Born in 1896 Howard Hawks was a director, producer and writer during the classic era of Hollywood cinema.Hawks got into the movie industry by interning at the Famous Players-Lasky in Hollywood while he was at university studying mechanical engineering.During the first World War he was a pilot in the Army Air Corps and returned home as a second lieutenant.Hawks began his movie career at the Mary Pickford Company as a props man before moving on to the editing department and the script department.By 1922 he had written and directed two comedy shorts before writing two further screenplays Quicksands and Tiger Love.Despite making his directing debut in 1925 with The Road to Glory he didn't really make his name until 1932 with Scarface, which has since been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Hawks became famous for his versatility working on comedies, film noir, gangster pictures and dramas.
1938's Bringing Up Baby began Hawks' partnership with actor Cary Grant, who would go on to star in Only Angels Have Wings and His Girl Friday.
Despite Hawks' string of well known and successful films it was 1941's Sergeant York that earnt him his one and only Oscar nomination.
A stirring biography of World War I hero Alvin York, Sergeant York features Gary Cooper in one of his most famous roles as a wild, hard-drinking young man from rural Tennessee who finds religion and reforms after almost killing a man for revenge.
Alvin becomes a pillar of his community; when the war breaks out, he refuses to defy the Bible and kill the enemy, and his pacifist views prevent him from enlisting.
However, after being drafted and put into combat, Alvin realizes that duty to his fellow soldiers and his country are important as well and succeeds in capturing more than 100 Germans almost single-handedly at the Battle of Argonne.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Gary Cooper and Best Film Editing. It was also nominated for a string of other awards including Best Picture.
But Hawks is perhaps most famous for bringing together one of the best on-screen couple in cinema history - Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Based on Ernest Hemingway's novel of 1937 of the same name To Have and Have Not was released in 1944 and introduced Lauren Bacall to movie goers, she was just nineteen.
Hawks was re-united with Bogart and Bacall in 1946 in The Big Sleep.
Chandler's first novel introduced private detective Philip Marlowe, and The Big Sleep set the standard for private detective movies.
Down-at-the-heels private eye Marlowe gets the assignment to clean up after the daughters of a dying millionaire, but dead people have a nasty habit of trailing in their wake.
In a career that spanned over forty years Hawks went on to make Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Land of the Pharaohs and Rio Bravo, working with stars such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe.
Hawks was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1975 for his services to the film industry. He did in 1977 at the age of eighty one.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw