Tag Archives: Howard Hawks

When I watched BALL OF FIRE (1941) back in January, I mentioned my disappointment I hadn’t watched it with TYG. So this weekend I watched it again, as a date movie, and for comparison with the 1948 remake, A SONG IS BORN.

As I anticipated, she squeezed maximum dirty jokes out of having gangster’s moll “Sugarpuss” O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) rooming with Professor Potts (Gary Cooper) and his seven elderly male colleagues, all working together on an encyclopedia. Potts wants Sugarpuss as a source so he can update the section on slang; she needs to hide out until her mobster boyfriend Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews) can arrange a marriage license. She knows stuff the cops want to grill her about but a wife can’t testify against her husband (to be clear, Lilac was already into her, it’s just that the murder rap he’s facing gave him an extra nudge).

In Romantic Comedy, James Harvey argues the appeal of screwball comedy is that characters can stay sharp, cynical and smartass and still get all goofy over a guy (or a dame). Sugarpuss knows “Pottsy” is a stick-in-the-mud, can’t kiss, is corny in his romantic overtures — but after initially wrapping him around her fingers, she can’t help falling for him anyway. What could have been insufferably cutesy and coy turns out a winner. With Dan Duryea as Lilac’s chief gunman and Richard Haydn and SZ Sakall among the professors. “The human heart reminds me of the windflower, also known as the anemone.”

According to Donald C. Willis in Films of Howard Hawks, Hawks remade Ball of Fire in 1948 as A Song Is Born because RKO offered him “a hell of a lot of money.” The big distinction is that Prof. Frisbee (Danny Kaye) and his crew are researching music; when Frisbee discovers his knowledge of popular music stops with ragtime — no swing, no jazz — he rushes out for a crash course and winds up with singer and mobster’s moll Honey (Virginia Mayo) as an unanticipated house guest.

What makes the film worth remaking was that the set-up allows for some great music. Benny Goodman (playing one of the professors who’s also a clarinetist), Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong and a lot of musicians I’ve never heard of — but no question, these cats can swing, man! However Frisbee going from nightclub to nightclub to listen pushes the nominal plot into the background. And where I found it easy to believe Potts was out of touch with everyday slang, for some reason I find it harder to believe in Frisbee not keeping up on popular music (perhaps because it doesn’t require interacting with regular folks — there’s the radio, vinyl discs …).

A bigger problem is that Hawks is fitting Kaye and Mayo into the Cooper and Stanwyck roles and not making any adjustment. Much as I love Danny Kaye, he’d normally play Frisbee as a nervous, ineffective nebbish; instead he has to play a forceful authority figure like Cooper’s Potts and he just can’t do it. Mayo is a competent actor but she doesn’t have any of Stanwyck’s flirtatious flash and confident swagger. Lines that were funny in the first film — Potts calling the housekeeper a “crab apple annie,” showing he’s learning slang — show up here but they aren’t funny without the slang subplot to anchor them. And none of the supporting cast have the vibrancy of Sakall or Duryea (one of the screen’s great sneering thugs, though also good in rare sympathetic roles). I’d say stick with the original, but if you like the music, it might be worth watching. “I’m merely assuming the role of the lover and you, the role of the maiden.”

All rights to images remain with current holders.

RED RIVER (1948) was Howard Hawk’s first Western (unless you count Viva Villa) and a spectacular, enjoyable Western it is, even to me (I’m not generally a Western fan). In the opening scenes, Dunson (John Wayne) breaks away from a wagon train with an eye to claiming some Texas land and breeding his cattle there. His true love wants to go with him but he refuses, promising to send for her. A short while later, she’s dead, the wagon train butchered by the Comanche. The only survivor is Matt, a teenager (who grows up to be Montgomery Clift) who becomes Dunson’s surrogate son and his trusted right hand along with Groot (Walter Brennan) — yes, I laughed at the name too.

