Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks (May 30, 1896 - December 26, 1977) was one of the more critically acclaimed directors of the Classic Hollywood Era.
Hawks directed several films considered to be classics in a number of different genres:
- The Big Sleep - film noir
- Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday - screwball comedy film
- Scarface - gangster film
- Sergeant York - war film
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - comedy
- Red River - western film
- Rio Bravo - western film
Hawks also produced The Thing From Another World, one of the best science fiction films from the 1950s. He may have also directed it, although the sole director's credit went to Christian Nyby.
Hawks was notorious for fabricating stories about the movie business, usually in a way which inflated his already considerable contributions to it. One such story has it that Hawks told Ernest Hemingway that he could make a good movie out of the worst thing that Hemingway had ever written, at which point Hemingway challenged him to make a movie out of To Have and Have Not. Hawks' film, which used a screenplay adapted by William Faulkner, may not be a classic, but it includes a number of memorable scenes, including Bacall's exercise in teaching Bogart how to whistle.