HOWARD HAWKS
INFORMATION FROM IMDb
Date of birth
30 May 1896
Goshen, Indiana, USA
Date of death
26 December 1977
Palm Springs, California, USA. (aftermath of a fall)
Birth name
Howard Winchester Hawks
Height
6' 2" (1.88 m)
Mini Biography
What do the classic and near-classic films "The Dawn Patrol" (1930), "Scarface" (1932), "Twentieth Century" (1934), "Bringing Up Baby" (1937), "Only Angels Have Wings" (1938) "His Girl Friday" (1940), "Sergeant York" (1941), "Ball of Fire" (1941), "Air Force" (1943), "To Have and Have Not" (1944) "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Red River" (1948), and "Rio Bravo" (1959) have in common with such first-rate entertainments as "I Was a Male War Bride" (1948), "Monkey Business" (1950), "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953), "Land of the Pharaohs" (1954), "Hatari" (1963), "Man's Favorite Sport" (1964), and "El Dorado" (1968)? Aside from their displays of great craftsmanship, the answer is director Howard Hawks, one of the most celebrated of American filmmakers, who ironically, was little celebrated by his peers in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences during his career.
Although his friend, contemporary, and the director arguably closest to him in terms of his talent and output, John Ford, told him that it was he, and not Ford, who should have won the 1941 Best Director Academy Award for "Sergeant York," the great Hawks never won an Oscar in competition and was nominated for Best Director only that one time despite making some of the best films in the Hollywood canon. The Academy eventually made up for the oversight in 1974 by voting him an honorary Academy Award, in the midst of a two-decade long critical revival that has gone on for yet another two decades. To many cineastes, Howard Hawks is one of the faces of American film and would be carved on any film pantheon's Mt. Rushmore honoring America's greatest directors beside his friend Ford and Orson Welles (the other great director that Ford beat out for the 1941 Oscar). It took the French, the `Cahiers du cinema" critics, to teach America to appreciate one of its own masters, and it was to the Academy's credit that it recognized the great Hawks in his lifetime.
Hawks' career spanned the freewheeling days of the original independents in the 1910s, through the studio system in Hollywood from the silent era through the talkies, lasting into the early 1970s, with the death of the studios and the emergence of the director as auteur, the latter a phenomenon that Hawks himself directly influenced. He was he most versatile of all American directors, and before his late career critical revival, he earned himself a reputation as a a first-rate craftsman and consummate Hollywood professional who just happened, in a medium that is an industrial process, to helm some great movies. Recognition as an influential artist would come later, but it would come to him before his death.
He was born. Howard Winchester Hawks in Goshen, Indiana, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1896, the first child of Frank W. Hawks and his wife, the former Helen Howard. The day of his birth, the sheriff killed a brawler at the local saloon, but the young Hawks was not born on the wild side but with the proverbial silver spoon firmly clenched in his young mouth. His wealthy father was a member of Goshen's most prominent family who owned the Goshen Milling Co. and many other businesses, and his maternal grandfather was one of Wisconsin's leading industrialists. His father's family had arrived in America in 1630, while his mother's father, C.W. Howard, who was born in Maine in 1845 to parents who emigrated to the U.S. from the Isle of Man, made his fortune in the paper industry with his Howard Paper Co.
Ironically, almost a half-year after Howard's birth, the first motion picture was shown in Goshen, just before Christmas on December 10, 1896. Billed as "the scientific wonder of the world," the movie attracted a sold out crowd at the Irwin Theater. However, the movie disappointed the audience, and attendance fell off at subsequent showings. The interest of the boy raised a Presbyterian would not be piqued again until his family moved to southern California.
Before that move came to pass, the Hawks family relocated from Goshen to Neenah, Wisconsin when Howard's father was appointed secretary treasurer of the Howard Paper Co. in 1898. Howard grew up a coddled and spoiled child in Goshen, but in Neenah, he was treated like a young prince. His grandfather C.W. lavished his young grandson with expensive toys. C.W. had been an indulgent father, encouraging the independence and adventurousness of his two daughters, Helen and Bernice, who were the first girls in Neenah to drive automobiles. Bernice even went for an airplane ride. The two sisters, Hawks' mother and aunt, likely were the first models for what became known as "the Hawksian women" when he was a director.
