Let's have a few Howard Hawks films.

The Dawn Patrol (1930), directed by Howard Hawks. As you would expect with Hawks, this is a film about male comradeship, male courage and honour and professionalism and self-sacrifice. Set during the First World War, the story follows a group of fliers asked to undertake dangerous missions with rickety planes; many of the pilots are young and inexperienced. The Commanders, first Major Brand (Neil Hamilton), and later Dick Courtney (Richard Barthelmess), agonize over lost men because they have sent them into combat. We follow Courtney and his close friend Douglas Scott (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.). It transpires that Courtney, following orders, sends Scott’s young brother into combat only to have him killed. The fliers down much alcohol while waiting for orders, and one scene has a jovial gathering of fliers with a captured German pilot who sings happily in his cups. Also in the picture is the German ace, Baron von Richthofen, the Red Baron, called von Richter here. Courtney manages to shoot down von Richter before another German pilot, played by Howard Hawks, shoots him down. The flight scenes are impressive for 1930. The film was remade in 1938 with Errol Flynn.

 

Road to Glory (1936), directed by Howard Hawks. Hawks made a number of war films, beginning with The Dawn Patrol in 1930. Road to Glory is a fairly conventional anti-war film that turns on a love triangle, leading one of the two men in love with the nurse to sacrifice himself. Hawks’s interest in professionals, men in action, honour, and a strong woman is evident. A few moments stand out: the moaning soldier wounded and caught on barbed wire, the enemy tunneling beneath the French garrison, and the soldier who tosses a grenade at his own men. Mostly, however, the action moves along predictably. The sub-plot that has Captain Paul LaRoche’s (Warner Baxter) father (Lionel Barrymore), who is in his sixties, join the regiment, strains believability. The scene during the air raid when Lt. Denet (Frederic March) meets Monique La Coste (June Lang) is nicely Hawksian. On the whole, this is a serviceable film, although not as strong as the films Hawks would create in the following two decades.

 

His Girl Friday (1939), directed by Howard Hawks. This is the fast-talking, fast-paced, quick-witted newspaper story told on film four times, this version being the slickest. This is also quintessential Hawks, with its group of professional men, reporters, and one professional woman, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell). The plot turns on capital punishment, with the sadsack Earl Williams scheduled to hang before the day is out, and the Post’s editor, Walter Burns (Cary Grant), attempting to get a reprieve to stop the hanging, and also attempting to get a good story. The scoop’s the thing. And the scoop may or may not be a reporting of the actual truth. The portrait of newspaper men scrambling to get a story before their competitors get the same story, and newspaper men willing to embellish the truth for the sake of sales smacks of today’s scepticism of news reporting. The dialogue here is famously fast, loud, and crowded with people talking over each other. The cast is chock full of well-known character actors: Ralph Bellamy, Regis Toomey, Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, John Qualen, Gene Lockhart, Billy Gilbert, Abner Biberman, Ed Cobb, even Earl Dwire, although I confess I missed his fleeting appearance. As usual with Hawks, the editing is seamless, hardly noticeable as characters move about naturally and talk as they walk. The humour is quick and laced with a certain cynicism. Walter Burns is a cad of the first order, but we like him anyway. Hildy Johnson is a career woman who thrives on work. All this is delicious. Underlying the focus on professionalism is an understanding of the corrupt underlay to a civilization built on a grasping for power.

 

