Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896–December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. He is popular for his films from a wide range of genres such as Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), The Thing from Another World (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959).

In 1975, Hawks was awarded the Honorary Academy Award as "a master American filmmaker whose creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema,"^[1] and in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Sergeant York.

Early life and education[link]

Howard Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana on May 30, 1896. Hawks was the first-born child of Frank W. Hawks (1865–1950), a wealthy paper manufacturer, and the former Helen Howard (1872–1952), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Hawks's family on his father's side were American pioneers and his ancestor John Hawks had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1630.^[2] The family eventually settled in Goshen and by the 1890s was one of the wealthiest families in the Mid-West, due mostly to the highly profitable Goshen Milling Company. Hawk's maternal grandfather C. W. Howard (1845–1916) had homesteaded in Neenah, Wisconsin in 1862 at age 17 and within 15 years had earned a fortune in the town's Paper mill and other industrial endeavors.^[3] Frank Hawks and Helen Howard met in the early 1890s and married in 1895.^[4] Hawks was the oldest of five children and his birth was followed by Kenneth Neil Hawks (August 12, 1899- January 2, 1930), William Bellinger Hawks (1902- January 10, 1969), Grace Louise Hawks (October 17, 1903- December 23, 1927) and Helen Bernice Hawks (1906- May 4, 1911). In 1898 the family moved to Neenah, Wisconsin where Franks Hawks began working for his father-in-law's Howard Paper Company.^[5]

Between 1906 and 1909 the Hawks's family began to spend more time in Pasadena, California during the cold Wisconsin winters in order to improve Helen Hawks's ill health. Gradually they began to spend only their summers in Wisconsin before permanently moving to Pasadena in 1910.^[6] The family settled in a house down the street from Throop Polytechnic Institute (which would eventually become California Institute of Technology), and the Hawks children began attending the school's Polytechnic Elementary School in 1907. Hawks was an average student at school and did not exceed in sports, but by 1910 had discovered coaster racing, an early form of soapbox racing.^[7] In 1911, Hawks's youngest sibling Helen died suddenly of food poisoning.^[8][9] From 1910 to 1912 Hawks attended Pasadena High School, where he was again an average student. But in 1912 the Hawks family moved to nearby Glendora, California, where Frank Hawks owned orange groves. Hawks finished his junior year of high school at Citrus Union High School in Glendora.,^[8] and was then sent to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire from 1913 to 1914. Again, he was an average student and his family's wealth may have influenced his acceptance to the elite private school. While in New England, Hawks often attended theatrical shows in nearby Boston.^[10] In 1914 Hawks returned to Glendora and graduated from Pasadena High School in 1914. In 1914 Hawks was accepted to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he majored in mechanical engineering and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. As always, Hawks was an average student and college friend Ray S. Ashbury remembered him as spending more of his time playing craps and drinking alcohol than studying, although Hawks was also known to be a voracious reader of popular American and English novels in college.^[11]

In 1916, C.W. Howard bought his grandson Howard a Mercer race car and Hawks began both racing and working on his new car during summer vacation in California. It was at this time that Hawks first met Victor Fleming, allegedly when the two men raced on a dirt track and caused an accident.^[12] Fleming had been an auto mechanic and early aviator when his old friend Marshall Neilan recommended him to film director Allan Dwan as a good mechanic. Fleming went on to impress Dwan by quickly fixing both his car and a faulty film camera and by 1916 had worked his way up to the position of cinematographer.^[13] Meeting Fleming lead to Hawk's first job in the film industry as a prop boy on the Douglas Fairbanks film In Again, Out Again for Famous Players-Lasky, which Fleming was employed on as the cinematographer. According to Hawks, a new set was in need of quickly being built when the studios set designer was unavailable and Hawks volunteered to do the job himself, much to Fairbank's satisfaction. He was next employed as a prop boy and general assistant on an unspecified film directed by Cecil B. DeMille (Hawks never named the film in later interviews and DeMille made five films roughly in that time period). While breaking into the film industry in the summer of 1916, Hawks also unsuccessfully attempted to transfer to Stanford University, and then returned to Cornell in September 1916. Hawks left Cornell in April 1917 when the United States declared war on Germany and entered World War I. Like many college students who joined the Armed services during the war, he received a degree in absentia in 1918. Before Hawks was called for active duty, he took the opportunity to go back to Hollywood and by the end of April 1917 was working on Cecil B. DeMille's The Little American, where he met and befriended the then eighteen-year-old slate boy James Wong Howe.^[14] Hawks next worked on the Mary Pickford film The Little Princess, directed by Marshall Neilan. According to Hawks, Neilan did not show up to work one day and the resourceful Hawks offered to direct a scene himself, which Pickford agreed to allow. Hawks then had his first experience as a film director at the age of twenty-one when he and cinematographer Charles Rosher spent the day filming a tricky double exposure dream sequence with Pickford. Hawks worked with Pickford and Neilan again on Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley before joining the United States Army Air Service.^[15] Hawks's military records were destroyed in the 1973 Military Archive Fire, so the only account of his military service is his own. According to Hawks, he spent fifteen weeks in basic training at the University of California in Berkeley where he was trained to be a squadron commander. When Mary Pickford visited Hawks at basic training, his superior officers were so impressed that they promoted him to flight instructor and sent him to Texas to teach new recruits. Due to boredom, Hawks attempted to get a transfer during the first half of 1918 before finally being sent to Fort Monroe, Virginia. But the Armistice was signed in November of that year and Hawks was discharged as a Second Lieutenant without having seen active duty.^[9][16]

