Howard Hawks Movies

Howard Hawks (1896-1977) is one of my favorite directors.
Howard Hawks (1896-1977) is one of my favorite directors.

Want to know the best Howard Hawks movies?  How about the worst Howard Hawks movies?  Curious about Howard Hawks’ box office grosses or which Howard Hawks movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Howard Hawks movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

I first discovered Howard Hawks when I was in high school. During a sick day, I was flipping through the channels when I stopped on 1938’s Bringing Up Baby. Bringing Up Baby starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and was directed by Howard Hawks. I was so impressed with Bringing Up Baby, that I started to seek out more Cary Grant and Howard Hawks movies. I then discovered that Howard Hawks was responsible for many classic movies.

His IMDb page shows 52 directing credits from 1926-1970. This page will rank Howard Hawks movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Some of his silent movies were not included in the rankings.
Gary Cooper in the Howard Hawks directed movie Sergeant York (1941)....easily Hawks' biggest box office hit.
Gary Cooper in the Howard Hawks directed movie Sergeant York (1941)….easily Hawks’ biggest box office hit.

Howard Hawks Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Howard Hawks Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Howard Hawks movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Howard Hawks movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Howard Hawks movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Howard Hawks movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Howard Hawks movie received.
  • Sort Howard Hawks movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Howard Hawks Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses

 
Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in 1946's The Big Sleep.
Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in 1946’s The Big Sleep.

Seven Possibly Interesting Facts About Howard Hawks

1. Howard Hawks only received one Oscar® nomination for Best Director (1941’s Sergeant York) but he was given an Honorary Oscar® in 1974. His good friend, John Wayne, presented Hawks the Oscar®. 2. Howard Hawks directed some very famous actors/actresses numerous times: John Wayne (5 times), Cary Grant (5 times), Gary Cooper (3 times), Marilyn Monroe (3 times), Walter Huston (3 times), Humphrey Bogart (2 times), Lauren Bacall (2 times) and Edward G. Robinson (2 times). 3. In 1996 Entertainment Weekly voted Howard Hawks as the 4th greatest director of all-time. 4. Howard Hawks was the co-director of The Outlaw.…the other director was Howard Hughes. In 1935 Hawks replaced another legendary director, William Wyler, during the making of Barbary Coast. The next year, Hawks was fired before completing Come and Get It.…the man who replaced him?…the same William Wyler. 5. Howard Hawks was married three times in his life. His first marriage to Athole Shearer produced his only son and only daughter. Athole Shearer was the sister to Oscar® winning actress Norma Shearer. 6.  And now we get to the mystery of the movie The Thing From Another World.  Howard Hawks is not listed as the director of the movie, but rumors have swirled for years that he directed the movie and gave credit to his longtime editor, Christian Nyby.  Since I believe in the rumor, I have included the movie in this movie page.
7. Check out Howard Hawks‘ career compared to current and classic actors and directors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Steve Lensman’s Howard Hawks You Tube Video

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55 thoughts on “Howard Hawks Movies”

  1. HI STEVE
    I think that the AFI regards a screen legend as generally a performer who has been known for a long while and who stands head an shoulders among most other artists. Within that context the great British film broadcaster and journalist Barry Norman opined that Bacall herself was not a true legend because she owed a lot of her fame to her association with Bogie and was not really a big box office star in her own right.

    However some dictionaries take a less grandiose view of a Legend and regard as such anyone who is prominently in the public eye now of in the past. By that more generous definition Margot Robbie could be regarded as a Legend despite only being about for some 10 years and my own reservations about her box office potential at least at the moment. Also of course Bacall and Kidman would be Legends too.

    Anyway as we have been on the subject of Howard Hawks here’s a little bit of topical trivia for your information with a slender Dan-like thread running through it. In 1966, I was serving with the Royal Air Force at Innsworth station in Gloucester, England and there were two general television rooms on the camp. On 30 July 1966 I sat in one of them watching Wayne/Hawks’ Red River whilst many of my English comrades were in the other one watching England win the World Cup. Have a good weekend.

    Reply

    1. In one scene in the 1991 Guilty by Suspicion watched by DeNiro’s character , Darryl F Zanuck has a telephone discussion with Howard Hawks in which Zanuck is apparently seeking confirmation from Hawks that the latter knows what he is doing in directing Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Obviously Marilyn was in safe hand as that movie along with Niagara the same year started the build-up that would metamorphose MM into arguably the most famous movie actress that ever lived. Hawks of course ably directed many other Legendary and skilled performers, as your video amply demonstrates – Cooper, Wayne, Eddie Robinson, Cagney, Bogie, Katie Hep, John Barrymore and John Garfield whom The Work Horse recently anointed as the “1st Brando” [or maybe WH meant that Marlon was the 2nd Garfield!]

