The Big Picture
Howard Hawks, a versatile filmmaker, struggled to gain recognition from critics despite his influential films.
Hawks was a pioneer in genre films, known for witty dialogue and working with Hollywood icons.
French New Wave critics like Godard elevated Hawks to greatness, but his legacy remains underappreciated today.
On lists of the greatest directors of all time, names like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Stanley Kubrick regularly pop up, but not Howard Hawks’. Even within specific parameterson this very website, Hawks seems forgotten. But one look at Hawks’ credits will tell he was one of the greatest to ever do it. His worshippers, from Jean-Luc Godard to Martin Scorsese, come exactly from those lists. Despite working with everyone in Hollywood, from John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart to Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hawks only got one Oscar nomination for Best Director, and didn’t win. So how exactly was a legend like Hawks so neglected?
Sergeant York
A Tennessee farmer and marksman is drafted in World War I, and struggles with his pacifist inclinations before becoming one of the most celebrated war heroes.
Release Date July 2, 1941
Director Howard Hawks
Cast Gary Cooper , Walter Brennan , Joan Leslie
Runtime 134
Main Genre Biography
Who Exactly Is Howard Hawks?
Howard Hawks was born in 1896 to a rich family that made their fortune from milling. His family moved to Pasadena, California before he was sent to the ultra-prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New England and later Cornell University, majoring in mechanical engineering. He struggled with his studies, and mostly indulged in privileged kid vices. During a summer vacation, he began working at Paramount because of his friendship with fellow racing hobbyist Victor Fleming. Describing his entrance to the film industry, Hawks said he just “wanted a job during summer vacation.”
He never finished his degree at Cornell because he joined the army to fight in World War I. He was an aviation instructor, but never got to fly in battle. He returned to Hollywood after the war, and after ambitiously breaking contracts with several studios in trying to become a director, he got his wish by 1925. He directed six silent films before moving onto talkies and the legendary career he’s known for today.
Howard Hawks Found His Niche in Genre Films
Image via 20th Century Fox
These few details already explain a lot about Hawks’ filmography. Hawks never aimed for high art, and worked mostly in genre films. He was the prototype and perhaps still the pinnacle of the journeyman director. His comedies include a pair of Cary Grant romcoms, Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, the former also starring Katharine Hepburn. Later in his career, there was also Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, featuring one of Marilyn Monroe’s most beloved and best-remembered performances. On the other hand, and in great contrast, he frequently made westerns with John Wayne, including Red River and Rio Bravo, the former also starring Montgomery Clift. He also discovered Lauren Bacall and made two films with her and her later husband Humphrey Bogart, which were the Hemingway adaptation To Have and to Not and the film noir The Big Sleep.
His WWI background and lifelong interest in aviation were also a major presence in his career. The Dawn Patrol and Only Angels Have Wings were aviation films, and he got his only Best Director nomination for the WWI film and Gary Cooper-starrer Sergeant York. These titles only scratch the surface of Hawks’ 40-film career, and his legacy continues today. His style of witty, rapid-fire dialogue can be seen in the films by Robert Altman and Quentin Tarantino, and just last year, Greta Gerwig cited His Girl Friday as a key influence on Barbie.
The Changing Reputation of Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks’ films were commercial successes, frequently the top-grossing movie their years, but he wasn’t taken seriously by critics. Not only did he work in genre films, which have always been considered lacking in prestige, his style was also unflashy and emblematic of classical Hollywood film grammar, consisting mostly of simple shot-reverse shots. He preferred to let the text and the actors speak, not the camera. Because of this stylistic anonymity and Hawks’ great versatility and even restlessness in hopping between genres, it was difficult to pinpoint Hawks as a specific kind of director, to the extent that American critics didn’t even try. You could associate John Ford with Westerns and Hitchcock with thrillers, but you couldn’t really associate Hawks with anything.
The Academy has long had a genre bias that films are still struggling to break through (even though the situation is finally improving). At least with Hitchcock, one could see his flashy mastery on display, but even Hitchcock was never awarded a competitive Oscar. The situation with a more laid-back director like Hawks could only be worse, which is why he never got the recognition he deserved. The Academy finally caught up to Hawks with an Honorary Oscar in 1974, but by then, his health was in decline. To this day, the Academy struggles to nominate underappreciated journeyman directors such as Christopher McQuarrie and Matt Reeves, despite what can be outstanding achievements.
Like other American directors who worked primarily in genre films, Hawks was “rescued” in the 1950s by the French New Wave directors who got their start as critics at the legendary magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. These men were responsible for the birth of the auteur theory, which, contrary to popular belief today, is not necessarily defined by the same person writing and directing a film, but has more to do with personal obsessions between varying films. Hitchcock and Hawks were the poster boys of the Cahiers group’s auteur worship, and Godard in particular revered Hawks as “the greatest American artist.” By the time critic Andrew Sarris wrote his seminal book The American Cinema and brought auteur theory stateside, he included Hawks in “the pantheon” of the 14 greatest directors. Hawks himself was bemused by this newfound attention, saying, “I get open-mouthed and wonder where they found some of the stuff they say about me.”
Related The 10 Best Howard Hawks Movies, According to IMDb Howard Hawks is a master filmmaker from classic Hollywood.
Howard Hawks Still Doesn’t Get the Recognition He Deserves
Image via United Artists
Despite the valiant efforts by the Cahiers group to lionize Hawks’ reputation, it has somehow slipped back into the ether again. Obviously, Hawks is beloved by many cinephiles, and his work is memorialized by shelves of Criterion Collection discs. But he never became a household name like Hitchcock and Kubrick, despite the accessibility of his enduring genre films. With much of his work readily available in the streaming age, there really is no excuse for that continued ignorance. The greatest thing about Hawks is, with how many varied films he made during his career, you can easily put on a “Hawksian” film, no matter what your mood is. You can easily rectify the mistake the Academy made.
Much of Howard Hawks’ movies are on streaming, but you can watch his critically acclaimed Sergeant York on Tubi in the U.S.
Watch on Tubi