His younger brother Kenneth was born in 1898, and was looked after by young Howard. However, Howard resented the birth of the family's next son, William, in 1902, and offered to sell him to a family friend for ten cents. A sister, Grace, followed William. Childbirth took a heavy toll on Howard's mother, and she never quite recovered after delivering her fifth child, Helen, in 1906. In order to aid her recovery, the family moved to the more salubrious climate of Pasadena, California northeast of Los Angeles for the winter of 1906-07. The family returned to Wisconsin for the summers, but by 1910, they permanently resettled in California, as grandfather C.W. took to wintering in Pasadena himself.
C. W. Howard eventually sold his paper company for and retired. He continued to indulge his grandson Howard, buying him whatever he fancied, including a race-car when the lad was barely old enough to drive legally. C.W. also arranged for Howard to take flying lessons so he could qualify for a pilot's license, an example followed by Kenneth.
The young Howard Hawks grew accustomed to getting what he wanted and believed his grandfather when C.W. told him he was the best and that he could do anything. Howard also likely inherited C.W.'s propensity for telling whopping lies with a straight face, a trait that had bedeviled many film historians ever since. C.W. also was involved in amateur theatrics and his mother Helen was interested in music, though no one in the Hawks-Howard family ever was involved in the arts until Howard went to work in the film industry.
Hawks was sent to Philips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire for his education, and upon graduation, he attended Cornell University, where he majored in mechanical engineering. In both his personal and professional lives, Hawks was a risk-taker, and he enjoyed racing airplanes and automobiles, two sports that he first indulged in his teens with his grandfather's blessing.
The Los Angeles area quickly evolved into the center of the film industry in America when studios began relocating their production facilities from the New York City area to southern California in the middle of the 1910s. During one summer vacation while Howard was matriculating at Cornell, a friend got Hawks a job as a prop man at Famous Players-Lasky (later known as Paramount Pictures), and he quickly rose up trough the ranks. Hawks recalled, "it all started with Douglas Fairbanks, who was off on location for some picture and phoned in to say they wanted a modern set. There was only one art director...and he was away on another location...I said, 'Well, I can build a modern set.' I'd had a few years of architectural training at school. So I did, and Fairbanks was pleased with it. We became friends, and that was really the start."
During other summer vacations from Cornell, Hawks continued to work in the movies. When the director of a Mary Pickford film he was working on, "The Little Princess" (1917), became too inebriated to continue working, Hawks volunteered to direct a few scenes, though it is not known whether his offer was taken up, or whether this was one of his tall tales.
During World War I, Hawks served as lieutenant in the Signal Corps, and later joined the Army Air Corps, serving in France. After the Armistice, he indulged in his love of risk, working as an aviator and a professional racing car driver. Drawing on his engineering experience, Hawks designed racing cars, and one of his cars won the Indianapolis 500. These early war and work experiences proved invaluable to the future filmmaker.
He eventually sought work in Hollywood and was employed in a variety of production jobs, including assistant director, casting director, script supervisor, editor, and producer. He and his brother Kenneth shot aerial footage for motion pictures, but Kenneth tragically was killed during a crash while filming.
Howard was hired as a screenwriter by Paramount in 1922, and was tasked with writing 40 story-lines for new films in 60 days. Hawks bought the rights for works by established authors like Joseph Conrad and worked, mostly uncredited, on the scripts for approximately sixty films. Hawks wanted to direct, but Paramount refused to indulge his ambition. A Fox executive, however, offered Hawks a job as director, and he made his first film, "The Road to Glory," in 1926, doubling as the film's screenwriter.
Hawks made a name for himself by directing eight silent films in the 1920s, With his facility for language, Hawks thrived with the dawn of the sound movies, establishing himself with his first talkie, the classic World War I aviation drama "The Dawn Patrol" (1930).
Hawks arrived as a major director with his controversial and highly popular gangster picture "Scarface" (1932), which was made for producer Howard Hughes. His first great movie, it catapulted him into the front rank of directors. "Scarface" remained Hawks' favorite movie, and under the aegis of the eccentric multi-millionaire Hughes, it was the only movie he ever made in which he did not have to deal with studio meddling. "Scarface" leavened its ultra-violence with comedy in a potent brew that has often been imitated by other directors
Though always involved in the development of the scripts of his films, Hawks was lucky to have worked with some of the best writers in the business, including his friend and fellow aviator, William Faulkner. Screenwriters he collaborated with on his films included Leigh Brackett, Ben Hecht, John Huston, and Billy Wilder. Hawks often recycled story-lines from previous films, such as when he jettisoned the shooting script on "El Dorado" during production and reworked the film-in-progress into a remake of "Rio Bravo."
