Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood

by Todd McCarthy

  22 Sergeant York

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with John Huston, Dick Moore, and Vincent Sherman; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC; the Hawks Collection at BYU; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles; Variety.

  23 Catching Fire

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Jean Howard, Sam Jaffe, Lauren Bacall, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., Leonid Kinsky, David Hawks, and Billy Wilder; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; production, story, and legal files of Samuel Goldwyn; the Hemingway books by Baker, Lynn, Fuentes, Meyers, and Laurence; Jean Howard’s Hollywood: A Photo Memoir, by Jean Howard; Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, MGM and the Secret Hollywood, by Charles Higham; Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life, by Slim Keith with Annette Tapert.

  24 Air Force

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Christian Nyby, Hans Koenekamp, and Vincent Sherman; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Hemingway books by Baker, Lynn, Fuentes, Meyers, and Laurence; Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life, by Slim Keith with Annette Tapert; The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre, by Jeanine Basinger; Variety.

  25 The Bel-Air Front

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Ella Raines, David Hawks, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, Sally Fleming, Andre de Toth, and Jean Howard; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Faulkner books by Blotner, Kawin, and Oates; Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life, by Slim Keith with Annette Tapert; Variety.

  26 Not in the Script: To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Lauren Bacall, Christian Nyby, Hoagy Carmichael, Meta Carpenter Wilde, Dan Seymour, Marcel Dalio, Sam Marx, Pat Marlowe, Jean Howard, Sheldon Leonard, Miles Krueger; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Hemingway studies by Baker, Fuentes, Lynn, Meyers, and Laurence; the Faulkner books by Blotner, Kawin, and Oates; Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life, by Slim Keith with Annette Tapert; By Myself, by Lauren Bacall; To Have and Have Not, screenplay by Jules Furthman and William Faulkner, edited by Bruce F. Kawin; The Big Sleep, screenplay by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, edited by George P. Garrett, O. B. Hardison Jr., and Jane R. Gelfman; A Loving Gentleman, by Meta Carpenter Wilde with Orin Borsten; Humphrey Bogart, by Bernard Eisenschitz; Bogie: The Biography of Humphrey Bogart and Bogart and Bacall, by Joe Hyams; Bogart, by A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax; The Life of Raymond Chandler, by Frank MacShane; Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by MacShane; “To Have and Have Not Adapted a Novel,” by William Rothman; “Who Cares Who Killed Owen Taylor?,” by Roger Shatzkin; Howard Hawks, Storyteller, by Gerald Mast; James Agee’s comment from his review of To Have and Have Not in the Nation, 159, November 4, 1944; Sometimes I Wonder: The Story of Hoagy Carmichael, by Hoagy Carmichael with Stephen Longstreet, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965; Mes Années Folles, by Marcel Dalio, Paris, Editions J. C. Lattes, n.d.; Variety; Cecelia Ager’s review of The Big Sleep, published in PM on September 1, 1946; the Motion Picture Association of America files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  Material pertaining to Leigh Brackett comes from the Leigh Brackett Collection at Eastern New Mexico University; Speaking of Science Fiction, by Paul Walker, Oradell, N.J., Lava, 1978; an interview with Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton conducted by David Turesdale with Paul McGuire, in Tangent, Summer 1976; “Leigh B. Hamilton,” an oral history by Juanita Roderick and Hugh G. Earnhart, Youngstown State University Oral History Program, October 7, 1975; “A Conversation with Leigh Brackett,” an unpublished, undated interview with Steve Swires; “A Comment on the Hawksian Woman,” by Brackett, Take One, July-August 1971; “Working with Hawks” by Brackett, Take One, October 1972; “From The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye and More or Less How We Got There,” by Brackett, Take One, September-October 1972; Brackett entry in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 25, American Screenwriters, Hale Research Company, 1984; “Hawks bad mig skriva manus pa The Big Sleep, profile in Chaplin 154, Stockholm, February 1978.

