60 Fun Facts About Howard Hawks

In which US state was Howard Hawks born in 1896?

Indiana was home only briefly: the family soon moved to his grandfather's paper-mill town in Wisconsin, then settled in Pasadena, California, where he grew up.

Which critic called Hawks "the greatest American director who is not a household name"?

Leonard Maltin wrote it in his Movie Encyclopedia, adding that with very few exceptions Hawks is the name modern filmmakers cite most often as an influence.

What did Hawks study at Cornell University?

Mechanical engineering got little of his attention: a college friend recalled him shooting craps and drinking rather than studying, and he left Cornell in 1917 to join the Army.

Hawks claimed to have been a national junior champion in which sport?

Tennis was the boast, but biographer Todd McCarthy found no record of Hawks playing at any school he attended and judged the title 'virtually impossible to believe'.

During World War I Hawks served in the Army Signal Corps doing what?

Teaching aviators to fly left its mark on his work: The Dawn Patrol, Ceiling Zero, Only Angels Have Wings and Air Force all followed.

Hawks's first film job, by most accounts, was as prop boy on a 1917 picture starring which silent star?

Douglas Fairbanks, by Hawks's account, was delighted when the prop boy designed a set in a hurry; Hawks later joined the star's weekend circle of sporting friends.

Hawks said he first directed a scene, at 21, when which silent superstar's director failed to turn up?

Mary Pickford agreed, by his account, after director Marshall Neilan went off on a drunk; the 21-year-old prop man and cameraman Charles Rosher shot a double-exposure dream sequence.

How did Hawks land his first important job in Hollywood, producing one-reel comedies?

He lent money to Jack L. Warner from the family fortune; Warner soon repaid it and hired him to oversee Monty Banks shorts, some of which Hawks later claimed, without proof, to have directed.

Which studio gave Hawks his first chance to direct, in 1925?

Fox hired him after Irving Thalberg stalled on a promise to let him direct at MGM; Hawks quit MGM and, by his account, had the Fox offer the same afternoon, over a round of golf.

Which silent film is considered Hawks's most important early work, his first "love story between two men"?

A Girl in Every Port follows two brawling sailors who end up prizing their friendship above the women they chase; after seeing Louise Brooks in it, G. W. Pabst cast her in Pandora's Box.

Which rival filmmaker tried to sabotage The Dawn Patrol (1930), fearing it would upstage his own First World War flying epic?

Howard Hughes sued, claiming the film copied his Hell's Angels, yet the two became friends during the legal fight and Hughes then hired Hawks to direct Scarface.

Scarface (1932) was loosely based on the life of which gangster?

Al Capone, by screenwriter Ben Hecht's account, sent two men to ask whether the film was about him; Hecht told them the title was only meant to intrigue, and they left him alone.

Who played Tony Camonte in Hawks's Scarface?

Paul Muni, a Broadway actor, at first turned the part down, feeling he was physically wrong for a gangster; his wife Bella helped talk him into it.

Hawks used the 1930 Indy 500 winner Billy Arnold in which car-racing film?

The Crowd Roars stars James Cagney as a champion driver whose younger brother wants to race too; Hawks knew that world first-hand, having raced cars himself as a young man.

Twentieth Century (1934) is largely set aboard what?

A train from Chicago to New York, the 20th Century Limited, gives the film its title; a broke Broadway producer boards it in disguise to dodge his debts and finds his former star aboard.

Carole Lombard, star of Twentieth Century, was related to Hawks how?

She was his distant cousin, a second cousin by his biographer's count; when she froze in rehearsal he asked what she would do if a man insulted her, heard 'kick him', and told her to go ahead.

Hawks left Come and Get It (1936) after a clash with which producer, who brought in William Wyler to finish it?

Samuel Goldwyn came back from weeks of illness to find Hawks had turned Edna Ferber's novel about plundered forests into a love triangle; Goldwyn said he fired him, Hawks said he quit.

In Bringing Up Baby, what is Baby?

A leopard named Nissa played Baby and the film's second big cat too; Katharine Hepburn was mostly unafraid of her, but Cary Grant was terrified, so a stand-in handled his close contact.

What bone is Cary Grant's paleontologist missing from his Brontosaurus in Bringing Up Baby?

The intercostal clavicle is a contradiction in terms: intercostal means between the ribs, and the clavicle is the collarbone; when the precious bone finally arrives, the dog George buries it.

What happened to Hawks after Bringing Up Baby ran over budget and lost money on its first release?

RKO fired him by ending his two-film contract early and handing Gunga Din, the adventure he had signed to direct, to George Stevens; the comedy only turned a profit on its reissue.

