Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (124 page)

The account of the Howard-Hawks wedding is drawn from the
Neenah Daily Times
, June 6, 1895, p. 1. The account of Howard Hawks’s birth is from the
Neenah Daily Times
, June 1, 1896. The account of C. W. Howard’s death and
funeral comes from the
Neenah Daily Times
, January 6 and 7, 1916, and the
Daily Northwestern
, Oshkosh, January 6, 1916.

Information on Pasadena, the Hawks family’s life there, and Howard Hawks’s education comes from: Barbara Hawks McCampbell; Pasadena Community Book, 1951 edition;
Auld Lang Syne
, vols. 43–44, Pasadena Historical Society; Polytechnic Elementary School Announcement,
1912–1913; Pasadena directory, 1909; Private institutional records of the Polytechnic Elementary School (Pasadena), Pasadena High School/Pasadena City College, Citrus Union High School/Citrus College (Glendora), Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, New Hampshire), Cornell University (Ithaca), and the University Club (New York City); “Life at Phillips Exeter,” bulletin of the Phillips Exeter Academy,
vol. 9, no. 3, October 1913;
The 1914 Edition of the Pean
, published by the Senior Class of the Phillips Exeter Academy.

Sources on Victor Fleming include Sam Marx, Allan Dwan, Pat Marlowe, John Lee Mahin, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, and Sally Fleming; a 1928 Paramount biography; a purported “autobiography,”
Action Is the Word
, published by MGM
in 1939; Norma Shearer’s unpublished autobiography;
an interview in the
Los Angeles Daily News
, by Virginia Wright, February 2, 1948; obituaries and follow-up stories in the
Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Examiner, Hollywood Citizen-News, Variety
, the
Hollywood Reporter
, and
Motion Picture Herald;
“Fleming: The Apprentice Years,” by John Howard Reid, in
Films & Filming
, January 1968;
The Making of
The Wizard of Oz, by Aljean Harmetz, New York,
Alfred A. Knopf, 1977, and the Eddie Sutherland interview, February 1959, conducted by the Popular Arts Project, Columbia University.

Information on Hawks’s entry into the film industry and his early work comes from the author’s interviews with Allan Dwan;
Allan Dwan
, by Peter Bogdanovich; the Cecil B. DeMille collection at Brigham Young University, and several interviews with Hawks, notably
the London session with Kevin Brownlow.

Sources on Hawks’s early Hollywood years include the author’s interviews with Allan Dwan; Norma Shearer’s unpublished autobiography;
Motion Picture News
, published weekly in New York, 1913–1930;
The American Film Institute Catalogue, 1921–1930;
“Famous Players-Lasky Corporation Studio Directory, August 1924”; the Cecil B. DeMille
collection at BYU;
Variety; Allan Dwan
, by Peter Bogdanovich; the Eddie Sutherland interview for the Popular Arts Project, Columbia University; Victor Fleming’s 1928 Paramount biography and 1939 MGM “autobiography,”
Action Is the Word;
and the following lawsuits filed in District Court, Los Angeles: J. D. Bach vs. Howard W. Hawks and Kenneth Hawks, January 13, 1921; H. W. Hawks vs. Marshall Neilan,
June 9, 1923; Collection Service Corp. vs. H. W. Hawks, January 26, 1923; and William Shea vs. H. W. Hawks and Walter Mitchell, a.k.a. Walter Morosco, December 1, 1923.

Sources on Hawks’s silent-era directing career include the author’s interviews with Allan Dwan, May McAvoy, L. W. O’Connell, D’Arcy O’Brien, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, David Hawks; the Fox Film Corp. story, legal, and
executive records at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California; the Hawks papers at BYU;
Variety; Motion Picture News; The American Film Institute Catalogue, 1921–1930; Hollywood Filmograph
, a weekly show-business trade paper published in Hollywood throughout the 1920s;
Lulu in Hollywood
, by Louise Brooks;
Louise Brooks
, by Barry Paris; the Louise Brooks
interview in
People
Will Talk
, by John Kobal; the British trade papers the
Bioscope
and the
Kinematograph Weekly;
Norma Shearer’s unpublished autobiography;
Norma Shearer: A Life
, by Gavin Lambert;
Norma: The Story of Norma Shearer
, by Laurence J. Quirk;
My Story
, by Mary Astor. Henri Langlois’s comment is taken from his article “Hawks Homme Moderne,”
Cahiers du Cinéma
, January 1963, translated
by Russell Campbell and reprinted as “The Modernity of Howard Hawks” in
Focus on Howard Hawks
, edited by Joseph McBride.

