HAWKS, Howard

(1896–1977)

   Born in Indiana but raised in Southern California, Howard Hawks, along with John Ford, was one of the most dominant film directors of the 20th century. His education at Cornell, was in engineering, and during World War I he flew planes for the U.S. Army. Both experiences helped form his interests behind the camera. He worked in a variety of off-set capacities throughout the 1920s and began directing in 1926. While Hawks directed some of the finest Westerns ever, he also worked in a wide range of genres. He assisted in directing Westerns such as Viva Villa! (1934) and The Outlaw (1943) before directing what many consider his most famous Western Red River (1948), with John Wayne. Wayne also starred in most of Hawks’s other Westerns, including Rio Bravo (1959), El Dorado (1967), and Rio Lobo (1970). Reportedly, Hawks was so disgusted with the success of High Noon (1952) —because of its procommunist tendencies and because it lacked masculinity—that he responded with Rio Bravo (1959).