sign in sign up
<<
Home , Ann Dvorak, Armitage Trail, A Devil with Women, A Song Is Born, Ball of Fire, Edwin Maxwell (actor)

Online versions of the Goldenrod Handouts have color images & hot links September 4, 2018 (XXXVII:2) http://csac.buffalo.edu/goldenrodhandouts.html (and Richard Rossen): (1932, 93 min)

DIRECTED BY Howard Hawks (Richard Rossen, co-director) WRITTEN BY Armitage Trail (based on the novel by), (screen story), Seton I. Miller (continuity), John Lee Mahin (continuity), W.R. Burnett (continuity), Seton I. Miller (dialogue), John Lee Mahin (dialogue), W.R. Burnett (dialogue), Howard Hawks (uncredited) PRODUCED BY Howard Hawks (uncredited), (uncredited) MUSIC BY Adolph Tandler (uncredited) CINEMATOGRAPHY , L. William O'Connell EDITING BY Edward Curtiss, (uncredited) VISUAL EFFECTS Howard A. Anderson (process photography)

Selected for by the National Film Shark, and La foule hurle in 1932; (1933) and Preservation Board, 1994 Barbary Coast (1935); and Come and Get It in 1936. He would direct the comedy classic in CAST 1940, and he would be nominated for a Best Director Oscar for ...Tony Camonte Sergeant York (1941) in 1942. In the 1940s, he would also direct ...Cesca Camonte such as: (1941) and (1943); To ...Poppy Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946); Red River Osgood Perkins...Johnny Lovo and (1948); and I Was a Male (1949). C. Henry Gordon...Police Inspector Guarino He would continue in the 1950s with films such as: The Big Sky ... Guino Rinaldo (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) Vince Barnett...Angelo (1955), and Rio Bravo (1959). He would finish his directing ...Tom Gaffney career with such films as: Hatari! (1962), Man's Favorite Sport? Purnell Pratt...Mr. Garston - Publisher (1964), (1965), El Dorado (1967), and Tully Marshall ...Managing Editor (1970). In 1975, he would be given an Honorary Award at the Inez Palange...Tony's Mother as “A master American filmmaker whose Edwin Maxwell...Detective Chief creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema.” He also produced 27 films and was a story or screenplay writer or HOWARD HAWKS (b. May 30, 1896, Goshen, IN—d. co-writer for 25 films. December 26, 1977, Palm Springs, CA), beginning in the 1920s, directed 47 films. His early work in the 1920s includes: The RICHARD ROSSEN (b. April 4, 1893, , NY— Road to Glory and in 1926; A Girl in Every Port d. May 31, 1953, Pacific Palisades, CA) began his film career as (1928) and Trent’s Last Case (1929). His work in the an actor in 1911. As an actor, he appeared in 88 films, before includes several noteworthy classics: Scarface (1932), Twentieth transitioning to film directing. While still acting, he directed a Century (1934), (1938), and Only Angels film in 1917, Her Father’s Keeper. He wouldn’t stop acting until Have Wings (1939). In this decade, he would also direct such appearing in 1922’s Always the Woman. He, then, would assume films as: The Dawn Patrol (1930); The Crowd Roars, Tiger the role of director, exclusively, beginning with Fine Manners in Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—2

1926. His directing career would last until 1943, with the release Midnight with Boston Blackie (director of photography), Murder of Corvette K-225. in Times Square (director of photography), The Boy from Stalingrad, Passport to Suez, and The Return of the Vampire in LEE GARMES (b. May 27, 1898, Peoria, IL—d. August 31, 1943; Stars on Parade (director of photography), Louisiana 1978, , CA) was cinematographer for 144 films. His Hayride (director of photography), and Cry of the Werewolf in early work includes: The Hope Chest (1918); Fighting Blood, 1944; The Crime Doctor's Courage, The Power of the Whistler, Some Punches and Judy (Short), Gall of the Wild (Short), The and Life with Blondie in 1945; Blondie's Lucky Day (director of Knight That Failed (Short) in 1923; The Square Sex (Short), photography), Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, and Bringing Up Father Bee's Knees (Short), Find Your Man, and The Lighthouse by the in 1946; Jiggs and Maggie in Society (1947), Assigned to Danger Sea (uncredited) in 1924; The Popular Sin (1926); The Garden of (1948, director of photography), Jiggs and Maggie Out West Allah, Rose of the Golden West, The Private Life of Helen of (1950), Trouble In-Laws (1951, Short, director of photography), Troy in 1927; The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come and The and The Gink at the Sink (1952, Short, director of photography). Barker in 1928; His Captive Woman, Love and the Devil, and Disraeli (photographed by) in 1929. In 1931, he was nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar for Morocco (1930); he won the Best Cinematography Oscar the following year for Shanghai Express (1932). In the 1930s, he did cinematography for such films as: Lilies of the Field (1930) and An