  27 The Urge to Independence: Red River

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Christian Nyby, Harry Carey Jr., William Self, Samuel Fuller, David Hawks, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Curtis Harrington, Jean Howard; the papers in the Hawks Collection at BYU; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the United Artists Collection at the Wisconsin State Historical Society in Madison; the Motion Picture Association of America files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; “The Rise and Fall of the American West,” an interview with Borden Chase by Jim Kitses, Film Comment, Winter 1970–71; the Borden Chase entry in Talking Pictures, by Richard Corliss; the Walter Brennan interview in the Popular Arts Project at Columbia University; John Wayne: American, by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson; Shooting Star: A Biography of John Wayne, by Maurice Zolotow; Monty: A Biography of Montgomery Clift, by Robert LaGuardia; Montgomery Clift: A Biography, by Patricia Bosworth; Things I Did and Things I Think I Did, by Jean Negulesco; Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life, by Slim Keith with Annette Tapert; The Making of the Great Westerns, by William R. Meyer; The BFI Companion to the Western, edited by Edward Buscombe; United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars, by Tino Balio, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1936; Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, by Charles Higham; Long Live the King: A Biography of Clark Gable, by Lyn Tornabene; Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961, edited by Carlos Baker. Articles about Margaret Sheridan appeared in the Hollywood Citizen-News, September 19, 1946; the Los Angeles Daily News, January 3, 1951, and May 2, 1951; the New York Times, April 1, 1951; and the Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1951.

  28 Slim Walks, Money Talks

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Christian Nyby, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., David Hawks, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, Samuel Fuller, Edward Lasker, Jane Greer, Virginia Mayo; the production, story, and legal files of Samuel Goldwyn; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; Goldwyn: A Biography, by A. Scott Berg; Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life, by Slim Keith with Annette Tapert; Life; Variety; Please Don’t Hate Me, by Dmitri Tiomkin and Prosper Buranelli; the Montgomery Clift biographies by LaGuardia and Bosworth; United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars, by Tino Balio; the Howard Hughes papers at Austin; the Howard Hughes biographies by Barlett and Steele, Brown and Broeske, and Higham; Howard Hawks, Storyteller, by Gerald Mast.

  29 Skirting Trouble: I Was a Male War Bride

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Ken Tobey, William Self, David Hawks, Barbara Hawks, Edward Lasker, Jane Greer, Christian Nyby, Hoagy Carmichael, Frank Capra, Andre de Toth, A. C. Lyles, Vincent Sherman, John Lee Mahin, Paul Helmick; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Hawks Collection at BYU; the 20th Century–Fox story files at UCLA; the Motion Picture Association of America files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the property settlement agreement between Howard and Nancy Gross Hawks executed on December 31, 1947, the interlocutory judgment of divorce filed May 28, 1949, and the final judgment of divorce granted in Los Angeles Civil Court June 6, 1949; Variety; Kinematograph Weekly, December 23, 1948, and February 2 and 17, 1949; “American Directors in Britain,” by Irving Silas in Film and Theatre Today: The European Scene, edited by Gavin Lambert and J. Clifford King, London, Saturn Press, 1949; the Ann Sheridan interview in People Will Talk, by John Kobal; the Cary Grant books by Buehrer, Harris, Higham and Moseley, Nelson, Vermilye, and Wasnell; obituaries of Victor Fleming and follow-up stories in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Examiner, Hollywood Citizen-News, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, Motion Picture Herald, January 7–11, 1949;
complaints of Athole Dane Hawks vs. Howard Hawks filed in Los Angeles Civil Court, August 31, 1949, and February 10, 1955.

  30 An Old Boss, a New Mate

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Christian Nyby, Edward Lasker, Lorrie Sherwood, Jane Greer, Larry Lasker, Ken Tobey, William Self, Robert Cornthwaite, Richard Keinen, Paul Helmick, George Sidney, David Hawks, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, Meta Carpenter Wilde, Arthur Marx, Erle Krasna; the RKO production, story, and legal files; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Hawks Collection at BYU; the Motion Picture Association of America files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; The RKO Story, by Richard B. Jewell with Vernon Harbin, New York, Arlington House, 1982; Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend, by William MacAdams; “Christian Nyby Interview,” by Jim Davidson, Filmfax, August-September 1992; “There’s No Thing like an Old Thing,” by Ted Newsome, Filmfax, May-June 1989; “Ken Tobey Interview” by Ted Newsome, Filmfax, May-June 1989; interview with Hawks by Ezra Goodman, Los Angeles Daily News, November 13, 1950; New York Times item, November 12, 1950; “The Real Thing,” by Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News, June 27, 1982; unpublished Hawks interview by Glenn Lovell, December 6, 1975; the estimations of The Thing by Michael Crichton, Arthur C. Clarke, and John W. Campbell Jr. from Focus on Science Fiction Film, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., A Spectrum Book, Prentice-Hall, 1972; Groucho, by Hector Arce, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979; The Ragman’s Son, by Kirk Douglas; Variety; Hollis Alpert’s review of The Big Sky in the Saturday Review, August 16, 1952.