The success of his films was partly rooted in his using first-rate writers. Hawks viewed a good writer as a sort of insurance policy, saying, "I'm such a coward that unless I get a good writer, I don't want to make a picture."
Though Hawks won himself a reputation as one of Hollywood's supreme storytellers, he himself came to the conclusion that the story was not what made a good film. After making and then remaking the confusing "The Big Sleep" (1945 and 1946) from the Raymond Chandler detective novel, Hawks came to believe that a good film consisted of at least three good scenes and no bad ones, at least not a scene that could irritate and alienate the audience. Hawks said, "As long as you make good scenes you have a good picture - it doesn't matter if it isn't much of a story."
It was Hawks' directorial skills, his ability to ensure that the audience was not aware of the twice-told nature of his films, through his engendering of a high-octane, heady energy that made his movies move that made them classics at best and extremely enjoyable entertainments at their "worst." Hawks genius as a director also manifested itself in his direction of his actors, his molding of their line-readings going a long way towards making his films outstanding. The dialog in his films often was delivered at a staccato pace, and characters' lined frequently overlapped. The spontaneous feeling of Hawks' films and the naturalness of the interrelationships between characters were enhanced by his habit of encouraging his actors to improvise.
Unlike Alfred Hitchcock, Hawks saw his lead actors as collaborators and encouraged them to be part of the creative process. He had an excellent eye for talent, and was responsible for giving the first major breaks to a roster of major stars, including Paul Muni, Carol Lombard, Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and James Caan. It was Hawks, and not John Ford, who turned John Wayne into a superstar, with "Red River" (shot in 1946, but not released until 1948). Of his performance in the film, Ford said, "I never knew the big son of a bitch could act," and gave Wayne some of his best roles in the cavalry trilogy, "Fort Apache," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949), and "Rio Grande" (1950), in which Wayne played a broad range of diverse characters.
During the 1930s, Hawks moved from hit to hit, becoming one of the most respected directors in the movie business. As his fame waxed, Hawks' image replaced the older, jodhpurs & megaphone image of the Hollywood director epitomized by Cecil B. DeMille. The new paradigm of the Hollywood director in the public eye was, like Hawks himself, tall and silver-haired, a Hemingwayesque man of action who was a thorough professional and did not fail his muse or falter in his mastery of the medium while on the job. The image of Hawks as the ultimate Hollywood professional persists until this day in Hollywood, and he continues to be a major influence on many of today's filmmakers. Among the directors influenced by Hawks are Altman, who used Hawksian overlapping dialog and improvisation in "M.A.S.H." (1970) and other films. Peter Bogdanovich, who wrote a book about Hawks, essentially remade "Bringing Up Baby" as "What's Up Doc?" (1972). Brian De Palma remade "Scarface" in 1983. Other directors directly indebted to Hawks are John Carpenter and Walter Hill.
Hawks was unique and uniquely modern in that, despite experiencing his career peak in an era dominated by studios and the producer system in which most directors were simply hired hands brought in to shoot a picture, he also served as a producer and developed the scripts for his films. Hawks was determined to remain independent and reused to attach himself to a studio, or to a particular genre, for an extended period of time. His work ethic allowed him to fit in with the production paradigms of the studio system, and he eventually worked for all eight of the major studios. He proved himself to be in effect, an independent film-maker, and thus was a model for other director-writer-producers who would arise with the breakdown of the studio system in the 1950s and `60s and the rise of the director as auteur in the early `70s. But Hawks did it first in an environment that ruined or compromised many another filmmaker.
Hawks was not interested in creating a didactic cinema but simply wanted to tell give the public a good story in a well-crafted, entertaining picture. Like Hemingway, Hawks did have a philosophy of life, but the characters in his films were never intended to be role models. Hawks' protagonists are not necessarily moral people, but they tend to play fair, according to a personal or professional code. A Hawks film typically focuses on a tightly bound group of professionals, often isolated from society at large, who must work together as a team if they are to survive, let alone triumph. The movies emphasize such traits as loyalty and self-respect. "Air Force" (1943), one of the finest propaganda films to emerge from World War II, is such a film, in which a unit bonds aboard a B-17 bomber, and the group more than the sum of the individuals.