American Tragedy (1931); Scarface and Strange Interlude (photographed by) in 1932; George White's Scandals (1934) and Gone with the Wind (1939, photographed by, uncredited). In 1945, he, with Stanley Cortez, would be nominated for the Best Cinematography, Black-and-White Oscar for (1944). In the 1940s, he would continue to do cinematography for films such as: Angels Over Broadway (1940, director of photography); The Jungle Book (director of photography) and Footlight Serenade in 1942; Stormy Weather (uncredited) and Jack London (uncredited) in 1943; Underground (1945) and Duel in the Sun (1946, director of photography); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (director of photography) and The Paradine Case (photographed PAUL MUNI (b. Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, by) in 1947; Portrait of Jennie (1948, uncredited) and My September 22, 1895, Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Foolish Heart (1949, director of photography). Lviv, Ukraine]—d. August 25, 1967, Montecito, CA) began his In 1960, he was is nominated for Best Cinematography, acting career as an adolescent with the Yiddish Theater group Color for his 1959 film The Big Fisherman. In the 1950s, he also located in the Bowery section of New York City. He made his would do cinematography for such films as: My Friend Irma Broadway debut in a 1926 production of We Americans. His first Goes West (1950, director of photography), Detective Story film role was in The Valiant in 1929. This performance led to his (1951, director of photography), and The Lusty Men (1952); first Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar nomination in 1930. He Land of the Pharaohs, The Desperate Hours (director of would go on to act in 29 roles, mostly in film. He was photography), and Man with the Gun (director of photography) in consistently nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading 1955; The Bottom of the Bottle and D-Day the Sixth of June Role in the 1930s: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) in (director of photography) in 1956. In the final years of his career, 1934, Black Fury (1935) in 1936, and he would do cinematography for such films as: Misty (1961, (1937) in 1938. He won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading director of photography), Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Role in 1937 for The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936). During this Man (1962), Lady in a Cage (1964, director of photography), A time, he also acted in films such as: Seven Faces (1929), Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966, director of photography), and Scarface (1932), Bordertown (1935), The Good Earth (1937), Why (1973). In addition to his extensive work as a and Juarez (1939). In the 1940s and 1950s he acts in films such cinematographer, he also directed six films. as: Hudson's Bay (1941), Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942), Stage Door Canteen (1943), A Song to Remember (1945), Angel L. WILLIAM O’CONNELL (b. July 31, 1890, Chicago, IL—d. on My Shoulder (1946), Stranger on the Prowl (1952), and The February, 1985, Pinopolis, SC) did cinematography for 180 films Last Angry Man (1959), for which he was, once again, such as: Missing (1918), The Little Grey Mouse (1920), The Sky nominated for a Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar in 1960. Pilot (1921), Custer of Big Horn (1926), Slaves of Beauty (1927), During the 1950s, he also acted in several televised theater series, and A Girl in Every Port (1928); The Big Timer (director of such as: The Ford Television Theatre (1953), General Electric photography) and Scarface in 1932; Charlie Chan in London Theater (1956), and Playhouse 90 (1958). He also acted in the (1934); Road Gang and Bengal Tiger in 1936; Alcatraz Island television series Saints and Sinners in 1962. (1937) and Nancy Drew: Detective (1938); Nancy Drew... Trouble Shooter and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase in ANN DVORAK (b. August 2, 1911, New York City, NY—d. 1939; The Blonde from Singapore (director of photography) and December 10, 1979, Honolulu, HI) acted in 96 films, some of Dangerously They Live (director of photography) in 1941; After which are: Ramona (1916), The Man Hater (1917), The Five Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—3