Sources for this chapter include documents in the Fox Film Corp.; story files at UCLA and USC;
Variety;
the
Bioscope;
the
Kinematograph Weekly;
Tom Luddy; and the following lawsuits filed in District Court, Los Angeles: First National Prods. Corp. vs. H.
Hawks and The Caddo Company, March 6, 1931, and Fox Film Corp. vs. Howard and Athole Hawks, May 3, 1932.

Sources for this chapter include Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Fay Wray Rothenberg, and David Hawks;
On the Other Hand: A Life Story
, by Fay Wray; the Warner Bros. legal, story, and production files at USC; the interview with Richard Barthelmess conducted by Arthur B. Friedman of UCLA
in 1956, on deposit at the Popular Arts Project collection at Columbia University;
Inside Warner Bros
. (
1935–1951
), edited by Rudy Behlmer;
Variety; Starmaker: The Autobiography of Hal Wallis
, by Wallis and Charles Higham; documents in the Howard Hughes Collection at the Texas State Archives in Austin, notably a deposition of Hawks taken on September 28, 1977, in connection with the estate case
of Howard Robard Hughes Jr. in Probate Court No. 2 of Harris County, Texas; the books on Howard Hughes by Charles Higham and by Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske. The picture of Kenneth Hawks’s death is drawn from the author’s interview with L. W. O’Connell;
My Story
, by Mary Astor, and several contemporary accounts, especially those in
Variety
, the
New York Times
, and the
Los Angeles Times
.

Sources for this chapter include the story, legal, and production files of Columbia Pictures at Sony Entertainment;
Variety;
and Philip Kemp’s interview with Constance Cummings, conducted on behalf of the author in London.

Sources for this chapter include interviews by the author with George Raft, John Lee Mahin, and L. W. O’Connell;
the Howard Hughes Collection at the Texas State Archives in Austin; the lawsuit of First National Prods. Corp. vs. H. Hawks and The Caddo Company, filed in District Court, Los Angeles, March 6, 1931; the script drafts in the Hawks Collection at BYU; Ben Hecht’s papers at the Newberry Library in Chicago; the biographies of Hughes by Higham, by Brown and Broeske, and by Donald L. Bartlett
and James B. Steele;
Crime Movies: From Griffith to the Godfather and Beyond
, by Carlos Clarens;
Actor: The Life and Times of Paul Muni
, by Jerome Lawrence;
George Raft
, by Lewis Yablonsky;
Variety; Bashful Billionaire
, by Albert B. Gerber, New York, Lyle Stuart, 1967;
United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars
, by Tino Balio, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1976; the W. R. Burnett
and John Lee Mahin interviews in
Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age
, edited by Pat McGilligan;
Writers in Hollywood
, by Ian Hamilton; the Ben Hecht entry in
Talking Pictures
, by Richard Corliss; “
Scarface
Returns After 45 Years,” by Todd McCarthy,
Daily Variety
, October 12, 1979; the 1964 Ben Hecht interview in the Popular Arts Project, Columbia University;
Ben
Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend
, by William MacAdams. The information on the long censorship battle, publicity campaign, and eventual release of
Scarface
is largely drawn from the Lincoln Quarberg Collection at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews
with Niven Busch, George Raft, and David Hawks;
Actor: The Life and Times of Paul Muni
, by Jerome Lawrence;
George Raft
, by Lewis Yablonsky; the Hawks deposition about his relationship with Howard Hughes in the Hughes Collection in Austin; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC;
Cagney: The Actor as Auteur
, by Pat McGillian; “Niven Busch: A Doer of Things,” an interview by
David Thomson in
Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age
, by Pat McGilligan.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with David Hawks, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, John Houseman, Wells Root, John Lee Mahin, and King Vidor; the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC;
All My Yesterdays: An
Autobiography
, by Edward G. Robinson
with Leonard Spigelgass;
Run-Through
, by John Houseman.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Sam Marx, John Lee Mahin, Wells Root, and Meta Carpenter Wilde; papers in the Hawks Collection at BYU; the lawsuit of Fox Film Corp. vs. Howard and Athole Hawks filed in District Court, Los Angeles, May 3, 1932; the biographies
of William Faulkner by Joseph Blotner and Stephen B. Oates;
Faulkner and Film
, by Bruce F. Kawin;
Faulkner’s MGM Screenplays
, edited by Kawin; MGM files at Turner Entertainment;
Variety
.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with John Lee Mahin and Sam Marx; papers in the Hawks collection at BYU;
Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick
, by David Thomson; the Ben
Hecht papers at the Newberry Library in Chicago;
Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend
, by William MacAdams; the MGM files at Turner Entertainment;
Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, MGM and the Secret Hollywood
, by Charles Higham; U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels’s official report on the Lee Tracy incident on file at the National Archives, Washington, D.C.; accounts of the incident
in
Daily Variety, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Evening News, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald, Los Angeles Post Record, Hollywood Citizen; Mexico Visto por el Cine Extranjero
, vol. 1, by Emilio Garcia Riera, Ediciones ERA, Universidad de Guadalajara, 1987;
El Universal
, Mexico City, November 20, 23, 24, 1933;
Excelsior
, Mexico City, November 22, 23, 1933.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interview with Edward Bernds; the Columbia Pictures story, production, and legal files at Sony Entertainment;
The House of Barrymore
, by Margot Peters, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990;
Variety;
the Ben Hecht papers at the Newberry Library;
Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend
, by William MacAdams; the Ben Hecht interviews in the Popular Arts Project
at Columbia University.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interview with Meta Carpenter Wilde; the production, story, and legal files of Samuel Goldwyn; the interview with Joel McCrea in
People Will Talk
, by John Kobal;
All My Yesterdays: An Autobiography
, by Edward G. Robinson with Leonard Spigelgass; the Hawks Collection at BYU;
Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend
, by William MacAdams; the Ben Hecht and Walter Brennan interviews in the Popular Arts Project at Columbia University.