Early film career[link]

After the War, Hawks was eager to return to Hollywood. After having also served in the Air Force, his brother Kenneth Hawks graduated from Yale University in 1919 and the brothers moved to Hollywood together to pursue their careers. They quickly made friends with Hollywood insider (and fellow Ivy Leaguer) Allan Dwan, but Hawks landed his first important job when he used his family's wealth to loan money to studio head Jack Warner. Warner quickly paid the loan back and hired Hawks as a producer to "oversee" the making of a new series of one-reel comedies starring the Italian comedian Monty Banks.^[17] Hawks stated that he personally directed "three or four" of the shorts, however no documentation exists to confirm this.^[18] The films were profitable, but Hawks soon left the series and proceeded to form his own production company using his family wealth and connections to secure financing. The company was named Associated Producers and was a joint venture between Hawks, Allan Dwan, Marshall Neilan and director Allen Holubar, with a distribution deal through First National.^[19] The company made fourteen films between 1920 and 1923, with eight directed by Neilan, three by Dwan and three by Holubar.^[20] More of a "boy's club" than a production company, the four men gradually drifted apart and went their separate ways by 1923, at which time Hawks decided that he wanted to direct instead of produce.^[21]

Beginning in the early 1920, Hawks lived in rented houses in Hollywood with the group of friends he was accumulating. This rawdy group of mostly macho, risk-taking men included his brother Kenneth Hawks, Victor Fleming, Jack Conway, Harold Rosson, Richard Rosson, Arthur Rosson and Eddie Sutherland. During this time period Hawks first met Irving Thalberg, the frail and sickly vice-President in charge of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Eventually many of the young men in this group would become successful at MGM under Thalberg, and Hawks admired his intelligence and sense of story.^[22] At the same time, Hawks was becoming friends with barn stormers and pioneer aviators at Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, getting to know men like Moye Stephens. In 1923, Famous Players-Lasky president Jesse Lasky was looking for a new Production Editor in the Story department of his studio, and Thalberg suggested the Ivy-League Hawks.^[9] Hawks accepted and was immediately put in charge of over forty productions, including many literary acquisitions that included works by Joseph Conrad, Jack London and Zane Grey. Hawks worked on the scripts for all of the films produced, but had his first official screenplay credit in 1924 on Tiger Love.^[23] Hawks was the Story Editor at Famous Players (later Paramount Pictures) almost two years, and occasionally edited such films as Heritage of the Desert. Although Hawks signed a new one-year contract with Famous-Players in the fall of 1924, he broke his contract to become a story editor for Thalberg at MGM with the promise that Thalberg would make him a director in a year. But in 1925 when Thalberg hesitated to follow through on his promise, Hawks broke his contract at MGM.^[24]

Career as a film director[link]

Silent Films: 1925-1929[link]

