Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks (1896-1977), American motion-picture director, writer, and producer, born in Goshen, Indiana. He earned an engineering degree from Cornell University and was an automobile racer, a pilot, and an aircraft designer before moving to Hollywood, California, in 1922. After holding a variety of positions in the movie industry, Hawks directed his first studio film, The Road to Glory, in 1926. His subsequent early films include his first motion-picture with sound, The Dawn Patrol (1930); Scarface (1932); Twentieth Century (1934); and Bringing Up Baby (1938). He introduced the team of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946). John Wayne appears in Hawks’s Red River (1948), Rio Bravo (1959), and Rio Lobo (1970).

Hawks was among the most versatile of Hollywood directors, working in nearly every genre of popular film, including screwball comedy, a category in which he excelled (His Girl Friday, 1940; Bringing Up Baby); detective thrillers (The Big Sleep); war stories (Sergeant York, 1940); westerns (Rio Lobo); musicals (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953); historical epics (Land of the Pharaohs, 1955); and even science fiction, with a film he codirected and produced, The Thing (1951). He specialized in movies about elite groups of men and women who demonstrate their professionalism and behave with grace under pressure. In 1974 Hawks was given an honorary Academy Award and his films were cited as a major contribution to world cinema. They remain among the most enduringly popular films shown on television in the United States.