  31 The Fox at Fox: Monkey Business and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Jane Russell, Gwen Verdon, Paul Helmick, David Hawks, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, Robert Cornthwaite, Miles Kreuger; the lawsuit of Howard W. Hawks vs. E. Steinkamp Inc., E. J. Neville Co., Inc., Elwain Steinkamp, Donna Steinkamp, J. A. Thompson, doing business as J. A. Thompson & Son, Frank F. Montank, Neil F. Montank, Donald F. Buhler, D. D. Koonce, and Doe I to Doe 350, filed in Santa Monica Civil Court, May 14, 1952; the Hawks Collection at BYU; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the 20th Century–Fox story files at UCLA; the Motion Picture Association of America files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the Cary Grant books by Buehrer, Harris, Higham and Moseley, Nelson, Vermilye, and Wasnell; the Jack Cole interview in People Will Talk, by John Kobal; Jane Russell: My Paths and Detours—An Autobiography, by Jane Russell; the Marilyn Monroe books by Janice Anderson, Richard Buskin, Fred Laurence Guiles, Donald Spoto, and Maurice Zolotow; Variety. The article on the shooting of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News, December 12, 1952.

  32 In the Land of the Pharaohs

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Noël Howard, Alexandre Trauner, Harold Jack Bloom, Rudi Fehr, Paul Helmick, Lorrie Sherwood, David Hawks, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, John Huston; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC; correspondence between Jack Warner and Hawks from Peter Knecht at Warner Bros.; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Hawks Collection at BYU; “Genie de Howard Hawks,” by Jacques Rivette, Cahiers du Cinéma, May 1953; Variety; Hollywood sur Nile, by Noël Howard, translated by the author in unpublished form as “Pharaohs I Have Known”; Anything for a Quiet Life, by Jack Hawkins; Past Imperfect, by Joan Collins; Inside Joan Collins, by Jay David; the Faulkner books by Blotner, Kawin, and Oates; Robert Capa, by Richard Whelan; Bogart, by A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax; Please Don’t Hate Me, by Dimitri Tiomkin and Prosper Buranelli; “Comment Peut-on Être Hitchcocko-Hawksien?” by André Bazin, Cahiers du Cinéma, February 1955.

  33 Sojourn in Europe

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Chance de Widstedt, Carl Foreman, François Truffaut, John Huston, Lorrie Sherwood, Christian Nyby, David Hawks; Billy Wilder; the Hawks Collection at BYU; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; Variety; judgment in favor of the plaintiff, Athole Dane Hawks, against the defendant, Howard Hawks, in Los Angeles Civil Court, May 3, 1955; “Howard Hawks” (interview), by Jacques Becker, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut, Cahiers du Cinéma, February 1956, reprinted in English in Interviews with Film Directors, edited by Andrews Sarris; Groucho, by Hector Arce; lawsuit of Nancy Gross Hayward vs. Howard W. Hawks & Doe I–X, Roe Corp. I–X, filed in Superior Court, Los Angeles, December 30, 1955; Dangerous Friends: At Large with Hemingway and Huston in the Fifties, by Peter Viertel; lawsuit of Howard Hawks doing business as Continental Company, Ltd., a Ltd. Partnership, and Howard Hawks, plaintiff, vs. Warner Bros., filed in Superior Court, Los Angeles, May 18, 1956.

