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.
Round Three, Part Two. Vote below. Voting continues until Saturday lunchtime. Round Four will start crack o' dawn Sunday.
To vote for actresses in the 1930s bracket, click here. To vote for actresses in the 1950s bracket, click here. To vote for actresses in the 1960s bracket, click here
The rest of Round Two starts now. Vote below. Voting continues until Saturday morning.
Voting continues in the other brackets as well. To vote for actresses in the 1930s bracket, click here. To vote for actresses in the 1950s bracket, click here. To vote for actresses in the 1960s bracket, click here
On September 14-16, In The Good Old Days Of Classic Hollywood is hosting The Lauren Bacall Blogathon. For reasons I won't go into here, I can't post on the day of, so instead I offer up this early post as my way of encouraging you to please make a note on your calendars and check out the blogathon.
At the heart of every Howard Hawks action movie is the concept of the professional doing his job, and doing it well, despite the imminent threat of death, an idealized code of conduct Hemingway called "grace under pressure." We're all going to die sooner or later, Hawks seems to be saying, can't we at least do it with a bit of dignity and honor and laughter and good company?
That, above all, I think, is at the core of what is known as "a Hawksian woman," one who can laugh and provide good company in the face of death.
Whatever else a Howard Hawks drama is about, usually a woman meets a man and grows up enough to prove worthy of him and his cadre of professional associates (what one might loosely think of his family).
His comedies, in contrast, are about a man proving worthy enough of a woman to start a family (through marriage).
To Have and Have Not, so far as I can remember, is the one Hawks movie that takes that comedy formulation — the man proving worthy of the woman — and applies it to a dramatic situation. Do you know To Have and Have Not? In it, 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 of the local government even as they are shooting his clients and making his life and the lives of his friends miserable.
Into that mix comes Marie "Slim" Browning (Lauren Bacall in her first film role), teaching him how to whistle and forcing him to realize that no matter how much he thinks he's successfully avoided sticking his neck out, his neck is out there, on the block, along with the necks of his "family" (Eddie, Frenchy, Cricket and, finally, Slim herself).
Whether he likes it or not, the Cause is his and he can either fight for it or go down the tubes anyway. So he fights, and in so doing, becomes worthy of Lauren Bacall, the toughest of tough young broads ever to grace the screen.
1944 was a very good year for actresses. The list of those I didn't nominate — Joan Bennett (The Woman In The Window), Claudette Colbert (Since You Went Away), Bette Davis (Mr. Skeffington), Joan Fontaine (Jane Eyre), Elizabeth Taylor (National Velvet), Gene Tierney (Laura) — would make a pretty good slate all by themselves. Can you imagine a lineup that strong coming of today's Hollywood?
It's Katie-Bar-The-Door's birthday. She's not only taking the day off, she's taking the rest of the week (plus Labor Day), so in all likelihood, no blogging until Tuesday. (Not that I've done much blogging in the past couple of weeks; lots of good reasons, but I won't bore you with the details.)
You know, I often talk about Katie-Bar-The-Door, for whom the all-important Katie Awards are named, but I don't know that I've ever described her. At her office, people sometimes see her as a combination of Ellen Ripley and the Terminator, only better dressed. Maybe like Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer.
Scary.
But when the big cheeses need someone to bring order out of chaos, or when her co-workers need someone to speak truth to power, Katie's the one they call on.
"Release the Kraken!" is how Katie cheerfully puts it.
"She very politely pretends to work for me," the owner of the company says, "but we both know who the boss really is."
At home, though, I see a different side of Katie-Bar-The-Door, and in terms of movie references you might know, this is how I would describe her:
The red hair and fiery temperament of Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man the loyalty and compatibility of Katharine Hepburn in Holiday the humor and easy companionship of Myrna Loy in The Thin Man series (we even have a dog!)
the wit and resourcefulness of Diana Rigg in The Avengers and the smarts of Irene Dunne in, well, everything.
In short, she's the ultimate Hawksian woman.
Which makes me a very lucky man indeed. Happy birthday, Katie-Bar-The-Door!
Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are back from the beach—that's Katie on the right.
Except for a couple of moments on a borrowed computer to answer a couple of comments, I didn't do any blogging at all—the last four entries were prepared in advance—and I'm way behind on both my movie watching and blog reading. I'll try to catch up over the weekend.
I did see that we picked up some new followers here at the Monkey—welcome!. I've added them to the blogroll, so you'll see a couple new sites when you scroll down the page. And I see that Movie Nut 14, our favorite trivia answering machine, tagged me with fifteen questions on her blog, Defiant Success.
1. Movie you love with a passion. 2. Movie you vow to never watch. 3. Movie that literally left you speechless. 4. Movie you always recommend. 5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie. 6. Actor/actress you don't get the appeal for. 7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you'd love to meet. 8. Sexiest actor/actress you've seen. (Picture required!) 9. Dream cast. 10. Favorite actor pairing. 11. Favorite movie setting. 12. Favorite decade for movies. 13. Chick flick or action movie? 14. Hero, villain or anti-hero? 15. Black and white or color?
I encourage fellow bloggers such as Who Am Us, Thingy, Zoe and Mister Muleboy—and anyone else so inclined—to cut and past the questions into their blog, or into the comments section below, and answer them. No penalties if you don't though. We pitch a guilt-free tent here at the Monkey.
My answers, by the way:
1. Passion about? Whichever movie I'm currently researching, in this case the comedies Chaplin made for Mutual in 1916 and 1917. 2. Vow not to see? None, as long as it's reasonably affordable. 3. Left me literally speechless? Schindler's List. 4. Recommended movie? On the right side of the page, click on the Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards and The Silent Oscars. 5. Watch them in anything? Many, such as Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, and just lately, Charlie Chaplin. 6. Don't get? Angelina Jolie. 7. Want to meet? Buster Keaton. 8. Sexiest? For Katie, it's Cary Grant. For me, Diana Rigg. 9. Dream cast? That would be Casablanca. Flawless cast. 10. Actor pairing? William Powell and Myrna Loy. 11. Movie setting? Around whichever musical instrument is appearing in whichever Howard Hawks movie I'm watching—for example, the piano in Only Angels Have Wings or To Have and Have Not, the guitar in Rio Bravo. 12. Favorite movie decade? 1940s. I think. 13. Chick flick or action movie? Put on Charade, which is both. 14. Hero, villain or anti-hero? Whatever Bogart is. Reluctant hero, I guess. 15. Black and white, or color? Yes, definitely.
Be sure to head over to All Good Things to vote in Monty's best actress March Madness tournament. Today it's round 2 of the 1940s bracket. The higher ranked seed won each of the first round match-ups, but I smell at least one upset in today's contests. The match-ups: Bette Davis v. Rita Hayworth, Vivien Leigh v. Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn v. Gene Tierney and Ingrid Bergman v. Olivia de Havilland.
By the way, that's Vivien Leigh and Lauren Bacall meeting Kay Kendall and Noel Coward for a friendly drink before the main event. They won't be so nice once they take the court, though, that I can assure you. The elbows will be flying!
Oh, and who won the right to represent the Silent Era/1930s bracket in the Final Four? Ten-seed Irene Dunne, the Cinderella of the tournament so far. She knocked off Clara Bow, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard, heavyweights all. Congratulations, Irene!
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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