Dollar Plate (1920, Short), and The Revue of 1929 Revenge, Invisible Enemy, and Yellow Jack in 1938; The Return (1929) in the 1910s and 1920s; Our Blushing Brides, Way Out of the Cisco Kid (1939); Passport to Alcatraz, Kit Carson, and West, and Madam Satan in 1930; Dance, Fools, Dance, Just a Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum in 1940. Gigolo, and This Modern Age in 1931; Scarface (1932); Massacre and I Sell Anything in 1934; 'G' Men (1935) and We Who Are About to Die (1937); Merrily We Live and Gangs of BORIS KARLOFF (b. New York in 1938; Blind Alley (1939); Cafe Hostess and Girls of November 23, 1887, the Road in 1940; This Was Paris (1942); Flame of Barbary Camberwell, London, Coast and Masquerade in Mexico in 1945; (1946); England, UK—d. February The Private Affairs of Bel Ami and The Long Night in 1947; The 2, 1969, Midhurst, Sussex, Walls of Jericho (1948) and The Return of Jesse James (1950); I England, UK) acted in 207 Was an American Spy and The Secret of Convict Lake in 1951. film and television roles, beginning with a bit part in The Dumb Girl of Portici in 1916. His career was pretty much cast in concrete with his 70th film role as the monster in Frankenstein (1931). His career spanned the 1910s through the early 1970s, appearing in films such as: The Lightning Raider and The Masked Rider in 1919; The Last of the Mohicans (1920), Omar the Tentmaker (1922), The General (1926), Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927), Vultures of the Sea (1928), and The Phantom of the North (1929). In addition to his career-defining role in Frankenstein, he also appeared in films such as and Graft in 1931. In the 1930s, he also appeared in films such as: Scarface, The Miracle Man, The Mask of Fu Manchu, and The Mummy in 1932; The Ghoul (1933) and The Lost Patrol (1934); Bride of Frankenstein and The GEORGE RAFT (b. September 26, 1901, New York, NY—d. Raven in 1935; The Walking Dead, The Man Who Lived Again, November 24, 1980, Los Angeles, CA) acted in 84 parts in film and Charlie Chan at the Opera in 1936; Devil's Island, Son of and television, some of which are: Queen of the Night Clubs and Frankenstein, The Mystery of Mr. Wong, Mr. Wong in in 1929; Goldie (1931); Dancers in Chinatown, The Man They Could Not Hang, and Tower of the Dark, Scarface, Night World in 1932; Pick-up (1933), The London in 1939. In the 1940s and 1950s, he appeared in films Trumpet Blows (1934), She Couldn't Take It (1935), and Each such as: Doomed to Die, Before I Hang, and The Ape in 1940; Dawn I Die (1939); and They Drive by The Climax and House of Frankenstein in 1944; The Body Night in 1940; Broadway (1942), Stage Door Canteen (1943), Snatcher (1945) and Bedlam (1946); The Secret Life of Walter (1945), Mr. Ace (1946), Intrigue (1947), Race Mitty and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome in 1947; and Abbott and Street (1948), (1949), Loan Shark (1953), Black Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), Abbott and Widow (1954), (1955), Around the World in 80 Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), and Frankenstein Days (1956), (1959), and Ocean's 11 (1960); 1970 (1958). In the last decade of his career, he appeared in films Batman (TV Series) and Casino Royale in 1967; (1978) such as: The Raven and The Terror in 1963; The Ghost in the and The Man with Bogart's Face (1980). Invisible and The Venetian Affair in 1966; Targets, House of Evil, and Fear Chamber in 1968; Cauldron of Blood (1970); OSGOOD PERKINS (b. May 16, 1892, West Newton, MA—d. Isle of the Snake People and Alien Terror in 1970. September 21, 1937, Washington, District of Columbia) acted in In the 1950s and 1960s, he was also very active in 21 films, such as: The Cradle Buster (1922); Second Fiddle and television acting, appearing in such productions as: The Boris Puritan Passions in 1923; Wild, Wild Susan (1925) and Love 'Em Karloff Mystery Playhouse (1949, TV Series), CBS Television and Leave 'Em (1926); Scarface (1932); Madame Du Barry and Workshop (1952, TV Series), A Connecticut Yankee (1955, TV The President Vanishes in 1934; Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936) Movie), The Alcoa Hour (1956, TV Series), Shirley Temple's and A Star Is Born (1937). Storybook (1958, TV Series), Playhouse 90 (1956-1960, TV C. HENRY GORDON (b. June 17, 1884, New York City, Series), Route 66 (1962, TV Series), and The Wild Wild West NY—d. December 3, 1940, Los Angeles, CA) acted in 80 films, (1966, TV Series). such as: A Devil with Women (1930); Charlie Chan Carries On, The Black Camel, and Mata Hari in 1931; The Gay Caballero, “Howard Hawks.” from World Film Directors v. I Ed John Scarface, The Doomed Battalion, and Wakeman HW Wilson Co NY 1987 (entry by Gerald Mast) in 1932; Gabriel Over the White House and Night Flight in 1933; Fugitive Lovers (1934); Under Two Flags and The Charge of the Director, producer and scenarist, Howard (Winchester) Light Brigade in 1936; Trapped by G-Men (1937); Tarzan's Hawks, was born in Goshen, Indiana. A child of the American Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—4