Aside from his interest in elucidating human relationships, Hawks' main theme is Hemingwayesque; it is the execution of one's job or duty to the best of one's ability in the face of overwhelming odds that would make an average person balk. The main characters in a Hawks film typically are people who take their work with the utmost seriousness as their self-respect is tooted in their jobs. Though often outsiders or loners, Hawksian characters work within a system, a relatively closed system, in which they can ultimately triumph by being loyal to their personal and professional codes. That thematic paradigm has been seen by some critics and cinema historians as being a metaphor for the film industry itself, and of Hawks' place within it.
In a sense, Hawks' oeuvre can be boiled down to two categories: the action-adventure films and the comedies. In Hawks' action-adventure movies, such as "Only Angels Have Wings" (1938), the male protagonist, played by Cary Grant (a favorite actor of his who frequently stars in his films between 1947 and 1950), is both a hero and the top dog in his social group. In the comedies, such as "Bringing Up Baby" (1937), the male protagonist (played by the same actor, Grant) is no hero but rather a victim of women and society.
Women have only a tangential role n the action films, whereas they are the dominant figures in the comedies. In the action-adventure films, society at large often is far away and the male professionals exist in an almost hermetically sealed world, whereas in the comedies are rooted in society and its mores. Men are constantly humiliated in the comedies, or are subject to role reversals (the man as the romantically hunted prey in "Baby," or the even more dramatic role reversal, including Cary Grant in drag, in "I Was a Male War Bride" (1948). In the action-adventure films in which women are marginalized, women are forced to undergo elaborate courting rituals to attract their man, who they cannot get until they prove themselves as tough as men. There is an undercurrent of homo-eroticism to the Hawks action films, and Hawks himself termed his "A Girl In Every Port" (1928) "a love story between two men." This homo-erotic leitmotif is most prominent in "The Big Sky" (1952).
By the time he made "Rio Bravo" (1959), over 30 years since he first directed a film, Hawks not only was consciously moving towards parody, but he was in the process of revising his "closed circle of professionals" credo toward the belief that, by the time of its loose remake, "El Dorado" (1968), he was stressing the superiority of family loyalties to any professional ethic. In Rio Bravo, the motley group inside the jail-house eventually forms into a family in which the stoical code of conduct of previous Hawksian groups is replaced by something akin to a family bond. The new "family" celebrates its unity with the final shootout, which is a virtual fireworks display due to the use of dynamite to overcome the villains who threaten the family's survival. The affection of the group members for each other is best summed up in the scene where the great character actor Walter Brennan, playing Wayne's deputy Stumpy, facetiously tells Wayne that he'll have tears in his eyes until he gets back to the jail-house. The ability to razz Wayne is indicative of the bond between the two men[/B].
The sprawl of Hawks' oeuvre over multiple genres, and their existence as high-energy examples of film as its purest, emphasizing action rather than reflection, led serious critics before the 1970s to discount Hawks as a director. They generally ignored the themes that run through his body of work, such the dynamics of the group, male friendship, professionalism, and women as a threat to the independence of men.
Granted, the cinematic world limned by Hawks was limited when compared to that of John Ford, the poet of the American screen, which was richer and more complex. However, Hawks' straightforward style that emphasized human relationships undoubtedly yielded one of the greatest crops of outstanding motion pictures that can be attributed to one director. Hawks' movies not only span a wide variety of genres, his pictures frequently rank with the best in those genres, whether the war film ("The Dawn Patrol"), gangster film ("Scarface"), the screwball comedy ("His Girl Friday"); the action-adventure movie ("Only Angels Have Wings"), the noir ("The Big Sleep"), the western ("Red River" and "Rio Bravo"), the musical-comedy ("Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"), and the historical epic (Land of the Pharaohs). He even had a hand in creating one of the classic science fiction films, "The Thing," which was directed by Christian Nyby, who had edited multiple Hawks films and who. In his sole directorial effort, essentially created a Hawks film.
Though Howard Hawks created some of the most memorable moments in the history of American film, a half-century ago, serious critics generally eschewed his work, as they did not believe there was a controlling intelligence behind them. Seen as the consummate professional director in the industrial process that was the studio film, serious critics believed that the great moments of Hawks' films were simply accidents that accrued from working in Hollywood with other professionals. In his 1948 book "The Film Till Now," Richard Griffin summed this feeling up with "Hawks is a very good all rounder."
