A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of May
Sitting in a Field of White Cotton
May 30, 1896 was the birthdate of American film director, producer and screenwriter Howard Hawks.
By the end of April in 1917 Howard Hawks was working on De Mille’s “The Little American” and later on on the Mary Pickford film “The Little Princess” directed by Marshall Neilan. Hawks began directing at age 21 after he and cinematographer Charles Rosher filmed a double exposure dream sequence with Mary Pickford. He worked with Pickford and Neilan again on another film before joining the United States Army Air Service. After the war he returned again to Hollywood.
Hawks first major film was the 1926 “Road to Glory”, the story of a young woman going blind and trying to spare her loved ones of the burden of her illness. Ir was filmed in two months and premiered in April of 1926, It received good reviews from critics but Hawks was dissatisfied with the film. Immediately after completing the film, he began writing his next film, his first comedy “Fig Leaves”. It was released in July of 1926 and was Hawks’ first hit as a director.
In March 1927, Howard Hawks signed a one-year, three-picture contract with 20th Century Fox and mad “A Girl in Every Port” in 1928. This film is considered by film scholars to be the most important film of Hawks’ silent career. It is the first of his films to utilize many of the distinctive themes and characters that would define much of his subsequent work.”A Girl in Every Port” was his first “love story between two men,” within which two men bonded over their duty, skills and careers and, as a result, considered their friendship to be more important than their relationships with women. Hawks wrote the original story and developed the screenplay with James Kevin McGuinness and Seton Miller. The film was released in February 1928, successful in the US, and a hit in Europe.
Over his career Howard Hawks directed and produced many important films in a wide variety of genres. He was a versatile director, whose career included comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir and westerns. His most popular films include” the 1932 “Scarface”, “Binging Up Baby” with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, the 1940 “His Girl Friday”, “The Big Sleep” with Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, the western “Red River” starring Montgomery Clift and John Wayne, the sci-fi classic “The Thing from Another World”, and the 1959 “Rio Bravo” with John Wayne and Dean Martin.
Howard Hawks popularized a particular female archetype in his films; women were portrayed as strong, less effeminate characters. Such an emphasis had never been done in the 1920s and therefore was seen to be a rarity. Hawks’ directorial style and the use of natural, conversational dialogue in his films are cited as major influences on many noted filmmakers, including Robert Altman, John Carpenter, and Quenton Tarantino. Howard Hawks received his only Oscar in 1975 as an Honorary Award from the Academy.