Years later, after the Civil War has left Texas mired in poverty, Dunson decides the only way to save himself from ruin is to drive his 10,000-strong herd across country to Missouri. Matt and Groot are along, backing him up, but as the road gets tougher, Dunson turns into a petty tyrant and Matt eventually has to make a stand.

While the Western stuff doesn’t grab me, the acting is good and the drama is strong enough to hold me — well, with the exception of Matt’s rivalry with fast gun Valance (John Ireland), which comes off incoherent (Valance’s actions at the climax seem more plot-driven than character). It doesn’t pass the Bechdel test — Joanne Dru’s Tess is the only female character besides Wayne’s dead love, and she’s not strong enough to make her role work. Still, I really enjoyed this. “You ever had a good Swiss watch?”

As I enjoyed the Japanese horror film Goke, the Bodysnatcher from Hell, I spent my birthday gift money on a boxed set including that film and three others from the Shokichu studio. Alas, THE X FROM OUTER SPACE (1967) is a pale imitator of Toho’s kaiju films, with the first hour taken up with dull drama and spaceflight as a Japanese mission tries to figure out why all Earth trips to Mars have failed. When we finally get to the silly-looking monster there’s plenty of satisfactory city-smashing but not satisfactory enough to excuse the first hour. “It’s advancing towards Tokyo creating mass hysteria and devastation.”

All rights to images remain with current holders.

I first saw 1944’s TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT in college. I’d left a party early, gone down to the common room and discovered it on the late show. The intensely sexy Lauren Bacall, the sexual chemistry of her and Humphrey Bogart, the crackling dialogue, and the drama of a WW II romance directed by Howard Hawks and released by Warner Brothers—wow.

TYG and I watched it for a date movie a couple of weeks back and it didn’t blow me away as much—but I did still enjoy it (so did she).

It’s 1940 in Martinique, where Harry Morgan (Bogart) runs a charter boat with the help of his friend Eddie (Walter Brennan), an addled alcoholic (“Was you ever bit by a dead bee?”). He meets Slim (Bacall), a pretty vagabond and occasional thief and sparks and snappy dialog start flying; after she kisses him for the first time Slim quips that “It’s even better when you help.” A local resistance cell wants Harry’s help getting a prisoner off Devil’s Island; he’s uninterested in helping them but ultimately he likes them better than the local Vichy authorities (French Nazi-friendly government) so he gets drawn in.

This is very obviously modeled on Casablanca, right down to having Hoagy Carmichael as a local pianist, analogous to Dooley Wilson in the earlier film. Romantic Comedy argues it’s almost refuting the earlier film: Bogart’s Harry is a nobody compared to Rick (when a customer stiffs Harry, it takes Slim picking the guy’s pocket to settle the score) and his picking sides isn’t about big principles but about who he likes best. However it doesn’t work anywhere near as well as Casablanca, with several weak scenes (there was no point to having Bacall sing several numbers, especially as she can’t sing). There’s some truth to the critique in The Films of Howard Hawks that it works because of the two stars and the dialogue more than anything else.

It does show Hawks’ fondness for lively scenes over plot and narrative because the plot isn’t focused — most of the time it works but in some spots in drags (which I never feel about Casablanca). Bacall would go on to marry Bogart; her role here is modeled on Hawks’ own wife (also nicknamed “Slim”). Her character has a lot in common with Jean Arthur’s Bonnie in Only Angels Have Wings — a drifter who stumbles into a relationship with a guy who’s not into relationships. Hawks has said Bacall gave him what he wanted, Arthur didn’t, but I think both characters work. . “Why don’t you put him on a goldfish bowl in the center of the table and be done with it?”

Lupita Nyong’o voices THE WILD ROBOT (2024), a droid who wakes up in a wilderness with no clue to why she’s there or what her assignment is. Fortunately after she accidentally kills some geese she winds up with their newly-hatched gosling (Kit Connor) imprinting on her. Now she has a task, to raise him into a goose, but even with the sharp-eyed fox Fink (Pedro Pascal) to help, parenting is more complicated than expected. Very charming; with Bill Nighy as an old goose and Marc Hamill as a dour bear. “We talked about this — dead things don’t have to explain why they’re dead.”