Midwest, like Thomas Edison. In the era of America’s romance period that produced such antiwar films as What Price Glory?. with inventors and inventions, Hawks would travel on his love of The Big Parade, and All Quiet on the Front. The flying machines to the art of machines, the motion picture. The son of a sequences in The Dawn Patrol were as photographically brilliant wealthy paper manufacturer and grandson of a wealthy as they were aeronautically accurate. Flying and filming had lumberman, Hawks moved west with his family in 1906. They never before been so beautifully mated, and Hawks flavorful settled in Pasadena, California, where the warmer and drier air dialogue sounded as if it were uttered by human beings, not was kinder to his mother’s asthma. The movies themselves orating actors. The affected, stilted diction that marred so many traveled west about the same time. The young Hawks moved early talkies was entirely absent. Dialogue in Hawks’ films between east and west for his education—prep school at Phillips would always suggest the feel and flavor of spontaneous Exeter, graduation from Pasadena High School, and a degree in conversation rather than scripted lines—he in fact not only engineering from Cornell University He began to spend time permitted his players to improvise but deliberately hired players with the new movie who would and could. companies that were turning Scarface (1930-1932) Hollywood into a company brought this spontaneous quality town. In 1917 he worked as a from the wartime skies to the prop boy for Famous Players- urban streets. Scarface remains Lasky, assisting Marshall simultaneously one of the most Neilan on Mary Pickford brutal and most funny of gangster films. Later that year he joined films—“as vehement, vitriolic, US Army Air Corps as a and passionate a work as has flying instructor. He would been made about Prohibition,” in combine his two loves—for the opinion of Manny Farber. flying and filming—in years When Tony Camonte lets go with to come. his new machine gun into a rack In the early 1920s, of pool cues, or the O’Hara gang Hawks shared a Hollywood shoots a restaurant to house with several young men smithereens, they are murderous on the threshold of movie children having “fun,” one of the distinction—Allan Dwan and most important words in Hawks’ Irving Thalberg among them. Thalberg recommended Hawks to critical lexicon. Hawks’ antihero Tony, a fanciful portrait of Al Jesse Lasky, who in 1924 was looking for bright young man to Capone sketched by Paul Muni, is not only a spiteful kid; he also run the story department of Famous Players. For two years nurses an unarticulated and repressed sexual attraction to his own Hawks supervised the development and writing of every script sister and guns down their best friend (George Raft) who invades for the company that was to become Paramount, the most this Freudian turf. Hawks’ recurrent piece of physical business powerful studio in 1920s Hollywood. William Fox invited for Raft—the obsessive flipping of a coin—has survived ever Hawks to join his company in 1926, offering him a chance to after as the quintessential gangster’s tic. It introduced the familiar direct the scripts he had developed. The Road to Glory was the Hawks method of deflecting psychological revelation from first of eight films Hawks directed at Fox in the next three years, explicit dialogue to the subtle handling of physical objects. As all of them silent except (1928) and Trent’s Last John Belton notes, “Hawks’ characterization is rooted in the Case (1929), part-talkies in the years of Hollywood’s transition physical. between silence and sound. Scarface also introduced Hawks to two important Of the Fox silents, only Fig Leaves (1926) and A Girl in professional associates: Howard Hughes, who produced the film Every Port (1928) survive. The former is a comedy of gender, and would weave through Hawks’ entire career as either ally or tracing domestic warfare from Adam and Eve to their modern enemy; and Ben Hecht, the hard-drinking, wise-cracking writer descendants. A Girl in Every Port is “a love story between two who, like Hawks, wanted to make films that were “fun.” Hecht men,” in Hawks’ words—two brawling sailor buddies who fall and Hawks were kindred cynics who would work together for for the woman. The motif of two friends who share the same love twenty years. Hughes, however, had his own war to win. A would recur in many Hawks sound films, particularly in the lifetime foe of film industry censorship boards, Hughes resisted 1930s (Tiger Shark, Today We Live, Barbary Coast, The Road to attempts to soften Scarface. He finally relented, not by toning Glory). The motif of two wandering pals, enjoying the sexual down its brutal humor but by inserting a drab lecture on the benefits of travel, returns with a gender reversal in Gentlemen social responsibility of voters. He also concluded the film with Prefer Blondes, with and playing the fallen mobster’s whining cowardice, to take the glamor out of the two traveling buddies. More than anything else, A Girl in his defiance. But Hughes was so enraged at being pressured into Every Port declared male friendship one