Which future star had her first major role in Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings (1939)?

Rita Hayworth had made more than a dozen pictures without anyone taking notice; as the old flame of Cary Grant's flying boss, she finally made Hollywood look.

His Girl Friday was adapted from which Hecht-MacArthur stage hit?

The Front Page had two men in the leads; Hawks made star reporter Hildy Johnson a woman and the editor's ex-wife, turning a newsroom farce into a battle of exes.

Who played Hildy Johnson opposite Cary Grant in His Girl Friday?

Rosalind Russell got the part after a string of bigger names turned it down; feeling Cary Grant had the better lines, she secretly paid her own writer to sharpen hers.

Where does Hildy hide the escaped convict Earl Williams in His Girl Friday?

In a rolltop desk in the courthouse press room; Walter Burns then tries to have the whole desk carried out of the building with the fugitive still inside.

Who won Best Actor for the title role in Sergeant York (1941)?

Gary Cooper played a man who had turned Hollywood down for years: the real Alvin York finally sold his story to pay for a Bible school he wanted to build.

Hawks made Sergeant York as a favour to which early mentor?

Jesse Lasky had put Hawks in charge of his studio's story department in 1923; the favour paid off for both, as Sergeant York became the biggest box-office hit of Hawks's career.

Ball of Fire (1941), co-written by Billy Wilder, is a playful take on which fairy tale?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs gave the plot its shape: a nightclub singer on the run from the police hides in a house of unworldly professors, who study her slang for their encyclopedia.

Where, by Hawks's account, did he bet Hemingway he could film his 'worst book', To Have and Have Not?

On a fishing trip, as Hawks told it: he wanted his friend to write for the movies, was turned down, and wagered he could make a picture out of the worst thing Hemingway ever wrote.

Which Nobel laureate besides Hemingway contributed to To Have and Have Not?

William Faulkner owed his screen career to Hawks, who started him as a screenwriter adapting one of his own stories into Today We Live; the two friends shared a love of flying and drinking.

How did Hawks find Lauren Bacall for To Have and Have Not?

His wife spotted her on a Harper's Bazaar cover in 1943 and left her mark on the film: Bacall's character goes by 'Slim', the nickname of Mrs Hawks herself.

Where is To Have and Have Not set, after an early Cuban setting was changed to avoid offending the Good Neighbor policy?

Martinique was under Vichy control in 1940, which let the writers trade Cuban politics for a Casablanca-like story of an American skipper drawn into helping the Resistance.

The Big Sleep (1946) was adapted from a novel by which crime writer?

Raymond Chandler was no help when the filmmakers wired to ask who killed the chauffeur: as he told a friend years later, 'dammit I didn't know either'.

Why was The Big Sleep, shot in 1944, shelved for more than a year?

Warners wanted its war films out first, fearing peace would kill interest in them; in the meantime Bogart and Bacall married, and new scenes of the pair sparring were shot in 1946.

Which actress had her breakout role in The Big Sleep in a largely improvised bookshop scene?

Dorothy Malone played the bespectacled bookshop clerk who helps Marlowe; Hawks said the scene went in simply because 'the girl was so damn good-looking'.

Red River (1948) is a fictional account of the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along which route?

The Chisholm Trail drive turns into a mutiny: John Wayne's rancher grows so tyrannical that his adopted son takes the herd away from him, a plot often likened to Mutiny on the Bounty.

Which actor filmed his first screen role as John Wayne's adopted son in Red River?

Montgomery Clift shot it in 1946, but the release was held up for two years, so his second film, The Search, reached cinemas first and brought him an Oscar nomination.

Hawks remade Ball of Fire in 1948 as A Song Is Born, this time centred on which kind of music?

Jazz gets the professors out of the library: Danny Kaye's musicologist discovers swing, Benny Goodman plays one of the stuffy academics, and Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton appear as themselves.

In I Was a Male War Bride (1949), Cary Grant plays an officer of which nationality?

French on screen, Belgian in life: Henri Rochard was the pen name of Roger Charlier, whose memoir told how red tape left him one way to follow his American wife home, as a 'war bride'.

Who is officially credited as director of The Thing from Another World (1951)?

Christian Nyby was Hawks's regular film editor, and who really directed has been argued ever since; Nyby called the question ridiculous, saying of course it was in the style of the man he studied.

The Thing from Another World (1951) was based on which science-fiction novella?

The novella Who Goes There? has an alien that imitates the men it kills; the 1951 film swapped it for a blood-drinking plant creature and left the shape-shifter to the 1982 remake.

