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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.
August 1, 1930-to-July 31, 1931, was one of those movie years where the list of the Academy's nominees and winners would give you a completely distorted idea of what was actually going on in movie history.
1931 was a pivotal year. James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Clark Gable all went from bit players to stars within the space of twelve months and in so doing, they gave the cinema a distinctly American feel for the first time. Instead of actors aping polished stage performers with British or faux-British accents, audiences heard the inflections and rhythms of urban wise guys like Cagney and Gable, or in the case of Robinson — who was born in Romania and raised in New York's Lower East Side — the voice of the American immigrant experience.
Gangster pictures starring Cagney and Robinson — The Public Enemy and Little Caesar, respectively — proved to be big, if controversial, hits with both critics and audiences. Censors were not so thrilled, however, contending that the films (and Howard Hawks's Scarface the following year) glamorized crime.
Hollywood, as usual, proved to be of two minds on the subject, happy to bank the money that was rolling in while paying lip service at Oscar time to the notion that gangster pictures were bad for us.
It was the same story with Universal's cycle of great horror pictures, which began in 1931 with Dracula, and continued in November of that year (too late for an Oscar nomination) with Frankenstein. Their stars, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, would dominate the genre and box office for years to come without either ever receiving any recognition from the Academy.
There was also the groundbreaking western The Big Trail, starring an impossibly young John Wayne and featuring the first widescreen movie in history.
And, of course, Groucho Marx gave us what was perhaps the most famous monologue of his career, confessing to audiences, "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know."
If, however, you look at the list of winners and nominees from the Academy Award ceremony held on November 10, 1931, you won't see any of these films or performers:
Picture: Cimarron
Actor: Lionel Barrymore (A Free Soul)
Actress: Marie Dressler (Min and Bill)
Director: Norman Taurog (Skippy)
Admittedly, although the Academy failed to recognize the revolution in their midst, Cimarron makes sense in the context of the times — it was based on a best-selling novel, critics loved it, and helped sell the notion that movies were high art. Not to mention the opening sequence is spectacular.
As for Marie Dressler and Lionel Barrymore, they were big stars and turned in good performances in solid films.
The only truly inexplicable award went to Norman Taurog for his direction of the comedy Skippy.
Skippy is pleasant enough, with a fine performance from child star Jackie Cooper, but in terms of what went on in the director's chair, it isn't much unless you count Taurog's threat to shoot Cooper's dog if the kid didn't cry on cue (he cried buckets and earned an Oscar nomination).
Nothing compared to the accomplishments of Charlie Chaplin and René Clair, who were eligible for the award, or Josef von Sternberg and Lewis Milestone, who were actually nominated.
Not to mention Taurog might be the worst director to ever win the award — aside from nabbing the Oscar itself, Taurog is mostly remembered now for directing nine Elvis Presley movies (and not the good ones either).
Well, okay, he directed Boys Town, I'll give him that. But that hardly makes up for Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.
Anyway, these are my picks:
1930-31
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Public Enemy (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck)
nominees: The Big Trail (prod. Winfield R. Sheehan); The Dawn Patrol (prod. Robert North); Dracula (prod. Tod Browning and Carl Laemmle, Jr.); Morocco (prod. Hector Turnbull)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: City Lights (prod. Charles Chaplin)
nominees: Animal Crackers (prod. Adolph Zukor); Bimbo's Initiation (prod. Max Fleischer); The Front Page (prod. Lewis Milestone); Min And Bill (prod. George W. Hill)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: M (prod. Seymour Nebenzal)
nominees: L'Âge d'Or (prod. Le Vicomte de Noailles); Le Million (prod. Frank Clifford); Prix de Beauté (prod. Romain Pinès); The Threepenny Opera (prod. Seymour Nebenzal)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar)
nominees: James Cagney (The Public Enemy); Gary Cooper (Morocco); Walter Huston (The Criminal Code); Bela Lugosi (Dracula)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Marx Brothers (Animal Crackers)
nominees: Eddie Cantor (Whoopee!); Charles Chaplin (City Lights); Jackie Cooper (Skippy); René Lefèvre (Le Million)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Marlene Dietrich (Morocco)
nominees: Joan Crawford (Dance, Fools, Dance); Irene Dunne (Cimarron); Norma Shearer (A Free Soul); Barbara Stanwyck (Night Nurse)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Marie Dressler (Min And Bill)
nominees: Virginia Cherrill (City Lights); Ina Claire (The Royal Family Of Broadway); Lya Lys (L'Âge d'Or); Jeanette MacDonald (Monte Carlo)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Fritz Lang (M)
nominees: Tod Browning (Dracula); Howard Hawks (The Dawn Patrol and The Criminal Code); Josef von Sternberg (Morocco); Raoul Walsh (The Big Trail); William A. Wellman (The Public Enemy)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Chaplin (City Lights)
nominees: Luis Buñuel (L'Âge d'Or); René Clair (Le Million); Lewis Milestone (The Front Page); G.W. Pabst (The Threepenny Opera)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Peter Lorre (M)
nominees: Dwight Frye (Dracula); Clark Gable (A Free Soul); Fredric March (The Barkleys of Broadway)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Harry Myers (City Lights)
nominees: Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Joan Blondell (Sinners' Holiday, Other Men's Women and Night Nurse)
nominees: Sylvia Sidney (An American Tragedy)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Lotte Lenya (The Threepenny Opera)
nominees: Mae Clarke (The Front Page); Margaret Dumont (Animal Crackers); Marjorie Rambeau (Min And Bill)
SCREENPLAY
winner: René Clair; from a play by Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemaud (Le Million)
nominees: Morrie Ryskind; from a play by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Burt Kalmar and Harry Ruby (Animal Crackers); Charles Chaplin (City Lights)
SPECIAL AWARDS
René Clair (Le Million) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Makin' Whoopee" (Whoopee!) (Best Song); Fritz Arno Wagner (M) (Cinematography)
The great Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule is featuring another of his famous movie quizzes. Click here to check it out, scroll down to read my responses.
