Howard Hawks

any Land of the Pharaohs advocates? showing tnite in NYC Late Hawks series.

The Big Sky is a good one! just a notch below Red River etc.

Molly & Andrew:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/bringing-up-hawks-20080925

watched Only Angels Have Wings recently and couldn't get past what a douche cary grant's character was. i liked how the woman who starts off seeming like the main character disappears after the more interesting grant shows up, though.

El Dorado is a kind of underwhelming Rio Bravo remix. James Caan's wig is funny.

Following a screening of Anatomy of a Murder the other night, a friend and I wondered whether Jimmy Stewart had worked with more (generally-agreed-upon) great directors than any other actor from the studio era. Hawks' name came up, and we couldn't think of a film of his that featured Stewart. I took a quick scroll through Stewart's IMDB page and couldn't spot a Hawks film. Did I miss something small (or maybe even famous--I looked over the list quickly), or did they indeed never work together?

can't think of one. Stewart did his westerns for other ppl, and HH's comedy style is a bit too wild for JS.

finally saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Marilyn very funny, Jane formidable, too bad about the plotty tiara stuff toward the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pthokb18V7U&feature=related

Allan Carr would have had his jaw wired shut twice over to have had a scene like that in one of his movies. Oh wait.

iirc hawks didn't actually direct any of the musical sequences?

Apparently that's correct. It was Jack Cole.

Wow. Here's an article about Jack Cole's work, particularly with Marilyn: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/09/entertainment/ca-marilyn-monroe9

http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Ch-De/Cole-Jack.html

Wow, he choreographed Gilda.

iirc hawks didn't actually direct any of the musical sequences?
― Ward Fowler

Apparently that's correct. It was Jack Cole.
― Bali Eiffel Tower Hai

That knowledge (and the scene Morbs posted) goes a long way toward explaining my love for GPB, despite being more or less indifferent to Hawks.

Just finished that latimes article. Extremely interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ilkr0BWNQ0&feature=related

OK, one more link: http://artsmeme.com/tag/jack-cole/

I'd read that HH didn't "direct" the numbers, but neither did a lot of the credited directors on big musicals (unless they had a background in such things).

So Eric, are you challenging Armond's assertion that GPB is "the most heterosexual" classic film musical?

http://www.nypress.com/article-21493-gentlemen-prefer-curves.html

Thanks – now I've no interest in watching it.

I ain't challenging Armond on shit.

Soto, it's str8, not narrow.

finally saw His Girl Friday, Jennifer Jason Leigh took her entire character in Hudsucker from the "without a quiver" line

All an armond has to do to refute himself is watch Morbius's youtube link a few posts upthread.

There's a moment in Only Angels Have Wings when Cary Grant breaks up a fistfight started by Thomas Mitchell. First he pulls him apart; then, failing, he punches him. But he almost immediately regrets it and within milliseconds is slapping his best friend conscious.

The sequence lasts a minute if that but exhibits so much of the physical grace Hawks is known for, and how Cary Grant understood film acting better than any actor in the so-called Golden Age.

Saw The Dawn Patrol (I think for the first time) yesterday, truly an archetypal flyboy piece -- homosocial love btwn Barthelmess and Fairbanks Jr def more physical than it was in the Errol Flynn remake.

Today The Egyptian!

isn't Hatari! screening somewhere in NYC this week?

duhhh, I mean Land of the Pharaohs. xp

yes, right after LotP. Have seen it in a theater before, probably aint doing another 150 mins today.

is it wort the watch? The auteurist affection has put me off for years

I remember liking it.

http://www.movingimage.us/films/2013/09/07/detail/the-complete-howard-hawks/

Ceiling Zero is a blast, must be in the top 3 of Cagney-O'Brien pics. The fast-paced comedy dialogue in the first half is the uncredited work of Morrie Ryskind, frequent writer for thr Marx Bros. Besides starting out like an aviation version of The Front Page, the working crew and airborne tragedy are clearly a dry run for Only Angels Have Wings.

Finally saw Come and Get It, from which HH was fired with Wyler finishing up. Edna Ferber all right, this is Giant with timber in place of oil (and an hour shorter thank God). Frances Farmer is almost all that, and she gets to pull taffy with Joel McCrea. Walter Brennan won an Oscar for stealing El Brendel's "YUMPIN' YIMINY!"

saw it on video a decade ago and I couldn't distinguish the Wyler from the Hawks stuff; agree about Farmer.

Richard Brody said nice things about The Road to Glory but not out on DVD.

Hawks said in his Bogdo interview that Farmer was the best performer he'd ever worked with.

Wyler did the last 30 mins, more or less.

the movie suddenly becomes rather restrained, and before you know it, there's a garden party going on.

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2007/03/strange-fame-of-frances-farmer-part-two.html

The Big Sky is pretty hard to see, def one of my underrated faves; winds up the Astoria fest this Sunday night.

http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2013/11/10/detail/the-big-sky

“Many westerns have been self-consciously conceived on an epic scale, but Howard Hawks’s Red River, in its deepest channels, actually feels like an ancient epic.”

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3176-red-river-the-longest-drive

i'm thinking the first hour of Ball of Fire may be the best thing Brackett & Wilder ever wrote.

This reminds of story I need to tell you about going many years ago to Lincoln Center to see discussion about auteur theory. Really.

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/the-best-films-of-howard-hawks/

watched Rio Bravo for the first time the other day

Yes

I like Ball of Fire, but His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby are classics

ctrl-f The Thing from Another World

saw a bunch more of his films recently

The Big Sleep was incredibly convoluted, even on second viewing. Maybe it was a great film, but I don't know

Thought Red River and Rio Bravo were great, Hatari! was interesting but I wondered about its treatment of the wild animals

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was very enjoyable I thought

Read Todd McCarthy's Hawks bio in January, this was maybe the most revelatory bit:

The final scene of what would’ve been Howard Hawks’ final film, When It’s Hot Play It Cool, written by the man himself circa 1976. pic.twitter.com/Iihua7IbVC

— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) January 24, 2021

Dan, no one involved in the making of The Big Sleep had any idea what was going on either, the trick is to sit back and enjoy. Hawks thought plot didn't matter.

it was interesting enough that I want to see it again

haven't seen Doris Day in any of her films with Rock Hudson yet, but I thought Paula Prentiss's loopy performance was really appealing opposite him in Hawks' "Man's Favorite Sport?"

His first three months on the Criterion Channel are winding down so a bunch of stuff is leaving at the end of January. Think I need to at least try to see both The Big Sky and of course The Criminal Code for the first time.

I also need to see Barbary Coast but I don't think it's leaving.

I read the novel of The Big Sky back in high school and seem to remember liking it well enough.

Weird that Kirk Douglas also starred in a film of The Way West decades later.