Serious critics at the time attributed the mantle of "artist" to a director only when they could discern artistic aspirations, a personal visual style, or serious thematic intent. Hawks seemed to them an unambitious director who, unlike D.W. Griffith or the early Cecil B. DeMille, had not made a major contribution to American film, and was not responsible for any major cinematic innovations. He lacked the personal touch of a Chaplin, a Hitchcock, or Welles, he did not have the painterly sensibility of a John Ford, and he had never matured into the master craftsman who tackled heavy themes like the failure of the American dream or racism like George Stevens. Hawks was seen as a commercial Hollywood director who was good enough to turn out first-rate entertainments in a wide variety of genre films in a time in which genre films such as the melodrama, the war picture, and the gangster picture were treated with a lack of respect.
One of the central ideas behind the modernist novel that dominated the first half of the 20th century artistic consciousness (when the novel and the novelist were still considered the ultimate arbiters of culture in the Anglo-Americ an world) was that the author should begin something new with each book, rather than repeating him/herself as the 19th century novelists had done. This paradigm can be seen most spectacularly in the work of James Joyce. Of course, it is easy to see this thrust for "something new" in the works of D.W. Griffith and C.B. DeMille, the fathers of the narrative film, working as they were in a new medium. In the post studio era, a Stanley Kubrick (through "Barry Lyndon" at least) and Lars von Trier can be seen as embarking on revolutionary breaks with their past. Howard Hawks was not like this, and in fact, the latter Hawks constantly recycled not just themes, but plots (so that his last great film, "Rio Bravo," essentially is remade as "El Dorado" and "Rio Lobo"). He did not fit the "modernist" paradigm of an artist.
The critical perception of Hawks began to change when the auteur theory, the idea that one intelligence was responsible for the creation of superior films regardless of their designation as "commercial" or "art house," began to influence American movie criticism. Commenting on his facility to make films in a wide variety of genres, the critic Andrew Sarris, who introduced the auteur theory to American movie criticism, said of Hawks, "For a major director, there are no minor genres."
A Hawks genre picture is rooted in the conventions and audience expectations typical of the Hollywood genre. The Hawks genre picture does not radically challenge, undermine, or overthrow either the conventions of the genre or the audience expectations of the genre film, but expands it the genre by revivifying it with new energy. As Robert Altman said about his own "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971), he fully played on the conventions and audience expectations of the western genre and in fact, did nothing to challenge them as he was relying on the audience being lulled into a comfort zone by the genre. What Altman wanted to do was to indulge his own artistry by painting at and filling in the edges of his canvas. Thus, Altman needed the audience's complicity through the genre conventions to accomplish this.
Hawks' films are not about the genre, but instead are focused on what he is his true them, what he believes is the true nature of human interaction between men and between men and women. As a genre director, Hawks used his audience's comfort with the genre to expound his philosophy on male bonding and male-female relationships. His movies have a great deal of energy, invested in them by the master craftsman, which made them into great popular entertainments. That Hawks was a commercial filmmaker who was also a first-rate craftsman was not the sum total of his achievement as a director, but was the means by which he communicated with his audience.
While many during his life-time would not have called Hawks an artist, Robin Wood compared Hawks to Shakespeare and Mozart, both of whom created popular entertainments that could also appeal to elites. According to Wood, "The originality of their works lay not in the evolution of a completely new language, but in the artist's use and development of an already existing one; hence there was common ground from the outset between artist and audience, and 'entertainment' could happen spontaneously without the intervention of a lengthy period of assimilation."
The great French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, who began his cinema career as a critic, wrote about Hawks, "The great filmmakers always tie themselves down by complying with the rules of the game.... Take, for example, the films of Howard Hawks, and in particular `Rio Bravo.' That is a work of extraordinary psychological insight and aesthetic perception, but Hawks has made his film so that the insight can passed unnoticed without disturbing the audience that has come to see a Western like all the others. Hawks is the greater because he has succeeded in fitting all that he holds most dear into a well-worn subject."
A decade before Godard's insight on Hawks, in the early 1950s, the French-language critics who wrote for the cinema journal "Cahier du cinema" (many of whom would go on to become directors themselves) elevated Howard Hawks into the pantheon of great directors. (The appreciation of Hawks in France, according to Cinématheque francaise founder Henri Langlois, began with the French release of "Only Angels Have Wings.") The Swiss Eric Rohmer, who would one day become a great director himself, in a 1952 review of Hawks' "The Big Sky," declared, "If one does not love the films of Howard Hawks, one cannot love cinema". Rohmer was joined in his enthusiasm for Hawks by such fellow French cineastes as Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut. and Jacques Rivette. The Cahiers critics claimed that a handful of commercial Hollywood directors like Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock had created films as artful and fulfilling as the masterpieces of the art cinema. Andre Bazin gave these critics the moniker Hitchcocko-Hawksians.