MS ELIZABETH HALSEY'S ROTTEN APPLE, HOT FOR (BAD) TEACHER SUMMER MOVIE QUIZ
1) Name a line from a movie that should've become a catch phrase but didn't
"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."
Not exactly a catch phrase, but it's the answer to many of life's more difficult questions.
2) Your second favorite William Wellman film
My favorite is Battleground, one of the best war movies ever made. And while he made great movies such as The Ox-Bow Incident and The Public Enemy, my second favorite William Wellman movie is Wings, the silent Oscar winner starring Clara Bow and a bunch of airplanes.
3) Viggo Mortensen or Javier Bardem?
Like them both, but I think Javier Bardem is a national treasure.
4) Favorite first line from a movie
"Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon."
5) The most disappointing/superfluous “director’s cut” or otherwise extended edition of a movie you’ve seen?
Everything George Lucas has ever done to Star Wars
6) What is the movie you feel was most enhanced by a variant version?
Possibly Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. But what I really want is a Blu-Ray with all five versions of TV's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
7) Eve Arden or Una Merkel?
Eve Arden and it's not close. Una Merkel's appeal baffles me.
8) What was the last DVD/Blu-ray/streaming film you saw? The last theatrical screening?
DVD? Season one of television's Lost in Space. Streaming? Amazon Prime's series Bosch. Theatrical? The Imitation Game
9) Second favorite Michael Mann film
Thief (my favorite being The Last of the Mohicans)
10) Name a favorite director’s most egregious misstep
Even though it grossed more money than any movie of the silent era, established once and for all the commercial and artistic viability of the feature film, and influenced everything that came after it, I consider the second half of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation the most blinkered, ill-conceived and pernicious piece of film ever made. And not just through the politically-correct lenses of 21st century glasses, at the time, too, when it was considered so inflammatory, it was banned outright in several U.S. cities. (I've written at length about it here.)
11) Alain Delon or Marcello Mastroianni?
Marcello Mastroianni, for 8½ and La Dolce Vita.
12) Jean-Luc Godard famously stated that “all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” Name one other essential element that you’d add to the mix.
Wit.
13) Favorite one-sheet that you own, or just your favorite one-sheet (please provide a link to an image if you can)
Only one sheet I own is of Key Largo, which I bought in a bookstore in Key Largo, Florida, twenty-five years ago.
14) Catherine Spaak or Daniela Giordano?
Honestly, I have no idea who either of these people are.
15) Director who most readily makes you think “Whatever happened to…?”
Pete Wilson, whose student film Das Volkswagen featured a supporting performance by the Mythical Monkey
16) Now that some time has passed… The Interview, yes or no?
Haven't seen it, nor am I likely to see it, for no other reason than that it looks stupid, and not in a fun way.
17) Second favorite Alberto Cavalcanti film
Who?
18) Though both displayed strong documentary influence in their early films, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog have focused heavily on the documentary form late in their filmmaking careers. If he had lived, what kind of films do you think Rainer Werner Fassbinder, their partner in the German New Wave of the ‘70s, would be making now?
Selfies on his phone? I have no idea. But it would be a rare director indeed who would be making better movies in his seventies than he made in his thirties. It's a young-ish man's (woman's) medium.
19) Name a DVD you’ve replaced with a Blu-ray. Name another that you decided not to replace.
Replaced DVD with a Blu-Ray? Citizen Kane. Didn't replace? About 800 others.
20) Don Rickles or Rodney Dangerfield?
Going to see Rickles in New York in two weeks. That's what, twelve times? I've even been personally insulted by Rickles. Rickles Rickles Rickles.
Although let's be honest, he can't act a lick.
21) Director who you wish would hurry up and make another film
Buster Keaton.
22) Second favorite Michael Bay film
Do people honest to God have a favorite Michael Bay film?
23) Name a movie that, for whatever reason, you think of as your own
I love lots of movies, I identify with many of them, I can quote some of them from beginning to end. But I don't think of any of them as "mine." I've never understood the tendency of some fans to become proprietary about the object of their admiration, throwing sharp elbows to keep newcomers at bay. I am a movie evangelist. Come one, come all!
24) Your favorite movie AI (however loosely you care to define the term)
Hal 9000
25) Your favorite existing DVD commentary track
Robinson Crusoe on Mars where Paul Mantee explains how "the monkey never lied to me." I get the impression everyone else in Hollywood did.
26) The double bill you’d program on the last night of your own revival theater
What, we're saying my revival theater has gone belly up? Before I've even opened one?
My goodbyes mostly resemble the ending of The Horse's Mouth, Alec Guinness's brilliant comedy about a half-mad artist — which is to say, I drift away on the tide while involved in another nutty project. (Lost in Space, anyone?)
But the best goodbyes involve saying hello to a beautiful redhead — the ending of Holiday and The Quiet Man being two of my favorites.
27) Catherine Deneuve or Claudia Cardinale?
I think Catherine Deneuve is a better actress but Claudia Cardinale was in more movies that I actually watch — i.e., The Professionals and Once Upon a Time in the West.
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