As I’m giving a Mensa presentation on Monty Python’s Flying Circus next month, it seemed a good time to rewatch THE LIFE OF PYTHON (1990), a documentary looking at how the six-man comedy team cut its teeth on British comedy such as David Frost and Do Not Adjust Your Set before launching their show in the summer of 1969. Very informative about their creative process (Graham Chapman didn’t write skits but his beta-reading suggestions were always spot on), their conflicts, and the path to Holy Grail and Life of Brian. Well worth watching if you’re a fan. “Who was Monty Python? What was he? And is he contagious?”

All rights to images remain with current holder.

In The World War II Combat Film, Jeanine Basinger cites AIR FORCE (1943) as the perfect WW II flyboy film; Donald C. Willis in Films of Howard Hawks thinks it’s crap (he has a deep dislike for war films that want to be both exciting adventures and grim Price of War tales). I fall somewhere in between.

The film starts Dec. 6, 1941 with a bomber taking off from Pearl Harbor for a test flight. It’s crew includes Gig Young, Harry Carey, Arthur Kennedy and John Garfield, scattered into the typical combat-film ethnicities (Texan, New York Italian, etc.). Garfield’s character is fed up with military service and ready to quit; a supporting character sneers that bombers are crap and the real excitement is flying fighters. Both will have to learn to subordinate themselves to the needs of the many, a standard element in such films.

During the flight the radio operator picks up some disturbing chatter, almost like there’s a war on or something … and they return home to discover it’s the day that will live in infamy (typical for the era, Air Force blames Japanese American sabotage for part of the damage — in reality there was none). Off they go to Wake Island and Manila, both of which the 1943 audience knew would soon fall to Japan …

This starts incredibly slow and talky, and I’m not sure it would have worked better if I’d seen it when it came out — I find it impossible to care about whether flying fighters or bombers is superior and the Pearl Harbor attack doesn’t have the gut-punch quality I imagine it had back then. It picks up steam, though, particularly in a tense section when the crew have crash-landed at Wake and have to get the plane back in the air before the Japanese forces seize it (it’s implicit in this section that letting Japan scavenge the plane would be more serious than losing the men). the ending, though, didn’t work for me — it felt headed for a downbeat finish like They Were Expendable, not a thrilling victory over a Japanese naval group. “I remember every honeymoon we didn’t have — including the first one.”

Two more from Leonard Maltin’s 151 Films book —

LA CIUDAD (1999) is El Norte without the optimism and upbeat ending, a grim cinema verite look at Latino immigrants struggling in a Big Apple of dangerous job, incomprehensible bureaucracy and dishonest employers. Well done, but not what I was in the mood for.

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001) is a goofy musical in which writer/director John Cameron Mitchell stars as the eponymous, angry transwoman singer (the Angry Inch refers to what was left after her botched sex change), performing in bottom of the barrel venues as she pursues the former lover who stole most of her songs and went on to stardom. I think I’d skipped seeing this before under the impression it was a Cabaret knockoff; turns out to be much more charming than I thought, though the dream/fantasy ending didn’t entirely work for me. “I chopped the legs off the whales and turned dinosaurs into lizards.”

All rights to images remain with current holders.

After several mediocre Howard Hawks films, my watching gets to a classic with his BRINGING UP BABY (1938). Cary Grant plays super-serious, head-centered paleontologist David Huxley, about to enter a largely passionate marriage (“There will be no entanglements.”). Then he meets heiress Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn) who generates chaos in everything she does. She also drags him out of his dry-as-dust comfort zone and gives him one hell of a good time (a good bad girl in terms of a taxonomy I once coined).

