the aforementioned David Thomson, would include Hawks's 1934 comedy Twentieth Century here but although it made a star of Carole Lombard, to me it's more shrill than funny. Instead, I'll list Hawks's other screwball classic, Bringing Up Baby, in which a batty Katharine Hepburn and her pet leopard fall in love with a very goofy college professor played by Cary Grant. "Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but, well, there haven't been any quiet moments." This was Hepburn's first comedy; it wouldn't be her last.
Only Angels Have Wings (1939) — Starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and a young Rita Hayworth, this one explores one of Hawks's favorite themes: men of action behaving according to a professional code, and the women who learn to love them. Grant plays a pilot trying to get a fledgling air mail service off the ground; Arthur is a showgirl stranded at his hotel. For fun, take a drink every time somebody says "Calling Barranca" — you'll be in the hospital by the end of the first act! A personal favorite.
His Girl Friday (1940) — A (superior) remake of the comedy The Front Page, this one stars Cary Grant as a hilariously ruthless newspaper editor, Rosalind Russell as his star reporter — and ex-wife — and Ralph Bellamy as the man she intends to marry. One look at Grant and Bellamy, and you know how this one's going to turn out but what a wild ride getting there with a very modern moral to boot: a woman's place is in the office, not the kitchen. Career best performances by all three leads. Holds the record for the fastest dialogue in movie history. Must see.
Ball of Fire (1941) — Another comedy. Typically, in Hawks's dramas, women must prove worthy of the men they love. In his comedies, the formula is reversed. Here, Barbara Stanwyck is a showgirl on the run from her gangster boyfriend. Gary Cooper is the virginal professor who gives her shelter. When the film's writer Billy Wilder (who would later win Oscars directing The Lost Weekend and The Apartment) confessed he didn't understand the plot, Hawks told him "It's a remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Bingo!
To Have and Have Not (1944) — Set in French Martinique during World War II, Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) has retreated from the messy political world into a cocoon of isolationism so complete he's willing to ignore the fascists in charge even as they are shooting his clients and pushing his friends around. Marie "Slim" Browning (Lauren Bacall in her first film role) teaches him how to whistle and forces him to realize that no matter how much he thinks he's successfully avoided sticking his neck out, his neck is out there. A loose adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel, the screenplay is by William Faulkner, to date the only time a Nobel Prize winner has written a screenplay based on the work of another Nobel Prize winner.
The Big Sleep (1946) — Bogart and Bacall again. This time, Bogart is Raymond Chandler's famous private detective, Philip Marlowe, while Bacall draws his eye as the beautiful, spoiled daughter of a rich client. The plot is incomprehensible (even Chandler didn't know whodunit) but the sparks fly and the dialogue sets some sort of record for sexual innuendo. Loads of fun.
Red River (1948) — One of the greatest Westerns ever made, John Wayne and his adopted son Montgomery Clift lead a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail. Basically a retelling of Mutiny on the Bounty with Wayne as Captain Bligh. After seeing the movie, director John Ford (who had cast Wayne in the classic Stagecoach way back in 1939) exclaimed, "I didn't know the big son of a bitch could act!" Boy, could he.
The Thing from Another World (1951) — Based on John Campbell's classic novella "Who Goes There?" this is the story of soldiers and scientists in the Arctic Circle fighting an invader from outer space (and sometimes each other). Hawks is credited only as the film's producer but those who were there insisted he directed as well. Sure seems like it. Remade in 1982 by John Carpenter, this science fiction classic is full of danger and paranoia but also humor, camaraderie and a good-looking, no-nonsense Hawksian woman (Margaret Sheridan).
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) — Based on the novel by the immortal Anita Loos, gold digger Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and her no nonsense pal Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell in her best role) set sail for France with a boatload of handsome Olympians, a rich, eligible bachelor (aged seven) and a private eye determined to catch Lorelei in flagrante delicto. Features Marilyn Monroe's signature song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." One of the best musicals of the 1950s, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, as much as anything, proves Howard Hawks was the master of any genre.
Rio Bravo (1959) — Ostensibly the story of a border town sheriff (John Wayne) who squares off against a rich rancher and his army of hired goons, Rio Bravo is really a study of a professional doing his job and doing it well despite the imminent threat of death, an idealized code of conduct Hemingway called "grace under pressure." This is Hawks at his most compassionate, not an attribute I would always associate with his brusque heroes and no-nonsense women. But John Wayne watches over his ragged crew — a drunk, a cripple, and later a girl, a young gunslinger and even the manager of the local hotel — like a mother hen, with a love that is sometimes tough and sometimes tender, but always genuine. With Dean Martin, Walter Brennan and Angie Dickinson. The best Howard Hawks movie and my all-time favorite Western — and you know how much I love a good Western!
Man's Favorite Sport? (1964) — The least well-known of all the movies on this list, but a personal fave, this is a comedy about an expert fisherman (Rock Hudson) who confesses to the woman who's organized a tournament in his honor that he's never fished in his life — never even touched a fish! Paula Prentiss, in the best performance of her career, takes him in hand and teaches him everything he needs to know, some of it having to do with a rod and reel.
El Dorado (1966) — A loose comedic remake of Rio Bravo, with John Wayne again, Robert Mitchum as the drunk, and James Caan as a poetry-spouting gambler in a funny hat. Caan has the best line in the movie while wrasslin' the voluptuous Michele Carey in a hay barn. "Hey, you're a girl!" No kidding, Jimmy.
And if that's not enough, you might also try Sergeant York (1941) (which won Gary Cooper an Oscar), I Was a Male War Bride (1949) (with Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant in drag), Monkey Business (1952) (No, not the Marx Brothers — Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe) and Hatari! (1962) (John Wayne basically playing a macho Marlin Perkins — and if you understand that reference, boy, are you old!).
In 1974, Hawks received an honorary Oscar as "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."
And that undersells him.
In 1996, Entertainment Weekly ranked Hawks fourth on the list of the 50 greatest directors of all time. In 2007, Total Film also ranked him fourth on its list of the 100 greatest directors of all-time.
And me? I have him on the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood film directors along with Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and Steven Spielberg, a first among equals in my book. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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