In October 1925 Sol Wurtzel, William Fox's studio superintendent at the Fox Film Corporation, invited Hawks to join his company with the promise of letting Hawks direct.^[25] Over the next three years, Hawks directed his first eight films (six silent, two "talkies").^[9] A few months after joining Fox Kenneth Hawks was also hired and eventually became one of Fox's top production supervisors.^[26] Hawks reworked the scripts of most of the films he directed without always taking official credit for his work. He also worked on the scripts for Honesty- The Best Policy in 1926^[27] and Joseph von Sternberg's Underworld in 1927, famous for being one of the first gangster film.^[28] In 1926 Hawks was introduced to Athole Shearer by his friend Victor Fleming, who was dating Athole's sister Norma Shearer at the time. Shearer's first marriage to writer John Ward was unhappy and she and Hawks began dating throughout 1927 until Shearer asked Ward for a divorce in 1928. Shearer had a young son with Ward named Peter.^[29] At the same time, Kenneth Hawks began dating actress Mary Astor^[30], and Hawks's youngest brother Bill began dating actress Bessie Love.^[31] Kenneth Hawks and Mary Astor eventually married in February 1928,^[32] while Bill Hawks and Bessie Love married in December 1929.^[33] On December 23, 1927 Hawk's sister Grace died of tuberculosis after Hawk's mother refused to allow medical treatment because of her Christian Science beliefs.^[34] Hawks and Athole Shearer finally married on May 28, 1928 and they honeymooned in Hawaii.^[35] Hawk's contract with Fox ended in May 1929, and he never again signed a long-term contract with a major studio but managed to remain an independent producer-director for the rest of his long career.^[9] In October 1929, Hawks and Shearer had their first child, David Hawks.^[36]

The Road to Glory (1926)

Hawks's first film The Road to Glory was based on a thirty-five page treatment that Hawks wrote and is one of only two Hawks films that are lost films. The film stars May McAvoy as a young woman who is gradually going blind and tries to spare the two men in her life from the burden of her illness. The two men are her boyfriend Rockliffe Fellowes and her father Ford Serling, with Leslie Fenton playing the greedy rich man whom she agrees to live with in order to get away from her father and lover. The film contained religious iconography and messages that would never again be seen in a Hawks film. It was shot from December 1925 to January 1926 and premiered in April. It received good reviews from film critics.^[37] In later interviews, Hawks said "It didn't have any fun in it. It was pretty bad. I don't think anybody enjoyed it except a few critics."^[38] Hawks was dissatisfied with the film after being certain that dramatic films would establish his reputation, but realized what he had done wrong when Sol Wurtzel told Hawks "Look, you've shown you can make a picture, but for God's sake, go out and make entertainment."^[38]

Fig Leaves (1926)

Immediately after completing The Road to Glory Hawks began writing his next film, Fig Leaves, his first (and only until 1935) comedy. The film portrays a married couple by juxtaposing them in the Garden of Eden and in modern New York City. The Garden of Eden humorously depicts Adam and Eve awoken by a Flintstones-like coconut alarm clock and Adam reading the morning paper off of giant stone tablets. Then in the modern day the biblical serpent is replaced by Eve's gossiping neighbor and Eve becomes a sexy flapper and fashion model when Adam is at work. The film starred George O'Brien as Adam and Olive Borden as Eve and received positive reviews, particularly for the art direction and costume designs. It was released in July 1926 and was a Hawk's first hit film as a director. Although he mainly dismissed his early work, Hawks praised the film in later interviews.^[39]

Paid to Love (1927)

Paid to Love is notable in Hawks's filmography as being the only time that he made a highly stylized, experimental film. German film director F. W. Murnau had recently made The Last Laugh and Sunrise and was the most critically acclaimed director in Hollywood, and Hawks's attempted to imitate Murnau's style with this film. The film includes atypical tracking shots, expressionistic lighting and stylistic film editing that was inspired by German Expressionist films. In a later interview Hawks commented "It isn't my type of stuff, at least I got it over in a hurry. You know the idea of wanting the camera to do those things: Now the camera's somebody's eyes."^[40] Hawks worked on the script with Seton I. Miller, with whom he would go on to collaborate with on seven more films. The film stars George O'Brien as the introverted Crown Prince Michael, William Powell as his happy-go-lucky brother and Virginia Valli as Michael's flapper love interest Dolores. Valli's character was an early yet incomplete example of the Hawkian woman archetype as the sexually aggressive showgirl, while O'Brien's Michael portrayal of a shy man not interested in sex is a character later elaborated upon by Cary Grant and Gary Cooper in later Hawks films. Paid to Love was completed by September 1926, but remained unreleased until July 1927, when it was unsuccessful financially.^[41]