Jacques Rivette wrote in his 1953 essay, "The Genius of Howard Hawks," that "Each shot has a functional beauty, like a neck or an ankle. The smooth, orderly succession of shots has a rhythm like the pulsing of blood, and the whole film is like a beautiful body, kept alive by deep, resilient breathing."
Hawks considered himself an entertainer, not an 'artist.' Hawks' definition of a good director was simply "someone who doesn't annoy you." He was never considered an artist until the French New Wave critics crowned him one, as serious critics had ignored his oeuvre. He found the adulation amusing, and once told his admirers, "You guys know my films better than I do."
Commenting on this phenomenon, Andrew Sarris' wife Molly Haskell said, "Critics will spend hours with divining rods over the obviously hermetic mindscape of Bergman, Antonioni, etc., giving them the benefit of every passing doubt. But they will scorn similar excursions into the genuinely cryptic, richer, and more organic terrain of home-grown talents."
Hawks' visual aesthetic eschews formalism, trick photography or narrative gimmicks. There are no flashbacks or ellipses in his films, and his pictures are usually framed as eye-level medium shots. The films themselves are precisely structured, so much so that Langlois compared Hawks to the great modernist architect Walter Gropius. Hawks strikes one as an Intuitive, unselfconscious filmmaker.
Hawks' definition of a good director was "someone who doesn't annoy you." When Hawks was awarded his lifetime achievement Academy Award, the citation referred to the director 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." It is a fitting epitaph for one of the greatest directors in the history of American, and world cinema.
IMDb mini-biography by
Jon C. Hopwood
Filmography
Director
1. Rio Lobo (1970)... aka San Timoteo
2. El Dorado (1966)
3. Red Line 7000 (1965)
4. Man's Favorite Sport? (1964)
5. Hatari! (1962)
6. Rio Bravo (1959)
7. Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
8. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) .. aka Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (USA: complete title)
9. O. Henry's Full House (1952) (segment "The Ransom of Red Chief") ... aka Full House (UK)
10. Monkey Business (1952).. aka Be Your Age.. aka Howard Hawks' Monkey Business (USA: complete title)
11. The Big Sky (1952)
12. The Thing From Another World (1951) (uncredited)... aka The Thing
13. I Was a Male War Bride (1949).. aka Howard Hawks' I Was a Male War Bride (USA: complete title).. aka You Can't Sleep Here (UK)
14. A Song Is Born (1948)
15. Red River (1948)
16. The Big Sleep (1946)
17. To Have and Have Not (1944)
18. Corvette K-225 (1943) (uncredited).. aka The Nelson Touch (UK)
19. The Outlaw (1943) (uncredited)
20. Air Force (1943)
21. Ball of Fire (1941).. aka The Professor and the Burlesque Queen
22. Sergeant York (1941)
23. His Girl Friday (1940). aka Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (USA: complete title)
24. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
25. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
26. Come and Get It (1936).. aka Roaring Timbers (USA: reissue title)
27. The Road to Glory (1936)
28. Ceiling Zero (1936)
29. Barbary Coast (1935).. aka Port of Wickedness (USA: reissue title)
30. Twentieth Century (1934).. aka 20th Century (USA: poster title)
31. Viva Villa! (1934) (uncredited)
32. The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) (uncredited).. aka Every Woman's Man
33. Today We Live (1933)
34. Tiger Shark (1932)
35. The Crowd Roars (1932)
36. Scarface (1932).. aka Scarface, the Shame of the Nation.. aka The Shame of a Nation
37. Foule hurle, La (1932)
38. The Criminal Code (1931)
39. The Dawn Patrol (1930). aka Flight Commander (USA: TV title)
40. Trent's Last Case (1929)
41. The Air Circus (1928)
42. Fazil (1928)
43. A Girl in Every Port (1928)
44. Paid to Love (1927)
45. The Cradle Snatchers (1927)
46. Fig Leaves (1926)
