The Everyday Chivalry of Howard Hawks

2 Responses to The Everyday Chivalry of Howard Hawks

1. Charles J. Sperling says:

   January 31, 2011 at 9:41 am

   The Faulkner in Hollywood story I like best is this:

   Faulkner asked a studio bigshot if it was all right if he wrote at home. Thinking that Faulkner meant someplace nearby, he said: “Oh, sure,” and Faulkner promptly flew home to Oxford, Mississippi.

   I hope it’s true, just as I hope that John Ford’s response to John Wayne’s performance in Hawks’s “Red River” was indeed “I didn’t know the big lug could act.”

   This was a very fine article; however, the details about Walter Brennan had me scratching my head a bit, though. Brennan is very good as Harry Morgan’s befuddled sidekick, but it’s not as if no one had noticed him before that: Hawks had used him before in “Sgt. York,” and Frank Capra had used him in “Meet John Doe” — and the year before that (1940), Brennan appeared in William Wyler’s “Westerner,” which won him his third Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his performance as Judge Roy Bean. (“Come and Get It,” which won him his first features Frances Farmer, so it’s fairly accessible, but I’ve never come upon “Kentucky,” which won him his second.) Hawks may have gotten some great* work out of him there (and again in “Red River”), but I wouldn’t make too much more of it.

   Whether 1939 was the Greatest Year for Hollywood Movies, it was certainly Thomas Mitchell’s: we should all have a year like he did (“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Stagecoach,” “Gone with the Wind,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Only Angels Have Wings”).

   As for Montgomery Clift, note that when the Clash list some of his movies in “The Right Profile,” the first is “Red River.” (“A Place in the Sun,” “The Misfits” and “From Here to Eternity” follow.) Not a word about “Raintree County,” which he was filming at the time of the accident!

   * As I am fond of “Rio Bravo” (less so of the second spin on it in”Rio Lobo” — I’ve never seen the first variant in “El Dorado”), perhaps the word should be “Good,” as that seems to be the ultimate accolade Chance, Dude and Stumpy use among themselves.

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2. sheila says:

   February 1, 2011 at 8:33 am

   Charles – thanks for your additional context about Walter Brennan. I had missed that, and I think you’re right.

   And yes, dear Thomas Mitchell. What an actor, and what a year. Also, he’s really quite DIFFERENT in all of those films – he was so damn good. His death scene in Only Angels Have Wings always brings me to tears, especially when he worries that he “might not be any good at it” – meaning, dying. He doesn’t want anyone to watch, in case he messes it up. What a script, what a personal moment. Everyone dies, but for everyone who dies it is the first time. I think that’s such a human vulnerable moment, heartbreaking.

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