The Cradle Snatchers (1927)

The Cradle Snatchers was based on a 1925 hit stage play by Russell G. Medcraft and Norma Mitchell about three unhappy, middle-aged housewives who teach their adulterous husbands a lesson by starting affairs with college-aged young men during the jazz age. The film starred Louise Fazenda, Dorothy Phillips and Ethel Wales and was shot in early 1927. The film was released in May 1927 and was a minor hit. For many years it was believed to be a lost film until film director Peter Bogdanovich discovered a print in 20th Century Fox's film vaults, although the print was missing part of reel three and all of reel four.^[42]

Frazil (1928)

In March 1927 Hawks signed a new one-year, three picture contract with Fox and was assigned to direct Frazil, based on the play L'Insoumise by Pierre Frondaie. Hawks again worked with Seton Miller on the script about a Middle Eastern prince who has an affair with a Parisienne showgirl and cast Charles Farrell as the prince and Greta Nissen as Fabienne. Hawks went both over schedule and over budget on the film, which began the rift between him and Sol Wurtzel that would eventually lead to Hawks leaving Fox. Although finished in August 1927, the film was not released until June 1928.^[43]

A Girl in Every Port (1928)

A Girl in Every Port is considered by film scholars to be the most important film of Hawks's silent career because it is his first film to introduce many of the Hawksian themes and characters that would continue until his final films. It was his first "love story between two men" where two men bond over their duty, skills and careers while considering their friendship to be more important than any affection towards a female. Hawks wrote the original story and developed the screenplay with James Kevin McGuinness and Seton Miller. In the film Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong play two merchant seamen who are arch rivals when it comes to conquest women, with McLaglen constantly finding Armstrong's tattoo on the women that he is attempting to seduce. Eventually the two rivals become friends and develop a heterosexual mutual admiration for each other. Louise Brooks plays the cabaret singer that the two men fall in love with. The film was filmed from October to December 1927 and released in February 1928. It was successful in the US, and very successful in Europe where Louise Brooks was developing a cult following.^[44] In France, Henri Langlois called Hawks "the Gropius of the cinema" and Swiss novelist and poet Blaise Cendrars said that the film "definitely marked the first appearance of contemporary cinema."^[45] However Hawks once again went over budget with this film and his relationship with Sol Wurtzel became worse. After an advanced screening that received positive reviews, Wurtzel told Hawks "This is the worst picture Fox has made in years."^[46]

The Air Circus (1928)

The Air Circus is Hawks's first film centered around aviation, one of his early loves. In 1928, Charles Lindbergh was the world's most famous person and Wings was one of the most popular films of the year. Wanting to capitalize on the countries aviation craze, Fox immediately bought Hawks's original story for The Air Circus, a variation of the male friendship plot of A Girl in Every Port about two young pilots. Officially, the original story is credited to Graham Baker and Andrew Bennison, while the screenplay was written by Seton Miller and Norman Z. McLeod. In the film, Arthur Lake and David Rollins play two eager young pilots at flight school who compete over their flight instructors aviatrix sister played by Sue Carol. The film was shot from April to June 1928, but Fox ordered an additional 15 minutes of dialogue footage to be shot so the film could compete with the new "talkies" being released. Hawks hated the new dialogue written by Hugh Herbert and he refused to participate in the re-shoots. The film was released in September 1928 and was a moderate hit. It is one of two filmed directed by Hawks's that is a lost film.^[47]

Trent's Last Case (1929)

Trent's Last Case is an adaptation of British author E. C. Bentley's 1913 novel of the same name, and had already been adapted to film in England in 1920. Hawks considered the novel to be "one of the greatest detective stories of all time"^[48] and was eager to make it his first sound film. He cast Raymond Griffith in the lead role of Phillip Trent. Griffith's throat had been damaged by poison gas during World War I and his voice was a horse whisper, prompting Hawks to later state "I thought he ought to be great in talking pictures because of that voice."^[49] However, after shooting only a few scenes, Fox shut Hawks down and ordered him to make a silent film, both because of Griffith's voice and because they only owned the legal rights to make a silent film. The film did have a musical score and synchronized sound effects, but no dialogue. Due to the failing business of silent films, it was never released in the US and only briefly screened in England where film critics hated it. The film was believed lost until the mid-1970s and was screened for the first time in the US at a Hawks retrospective in 1974. Hawks was in attendance of the screening and attempted to have the only print of the film destroyed.^[50]