47. The Road to Glory (1926)
Writer
1. Scarface (1983) (1932 screenplay) (uncredited)
2. The French Connection (1971) (uncredited)
3. Red Line 7000 (1965) (story)
4. The Thing From Another World (1951) (uncredited)
... aka The Thing
5. The Outlaw (1943) (uncredited)
6. Indianapolis Speedway (1939) (story)
... aka Devil on Wheels (UK)
7. Only Angels Have Wings (1939) (story Plane From Barranca)
8. Test Pilot (1938)
9. The Road to Glory (1936) (uncredited)
10. Viva Villa! (1934) (contributing writer) (uncredited)
11. Tiger Shark (1932) (contributing writer) (uncredited)
12. The Crowd Roars (1932) (story)
13. Scarface (1932) (uncredited)
... aka Scarface, the Shame of the Nation
... aka The Shame of a Nation
14. Foule hurle, La (1932) (story)
15. The Dawn Patrol (1930) (adaptation and dialogue)
... aka Flight Commander (USA: TV title)
16. A Girl in Every Port (1928) (story)
17. Underworld (1927) (scenario) (uncredited)
... aka Paying the Penalty (UK)
18. Fig Leaves (1926) (story)
19. Honesty - The Best Policy (1926) (story)
20. The Road to Glory (1926) (story The Chariot of the Gods)
21. The Road to Yesterday (1925) (titles)
22. The Dressmaker From Paris (1925) (story)
23. Tiger Love (1924)
24. Quicksands (1923) (story)
Producer
1. Rio Lobo (1970) (producer)
... aka San Timoteo
2. El Dorado (1966) (producer)
3. Red Line 7000 (1965) (producer)
4. Man's Favorite Sport? (1964) (producer)
5. Hatari! (1962) (producer)
6. Rio Bravo (1959) (producer)
7. Land of the Pharaohs (1955) (producer)
8. The Big Sky (1952) (producer)
9. The Thing From Another World (1951) (producer)
... aka The Thing
10. Red River (1948) (producer)
11. The Big Sleep (1946) (producer)
12. To Have and Have Not (1944) (producer)
13. Corvette K-225 (1943) (producer)
... aka The Nelson Touch (UK)
14. Sergeant York (1941) (producer)
15. His Girl Friday (1940) (producer)
... aka Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (USA: complete title)
16. Only Angels Have Wings (1939) (producer) (uncredited)
17. Bringing Up Baby (1938) (producer) (uncredited)
18. Twentieth Century (1934) (producer)
... aka 20th Century (USA: poster title)
19. Today We Live (1933) (producer)
20. Scarface (1932) (producer) (uncredited)
... aka Scarface, the Shame of the Nation
... aka The Shame of a Nation
21. Quicksands (1923) (producer)
Production Manager
1. Lord Jim (1925) (production manager) (uncredited)
2. The Light of Western Stars (1925) (production manager) (uncredited)
3. Adventure (1925) (production manager) (uncredited)
4. Code of the West (1925) (production manager) (uncredited)
5. The Devil's Cargo (1925) (production manager) (uncredited)
6. North of 36 (1924) (production manager) (uncredited)
7. Open All Night (1924) (production manager) (uncredited)
... aka One Parisian Night (UK)
Miscellaneous Crew
1. Scarface (1983) (dedicatee)
2. El Dorado (1966) (presenter)
3. Man's Favorite Sport? (1964) (presenter)
4. Hatari! (1962) (presenter)
5. Red River (1948) (presenter)
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
1. Bob Hampton of Placer (1921) (assistant director)
2. Dinty (1920) (assistant director)
3. Go and Get It (1920) (assistant director)
4. The Little Princess (1917) (assistant director) (uncredited)
5. In Again, Out Again (1917/II) (assistant director)
Editor
1. Empty Hands (1924)
2. The Dawn of a Tomorrow (1924)
3. The Heritage of the Desert (1924)
Actor
1. Scarface (1932) (uncredited) .... Man on bed
Himself
1. "Hollywood" (1980) (mini) TV Series .... Himself
... aka Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (USA: video box title)
2. Verdammt gutes Leben - Howard Hawks, Ein (1978) (TV) .... Himself
... aka Verdammt gutes Leben, Ein (West Germany: short title)
3. The Men Who Made the Movies: Howard Hawks (1973) (TV) .... Himself
4. Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 3 (1942) (uncredited) .... Himself
5. 1925 Studio Tour (1925) .... Himself - a Writer
, but if you really want to read a book about the man, Amazon has 
.