Sources for this chapter include the Warner Bros. production, story, and legal files at USC;
Cagney: The Actor as Auteur
, by Pat McGilligan;
I Shot an Elephant in My Pajamas: The Morrie Ryskind Story
, by Morrie Ryskind and John H. Roberts, Lafayette,
Louisiana, 1993, 1994;
Variety
.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Meta Carpenter Wilde and Andre de Toth; the 20th Century–Fox files at UCLA; the Faulkner books by Blotner, Kawin, and Oates;
Variety; A Loving Gentleman
, by Meta Carpenter Wilde with Orin Borsten.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews
with Meta Carpenter Wilde, David Hawks, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., and Sam Marx; the production, story, and legal files of Samuel Goldwyn;
William Wyler
, by Axel Madsen;
Goldwyn: A Biography
, by A. Scott Berg;
Will There Really Be a Morning?
, by Frances Farmer;
Frances Farmer: Shadowland
, by William Arnold; the Walter Brennan interview in the Popular Arts Project at Columbia University; the Joel McCrea
interview in
People Will Talk
by John Kobal;
A Loving Gentleman
, by Meta Carpenter Wilde with Orin Borsten;
Variety;
the lawsuit of Howard Hawks vs. Universal Pictures Corporation filed in District Court, Los Angeles, June 16, 1936.

Sources for this chapter include the author’s interviews with Meta Carpenter Wilde, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.,
Barbara Hawks McCampbell, John Lee Mahin, King Vidor, Frank Capra, Christian Nyby, Vernon Harbin, and Pandro S. Berman; the production, story, and legal files of RKO Pictures; the Faulkner books by Blotner, Kawin, and Oates;
Me
, by Katharine Hepburn;
Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn
, by Charles Higham; the Cary Grant books by Beverley Bara Buehrer, Warren G. Harris, Charles Higham and Roy Moseley,
Nancy Nelson, Jerry Vermilye, and Geoffrey Wasnell;
Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend
, by William MacAdams;
Norma Shearer: A Life
, by Gavin Lamberg;
Variety;
the records of the Directors Guild of America;
Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success
, by Joseph McBride; the Joel McCrea interview in
People Will Talk
, by John Kobal.