Red River (1948), directed by Howard Hawks. Mutiny on the Chisholm Trail with Tom Dunson (John Wayne) as Colonel Bligh and Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) as Fletcher Christian. This epic tale of the first great cattle drive from Texas to Kansas is Hawks’s first western, and it shows traces of John Ford’s style both in Russell Harlan’s cinematography and in a cast that has many Ford regulars: John Wayne, Walter Brennan, Tom Tyler, Glenn Strange, Harry Carey Sr. and Jr. In content, however, this is distinctly a Hawks film, focusing as it does on a group of men, professionals at what they do (here herd cattle!), who must confront difficulties posed by both nature and by human frailties. Dunson is the hard-nosed stubborn cattle baron who rules his men with a ruthlessness bordering on instability. His adopted son, Matthew, is a gentler sort. Entering the lives of these two, late in the film, is Tess Millay (Joanne Dru, who will appear in two of Ford’s films soon after), strong woman who sorts things out between father and son. Along for the ride is gunfighter Cherry Valance (John Ireland), allowing for a scene in which Matthew and Cherry admire each others’ gun! Scenes of the cattle drive are impressive in their sweep, especially the stampede that occurs after one of the cowhands causes a racket of falling pots and pans. Dunson’s fanatic desire to get his cattle to Missouri (they end up in Abilene, Kansas) leads him to cruel and unnecessary behaviour, even shooting would be deserters. The intensity Wayne brings to this role will resurface again in Ford’s The Searchers (1956). As westerns go, this one is near the top. The sharp-eyed viewer will spot a few familiar faces: Shelley Winters, John Merton, Richard Farnsworth, Lane Chandler, for example.

 

The Thing From Another World (1951), directed by Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks. “An intellectual carrot – the mind boggles.” Yes, this one is about an alien from outer space, a vegetable man who wreaks havoc in an arctic outpost. This is Hawks’s contribution to the red scare mood of the post war period. I say Hawks’s contribution because the film has his imprint: an isolated place peopled with a group of men and a strong woman, professionals faced with an unusual situation. One rather kinky scene has the female lead, Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), tying the male lead, Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey), to a chair. Then we have the scientist who insists on the importance of scientific learning. Unlike the good Captain Hendry, scientist Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) wants to keep Vegetable Man (James Arness) alive in order to study him. Vegetable Man is well-nigh impossible to kill and he reproduces at an alarming rate; we have a big tray filled with wee seed pods, a small-scale look ahead at the larger seed pods in Don Siegal’s terrific red scare flick, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). What does manage to rid the world of Vegetable Man is electricity, something that proved useful in getting rid of a number of monsters in films of the 1950s. The dialogue here is snappy, as one would expect from Hawks. We do see Vegetable Man, but not a great deal. Much of the tension comes from the isolated location of the action and the lurking danger just behind closed doors. The two characters, Captain Hendry and Dr. Carrington remind me of Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) and Tom Dunson (John Wayne) in Hawks’s Red River (1948). The location is  reminiscent of the isolated trading port in Hawks’s Only Angels Have Wings (1939). Christian Nyby may have onscreen directing credit, but the film has Hawks’s imprint all over it.

 

Man's Favourite Sport (1964), directed by Howard Hawks. Hawks was the consummate professional, and his films take an interest in professionalism. In this film, the professional is a fisherman who is not a professional. Roger Willoughby (Rock Hudson) works for Abercrombie and Fitch as a fishing expert; he has even written a well-known book on fishing. His secret, however, is that he has never once been fishing. Not only that, he is inept at the sporting life and cannot even swim. So you can imagine the plot turns on Roger's entry into a fishing contest, against his will. Hawks made some of the best screwball comedies, including Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), I Was a Male War Bride (1949), and Monkey Business (1952). The films I list all have Cary Grant in the lead male role. Rock Hudson is no Cary Grant, and yet Hudson's very clumsiness works. The film is Hawksian in its focus on male activities, professionalism, and the disruptions that a strong woman can bring to the male group. The male group here consists of wealthy older men out for a lark, and we have some familiar faces from those earlier days of screwball comedy - Roscoe Karns and Regis Toomey, for example. Yes, the plot and the action are far-fetched, but they do have funny moments. Some of what we have is now dated, but Hudson in his inflatable waders, or stunts with zippers, or unlikely ways of catching a fish are funny. And the actors are likeable and comfortable (with the exception, perhaps, of Hudson), as we would expect in a Hawks film. Hawks was never a flashy director, but he was most definitely a director with both a consistent world view and a facility with the medium as it was in its heyday.