The film is delightfully daffy and funny; Hepburn plays against her usual type (just as confident, a lot less tough) as does Grant and they’re backed up by a variety of colorful supporting characters, not to mention a pet leopard. Despite all of which, the movie bombed, ending Hawks’ relationship with RKO and killing Hepburn’s career (she bounced back a couple of years later with The Philadelphia Story). Hawks himself blamed it on having too many eccentrics and no normal people to serve as an anchor. Perhaps that’s it — but what’s more important is, 1938 audiences were wrong. The film is marvelous (and the inspiration for one of my personal favorites, What’s Up Doc?). “If one more person mentions that she’s got an aunt I’ll put you on bread and water for 20 days!”

HE’S ALL THAT (2021) is a teen rom-com built around a premise I’ve seen before, a Makeover Bet where a teenage influencer sets out to turn a dour outsider into the school’s prom king. Only it turns out there’s more to him than being surly and he finds she’s not as shallow as he thought — but will their love survive learning about the bet? Nothing I needed to see, but pleasant enough to fill 90 minutes. “Smelling my hand is the horse’s equivalent of saying hello.”

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO (2008) when lifelong Dioscuri and current roommates Emily Banks and Seth Rogan decide that’s the quickest way to resolve their ongoing cash crunch. Fortunately their feelings for each other are completely platonic so having sex on camera with other people won’t bother either of them … right? Kevin Smith’s film has a rom-com heart under its raunch, though as usual I’m irked by the assumption straight opposite-sex friends can’t be really platonic. Brandon Routh and Deb Mazar play former classmates; Traci Lords plays a professional porn actor. “I call that look ‘Nickelodeon chic.’”

FIERCE CREATURES (1997) reuses the Fish Called Wanda cast in an unrelated story. When Rupert Murdoch-clone Kevin Kline appoints John Cleese to takeover a small British zoo, Cleese is under orders to weed out every non-fierce creature (I feel this is a parody of When Animals Attack videos). Can the zookeepers (including Michael Palin) change his mind? Kevin Kline plays a second role as the CEO’s marketing-expert son (“We have eliminated the non-event interest deficit!”) and Jamie Lee Curtis is a sexy career woman. A fun absurdity. “Contrary to all available evidence, you actually think people like you.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

Howard Hawks was one of three directors who had a hand in COME AND GET IT (1936) a historical drama in which 19th century lumber baron Edward Arnold dumps Great Love Frances Farmer so that he can marry rich. Arnold’s BFF Walter Brennan marries her instead, has a lookalike daughter and years later Arnold wonders if he has a shot at turning her into his mistress … or will Arnold’s son Joel McRae win her first?

As Donald C. Willis says, this film is a mess. The Brennan/Farmer marriage comes out of nowhere, but has to happen to set up the next generation. The younger Farmer isn’t drawn sharply enough to be a character — she’s opportunistic but not quite, doesn’t have any feelings about Arnold’s treatment of her mother, etc. And the ending is feeble: Farmer simply tells Arnold he’s too old for her and he deflates.

That said, I’ve been curious about Farmer ever since watching her biopic, Frances, and she’s the best thing in this movie, with a strong screen presence. Worth the watching for that. “Who wouldn’t pick up a million dollars lying at their feet?”

A lecherous judge trying to pressure a young girl into becoming his mistress is just a subplot in 100 MONSTERS (1968), a bizarro Japanese film in which a rapacious developer tears down a village shrine to build a brothel — what do you mean, a curse on the shrine site? Only superstitious fools believe in such nonsense! While the consequences are predictable, the weird variety of monsters makes this memorable “You fellows have no idea of the horrors of being cursed.”

Preston Sturges was a master of screwball comedy and THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942) is easily his screwiest. After a madcap opening which only makes sense later, Claudette Colbert divorces architect Joel McRae because she loves him so much — once she’s free, she can hook a rich sugar daddy who will underwrite McRae’s plans to build the airport of the future. She takes off, McRae pursues and they become entangled with William Demarest’s drunken gun club, the crotchety Weenie King and rich siblings Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee. This was our date movie for last weekend and TYG thoroughly enjoyed it. “Sex has everything to do with it, darling — you realize that when you’re 15 and start noticing how arch your girlfriends’ fathers are becoming.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.