      HOWARD HAWKS VIDEO 1-20 My pick of the best POSTERS is Hatari [with Wayne dwarfing the long-forgotten Hardy Kruger] The Big Sky [the 1st Kirk Douglas film I ever saw] Barbary Coast, foreign language one for Air Force, The Thing, Sgt York, the foreign language one for Rio Lobo, Scarface, Red River and 2 corkers for El Dorado. “Watching Wayne and brother Bob walking toward me when I was behind the camera with Howard Hawks I had the impression that I was seeing three men moving down the street and not just two!” [Jim Mitchum]

      Abundance of STILLS in Part 2 and the best for me were (1) 2 of the greatest of the Greats, MM showing Cary a shapely leg (2) MM and Jane Russell [Hey – I thought you said Jane was just a B movie actress!] (3) Coop being decorated (4) Coop with Stanwyck (5) Carole kicks the great Barrymore (6) Grant with I think the very young Rita? (7) Bogie with his trademark cig. (8) Grant, Katie H and “friend” from Bringing Up Brucie (9) Wayne and Clift. What nostalgic memories that one brings flooding back. I was just 9 when I first saw Red River and it was actually also the first time I had ever seen Wayne and I thought I was watching the 8th Wonder of the World! (10) the Big Three in Rio Bravo and (11) is that Howard, seated on the Rio Bravo set, with the sexy Angie? A running gag in my fave TV sitcom, Frasier, is that Frasier’s dad [John Mahoney] is a great fan of Angie Dickinson movies [along with those of Jean Claude Van Damme].

      Great stuff easily worth 98% rating. You and WH agree on just 3 of Hawks’ best reviewed movies, The Big Sleep, Bringing up Brucie and Rio Lobo.

      Reply

      1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, info, trivia, quote and comparison, always appreciated. Happy you enjoyed the visual presentation.

        That was Hawks with Angie Dickinson in the still and she sure was a sexy ‘broad’. 🙂

        Btw you’ve mixed up Rio Bravo with Rio Lobo in a couple of paragraphs.

        Hawks has 10 films scoring 10 out of 10 from my sources, they are –

        Big Sleep ,The (1946)
        Bringing Up Baby
        Red River
        Scarface (1932)
        Rio Bravo
        His Girl Friday
        Only Angels Have Wings
        To Have and Have Not
        Twentieth Century
        El Dorado

        Seven more scored 9 out of 10 inc Ball of Fire, Sergeant York and The Thing.

        There are no top winners from any of my sources and several ties for first place. Bruce and I do have a winner though – The Big Sleep, and we have the same no.2 too – Bringing Up Baby. Sergeant York tops the UMR chart and York is also Hawks biggest domestic grosser.

        Flora’s favorite director features in my latest expanded video and it has a record number of stills too.

        Reply

        2. Yeas, Steve, and I am thrilled with the Hitchcock video. 🙂 I was finally able to finish my comment about an hour ago.

          Reply

    2. Bob, I probably would have joined you in watching Red River. I was never a big sports person as Bruce knows, he is and watches all the sports movies. I can’t remember watching any… okay maybe… Rocky? 😉 Does Ben-Hur count as a sports movie? I’ve seen that one several times.

      Bob, we’ll have to agree too disagree on Lauren Bacall, I’m sure there are film buffs that will back me up in that she is a Hollywood legend and doesn’t have to carry a film on her own to claim that title. She was Bogie’s leading lady in several classic films and she had a certain iconic look which sets her apart from the rest.

      Rita Hayworth is a legendary actress too despite her limited range as an actress. Not sure about Jane Russell though… [Bob snarls] 🙂

      Reply

  2. HI STEVE

    I saw Margot in Focus and Wolf of Wall Street. Lovely looking woman and obviously talented but I agree with Davis and Crawford that to be regarded as a star a performer must prove his/her worth at the box office and in my opinion Robbie has not yet done that. Yet there’s hope because with the Work Horse in her corner can she fail in the end?

    Reply

    1. Bob, I remember Lauren Bacall getting agitated when an interviewer referred to Nicole Kidman as a movie legend, they were working together on a film. The interviewer talked about her teaming up with Bogie and than said “And now you’ve worked alongside another screen legend, Nicole Kidman … ” Bacall snapped: “She’s not a legend. She’s a beginner. What is this ‘legend?’ She can’t be a legend at whatever age she is. She can’t be a legend – you have to be older.” 🙂

      Reply

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