Early Sound Films:1930-1934[link]

By 1930, Hollywood was in upheaval over the coming of "talkies" and many careers (both actors and directors) were ruined. Many Hollywood studios were recruiting stage actors and directors that they believed were better suited for sound films. After having worked in the industry for 14 years and directing many financially successful films, Hawks found himself having to re-prove himself as being an asset to the studios. Leaving Fox on sour terms didn't help his reputation, but Hawks was one of the few people in Hollywood who never backed down from fights with studio heads. After several months of unemployment, Hawks renewed his career with his first sound film in 1930.^[51]

On January 2, 1930, Hawks's brother Kenneth Hawks died while shooting the film Such Men Are Dangerous.^[52] Kenneth's career as a director was quickly rising after his debut film Big Time in 1929. This sound film starred Lee Tracy and Mae Clarke and was an early example of the "fast-talking" sound films that Howard Hawks would later make one of his signatures.^[53] Such Men Are Dangerous was based on the life Alfred Lowenstein, a Belgian captain who either jumped or fell out of his plane in 1928. On January 2, Kenneth Hawks and his crew flew three planes (two with cameras, one with a stunt actor) over Santa Monica Bay when the two camera planes crashed into each other, killing ten men. The crash was the first major on-set accident in Hollywood history and made national news. Mary Astor kept her distance from the Hawks family after Kenneth's death.^[54]

The Dawn Patrol (1930)

Hawks's first all sound film was The Dawn Patrol, based on an original story by John Monk Saunders and (unofficially) Hawks. Saunders was a flight instructor during World War I and had written Wings. He was considered one of the most talented writers in Hollywood and was often compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Accounts vary on who first came up with the idea of the film, but Hawks and Saunders developed the story together and tried to sell it to several studios before First National agreed to produce the film.^[55] Saunders received solo screen credit for the original story and won an Academy Award for Best Story in 1930. The screenplay was written by Hawks, Seton Miller and Dan Totheroh and starred Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Shooting began in late February 1930, about the same time that Howard Hughes was finally finishing his epic World War I aviation epic Hell's Angel's after being in production since September 1927. Hawks schrewdly began to hire many of the aviation experts and cameramen that had been employed by Hughes, including Elmer Dyer, Harry Reynolds and Ira Reed. When Hughes found out about the rival film, he did everything he could to sabotage The Dawn Patrol by harassing Hawks and other studio personal, hiring a spy that was quickly caught and finally suing First National for copyright infringement. Hughes finally dropped the lawsuit in late 1930 and he and hawks became good friends during the legal battle. In the film, Barthelmess and Fairbanks play two Royal Flying Corps pilots during World War I who deal with the pressure of wartime combat and constant death by drinking and fighting with their commanding officer. Filming was finished in late May 1930 and premiered in July, setting a first week box office record at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. The film became one of the biggest hits of 1930.^[56]

The Criminal Code (1931)

Hawks didn't get along with Warner Brothers executive Hal B. Wallis and his contract allowed him to be loaned out to other studios. Hawks took the opportunity to accept a directing offer from Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures: The Criminal Code, based on a successful play by Martin Flavin. Hawks and Seton Miller worked on the script with Flavin for a month and filming began in September 1930. The film starred Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Constance Cummings and Boris Karloff. Huston plays a prison warden who wants to reform the conditions of the inmates and Holmes plays a wrongly convicted prisoner who learns about the "code" of not ratting on other inmates.^[57] Hawks called Huston "the greatest actor [he] ever worked with".^[58] Hawks also worked with his old friend James Wong Howe for the first time as a cinematographer. The film opened in January 1931 and was a hit. Hawks encountered a minor amount of censorship when the film was banned in Chicago, which would deal with even further on his next film.^[59]

Scarface (1932)

In 1930 Howard Hughes hired Hawks to direct Scarface, a gangster film loosely based on the life of Chicago mobster Al Capone. The film starred Paul Muni in the title role, with memorable supporting performances from George Raft, Boris Karloff, and Osgood Perkins. The film was completed in September 1931, but the censorship of the Hays Code prevented it from being released as Hawks and Hughes had originally intended, and the two men fought the Hays Office (and made compromises) for over a year until the film was released in 1932, after such other pivotal early gangster films as The Public Enemy and Little Caesar. Scarface was the first film in which Hawks worked with screenwriter Ben Hecht, who became a close friend and collaborator for twenty years.^[9]