  34 Bravo

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Chance de Widstedt, Angie Dickinson, John Russell, Harry Carey Jr., Meta Carpenter Wilde, Budd Boetticher, Paul Helmick, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, David Hawks, Christian Nyby; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at Warner Bros.; the Hawks Collection at BYU; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Motion Picture Association of America files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; John Wayne: American, by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson; Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, by Nick Tosches; Teenage Idol, Travelin’ Man: The Complete Biography of Rick Nelson, by Philip Bashe; Bogart, by A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax; The Making of the Great Westerns, by William R. Meyer; The BFI Companion to the Western, edited by Edward Buscombe; the Leigh Brackett Collection at Eastern New Mexico University; Please Don’t Hate Me, by Dimitri Tiomkin and Prosper Buranelli; Variety; “Howard Hawks” by Jean-Pierre Coursodon in American Directors, vol. 1, edited by Coursodon with Pierre Sauvage; “Howard Hawks” by Molly Haskell in Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, vol. 1, edited by Richard Roud; Howard Hawks, by Robin Wood; divorce suit of Donna H. Hawks vs. Howard W. Hawks filed in Santa Monica District Court, October 1, 1959.

  35 Fun in the Bush: Hatari!

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Chance de Widstedt, Red Buttons, Gerard Blain, Valentin de Vargas, Bud Brill, Edward Lasker, Paul Helmick, Peter Bogdanovich, David Hawks; Paramount Pictures files; the Hawks Collection at BYU; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; John Wayne: American, by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson; Sono come Sono: Dalla Dolce Vita e Ritorno, by Elsa Martinelli; “High Adventure on Location” by Howard Hawks, Hollywood Reporter, November 14, 1961; the Leigh Brackett Collection at Eastern New Mexico University; the unpublished interview with Leigh Brackett by Steve Swires; interview with Leigh Brackett in Speaking of Science Fiction, by Paul Walker, Oradell, N.J., Lava, 1978; Did They Mention the Music?, by Henry Mancini with Gene Lees; Variety; Just Resting, by Leo McKern, London, Methuen, 1983; interview with John Wayne by Charles Higham, Hollywood Film Industry Oral History Project, July 6, 1971, at Columbia University; The Cinema of Howard Hawks, by Peter Bogdanovich; Movie, no. 5, December 1962; “The World of Howard Hawks,” by Andrew Sarris in Films and Filming 8, nos. 10 and 11, July and August 1962, adapted from a 1961 article in the New York Film Bulletin; Auteurism, Hawks, Hatari! and Me,” by Stuart Byron in Favorite Movies, edited by Philip Nobile.

  36 A Fishy Story: Man’s Favorite Sport?

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Paul Helmick, David Hawks, Angie Dickinson, Norman Alden, Bruce Kessler; Universal files at USC; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Leigh Brackett Collection at Eastern New Mexico University; Variety; Rock Hudson: A Bio-Bibliography, by Brenda Scott Royce; “Man’s Favorite Sport? (Revisited)” by Molly Haskell, Village Voice, January 21, 1971, reprinted in Focus on Howard Hawks, edited by Joseph McBride.

  37 Fast Cars and Young Women

  Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with George Kirgo, Paul Helmick, Howard W. Koch, A. C. Lyles, Christian Nyby, Pierre Rissient, Chance de Widstedt, Robert Mitchum, John Woodcock, Bruce Kessler, Cissy Wellman, Norman Alden, Robert Donner, Johnny Crawford; Kevin Macdonald’s interview with James Caan;
Paramount Pictures files; the Charles K. Feldman Collection at the AFI; the Motion Picture Association of America files at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences; the Leigh Brackett Collection at Eastern New Mexico University; the incompetency case of Athole Dane Hawks filed in Superior Court, Los Angeles, September 5, 1963; James Caan interviews in Game, April 1975, and with Times Newspapers Ltd., May 5, 1991; the Harold Rosson interview in Behind the Camera: The Cinematographer’s Art, by Leonard Maltin, New York, Signet, 1971; John Wayne: American, by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson; Variety; “The Name-dropper Drops Howard Hawks, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and James Caan, El Dorado, Part II,” by John M. Woodcock in Cinemeditor, July 24, 1995; “The Namedropper Drops Arthur Hunnicut, Ed Asner, Chris George, Robert Donner, R. G. Armstrong, El Dorado, Part III” by John M. Woodcock, unpublished.