Who played the Thing in The Thing from Another World?

James Arness is the film's blood-drinking plant creature, a long way from the part that made him famous four years later: Marshal Matt Dillon, whom he played on Gunsmoke for 20 years.

Which two actresses co-starred with Cary Grant in Hawks's Monkey Business (1952)?

Marilyn Monroe and Ginger Rogers are caught up in the chaos when a lab chimpanzee mixes a youth potion and tips it into the water cooler; Rogers plays Cary Grant's wife, Monroe his boss's secretary.

Which choreographer is generally credited with staging the numbers in Hawks's 1953 Marilyn Monroe musical?

Jack Cole staged the numbers so completely that, as Jane Russell put it, Hawks 'had nothing to do with' them and 'was not even there'; Cole's assistant was a young Gwen Verdon.

Land of the Pharaohs (1955) is a fictional account of the building of what?

The Great Pyramid's self-sealing tomb is the point of the story, but the epic went wrong for Hawks: he withdrew to Europe to rethink, and it was four years before his next film, Rio Bravo.

Rio Bravo (1959) was made partly as a response to which earlier Western?

High Noon's marshal spends the film asking townspeople for help; Hawks thought a good lawman would never do that, so John Wayne's sheriff in Rio Bravo turns amateur help away.

Which singer played Dude, the drunk deputy, in Rio Bravo?

Dean Martin won the part by turning up bedraggled for an early-morning meeting, having flown in after his Las Vegas show; the effort so impressed Hawks that he hired him on the spot.

What tune do the villain's saloon musicians play repeatedly in Rio Bravo to signal no mercy?

"El Degüello" comes from the Spanish for throat-cutting: Santa Anna's buglers are said to have played the call at the Alamo to promise no quarter, though the film's tune is Dimitri Tiomkin's own.

Which 1976 John Carpenter film reworked the story of Rio Bravo?

Assault on Precinct 13 moves the siege to a defunct Los Angeles police station, and Carpenter edited it under the name John T. Chance, John Wayne's sheriff in Rio Bravo.

Hatari! (1962) was shot on location in which country?

Tanganyika no longer appears on maps: independent from Britain in 1961, it joined with Zanzibar in 1964 to form Tanzania; the film's title is Swahili for 'danger'.

Which star played the drunken sheriff opposite John Wayne's gunfighter in El Dorado (1966)?

Robert Mitchum asked what the story was and, as he told it, heard that there wasn't one; he took the part anyway, playing a sheriff who has drunk himself into ruin.

What was Hawks's last film, a 1970 western starring John Wayne?

Rio Lobo was his third go at one story, a sheriff's office besieged by outlaws, after Rio Bravo and El Dorado; he spent his last seven years planning films that were never made.

How did Hawks famously define what makes a film work?

"Three good scenes, and no bad ones" was a test The Big Sleep passed: Hawks admitted he never figured out its plot, and said he stopped worrying about being logical after that.

Orson Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that another director was "poetry"; what did he call Hawks?

Great prose suits a director who kept the camera at eye level and said he just tried to tell his story 'as simply as possible'.

Hawks's first wife, Athole, was the sister of which MGM star?

Norma Shearer was the wife of MGM production chief Irving Thalberg, so marrying her sister Athole made Hawks the brother-in-law of the man who had once promised, and failed, to let him direct.

Hawks named his youngest son after which cinematographer?

Gregg Toland, famed for Citizen Kane, was a cameraman Hawks loved working with, on films such as Ball of Fire; he died at 44 in 1948, and Hawks later gave his name to a son.

Hawks died in December 1977 from complications after what accident at his Palm Springs home?

Tripping over his dog left Hawks with a concussion, and he died of complications weeks later, aged 81, while still planning to direct another Western.

What kind of Oscar, the only one of his career, did the Academy give Hawks in the 1970s?

An honorary one: the Academy hailed him as a master American filmmaker, three decades after his nomination for directing Sergeant York had gone unrewarded.

Which 1953 Hawks film features Marilyn Monroe performing 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend'?

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a musical whose songs Hawks kept away from: "I didn't do the production numbers," he said later, leaving them to the choreographer.

Which director remade Hawks's Scarface in 1983 with Al Pacino in the lead?

Brian De Palma moved the story to 1980s Miami, where Al Pacino's Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee, climbs to the top of the cocaine trade.

Which Henry Mancini tune was written for Hawks's Hatari!?

Baby Elephant Walk was written for Elsa Martinelli's photographer, who adopts three orphaned elephant calves that then trail after her wherever she goes.