The Crowd Roars (1932)

After filming was complete on Scarface, Hawks left Hughes to fight the legal battles and returned to First National to fulfill his contract, this time with producer Darryl F. Zanuck. For his next film, Hawks wanted to make a film about his childhood passion: car racing. The Crowd Roars is loosely based on the play The Barker: A Play of Carnival Life by Kenyon Nicholson. Hawks developed the script with Seton Miller for their eighth and final collaboration and the script was by Miller, Kubec Glasmon, John Bright and Niven Busch. The film starred James Cagney, Eric Linden, Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak. In the film, Cagney plays a race car driver who tries to "protect" his younger brother Linden, who is also a driver, from being distracted by his girlfriend, Blondell. At the same time, Cagney must hide his own neurotic girlfriend, played by Dvorak, from his younger brother. Blondell and Dvorak were initially cast in each others roles but swapped after a few days of shooting. Shooting began on December 7, 1931 at Ascot Motor Speedway and wrapped on February 1, 1932. Hawks used real race car drivers in the film, including the 1930 Indianapolis 500 winner Billy Arnold.^[60] The film was released in March and became a hit.^[61]

Tiger Shark (1932)

Later in 1932 he directed Tiger Shark starring Edward G. Robinson as a tuna fisherman. In these early films, Hawks established the prototypical "Hawksian Man", which film critic Andrew Sarris described as "upheld by an instinctive professionalism."^[9]

Today We Live (1933)

In 1933 Hawks signed a three-picture deal at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and his first film was there Today We Live in 1933, starring Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper. The World War I film was based on a short story by author William Faulkner, who Hawks got to know personally during the shooting of the film and remained friends with for over twenty years.

Hawks's next two films at MGM were the boxing drama The Prizefighter and the Lady and the bio-pic Viva Villa!, starring Wallace Beery as Mexican Revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. But because of studio interference on both films, Hawks walked out on his MGM contract without completing either film himself.^[9]

Later Sound Films[link]

In 1934 Hawks went to Columbia Pictures to make his first screwball comedy, Twentieth Century, starring John Barrymore and Hawks's distant cousin Carole Lombard. The film was based on a stage play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and along with Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (released the same year) is considered to be the defining film of the screwball comedy genre.^[9] In 1935 Hawks made Barbary Coast with Edward G. Robinson and Miriam Hopkins. In 1936 he made the aviation adventure Ceiling Zero with James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. Also in 1936, Hawks began filming Come and Get It, starring Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea, Frances Farmer and Walter Brennan. But he was fired by Samuel Goldwyn in the middle of shooting and the film was completed by William Wyler.^[9]

In 1938 Hawks made the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby for RKO Pictures. The film starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and has been called "the screwiest of the screwball comedies" by film critic Andrew Sarris.^[9] In the film, Grant plays a near-sighted paleontologist who suffers one humiliation after another due to the lovestruck socialite played by Hepburn. The film was unsuccessful when initially released but has gradually become regarded as Hawks's masterpiece. Hawks followed this with the aviation drama Only Angels Have Wings, again starring Cary Grant and made in 1939 for Columbia Pictures. The film also starred Jean Arthur, Thomas Mitchell, Rita Hayworth and Richard Barthelmess.^[9]

In 1940 Hawks returned to the screwball comedy genre with His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The film was an adaptation of the hit Broadway play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, which had already been made into a film in 1931. In 1941 Hawks made Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper as a pacifist farmer who becomes a decorated World War I soldier. The film was the highest-grossing film of 1941 and won two Academy Awards (Best Actor and Best Editing), as well as earning Hawks his only nomination for Best Director. Later that year Hawks re-teamed with Cooper for Ball of Fire, also starring Barbara Stanwyck. The film was written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and is playfully based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the film, Cooper plays a sheltered, intellectual linguist who is writing an encyclopedia with six other scientists, and hires street-wise Stanwyck to help them with modern slang terms. In 1941 Hawks began work on the Howard Hughes produced (and later directed) film The Outlaw, based on the life of Billy the Kid and starring Jane Russell. Hawks completed initial shooting of the film in early 1941, but due to perfectionism and battles with the Hollywood Production Code, Hughes continued to re-shoot and re-edit the film until it was finally released in 1943, with Hawks uncredited as director.^[9]