of Hawks’ primary these emendations that he withdrew the film from circulation for concerns. With the end of his Fox contract in 1929, Hawks four decades. Only his death returned it to American audiences. would never again sign a long-term contract with a single studio. Hawks traveled to other studios and genres in the 1930s. Columbia gave him a prison movie, The Criminal Code (1931). It was the coming of synchronized sound that allowed The Crowd Roars (1932) at Warner Brothers was his first picture Hawks to become so independent a film stylist. The Dawn Patrol about auto racing, another Hawks hobby; he designed the (1930) was a remarkable early in many respects. Its automobile that won the 1936 Indianapolis 500. Tiger Shark pacifism mirrored the reaction against the First World War in a (1932), for Warners’ subsidiary, First National, took Hawks to Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—5 sea with Edward G. Robinson and the fishing fleet. Hawks visible, photographic means of making clear inner feelings that depicted the professional business of tuna fishing in this film his characters never verbally express….The film also set the two with the same documentary accuracy and regard for detail that he essential Hawks patterns with movie stars: making a familiar star devoted to flying in The Dawn Patrol or driving in The Crowd into a comedic parody of his own persona (as Hawks would later Roars. His earliest talkies established a key pattern: in the words do with , , John Wayne, and of Andrew Sarris, “The Hawksian hero is upheld by an Marilyn Monroe); and inventing the persona of a total unknown instinctive professionalism.” (future Hawks Galateas included , Rita Hawks returned to wartime Hayworth, Jane Russell, Lauren Bacall, professionals in Today We Live (1933) and Montgomery Clift, , and The Road to Glory (1936). The former was Angie Dickinson). adapted from “Turn About,” a story by Bringing Up Baby (1938) at RKO, , and began Hawks’ “the screwiest of screwball comedies” for personal and professional association with Andrew Sarris, was also the first of the writer. Like Hawks, Faulkner loved Hawks’ four screwball comedies with flying and, like Hawks, had lost a brother in Cary Grant. In these films the smooth an air crash. Both men also liked drinking Grant not only becomes the alter ego of and storytelling. Hawks and Faulkner the icily smooth Howard Hawks behind would drink, fly, and tell stories together the camera; he also becomes the butt of over the next twenty years. Today We Live, jokes that the world longs to inflict on the made at MGM, began another Hawks icily smooth. “Whereas the dramas show pattern—walking off the set when studio the mastery of man over nature. . . ,” bosses interfered with his filming. Today according to Peter Wollen, “the comedies We Live was the only film Hawks show his humiliation, his regression.” completed under a three-picture agreement Hawks endlessly submits Grant to with MGM. After tolerating Louis B. degrading attacks on his handsome Mayer’s interference on this first film, masculinity, usually by removing his pants mostly in the handling of star Joan and putting him in a dress. In Bringing Up Crawford, Hawks refused to finish two Baby Grant is a nearsighted zoologist who others (The Prizefighter and the Lady, and Viva Villa!). He spends a midsummer night’s eve with Katherine Hepburn, would never return to MGM. apparently chasing leopards and lost dinosaur bones. What he finds instead is his love and his eyesight—indeed his recognition Perhaps Hawks’ most interesting genre films in the that love is the secret of vision. In His Girl Friday (1940), 1930s were screwball comedies. Hawks was a master of a genre adapted from The Front Page, another Hecht-MacArthur stage that has come to represent one of the period’s most revealing hit, Hawks changes the gender of the original newspaper reporter reflections of American aspirations. As the philosopher Stanley from male to female (), initiating a contest with Cavell argued, the enacts the “myth of modern her editor (Grant) that is both love and war. In the end, she too marriage,” the basis of our culture’s idea of happiness. While recovers her eyesight to discover love in their combative Hawks always added comic touches to serious stories—from friendship…. Scarface in 1930 to El Dorado in 1967—the pure comedy Hawks spent the early 1940s with two personalities less provided much broader comic possibilities. Love and friendship slick, cool, and distant than Grant. made two films had always been closely intertwined in his films, and since for Hawks, both in 1941. Sergeant York, produced at Warners by Hawks friends fight as much as they talk, fight because they are Jesse Lasky, Hawks’ first boss, features Cooper as the homespun friends, each convinced of his own rightness, it was a very short pacifist who became a hero. Hawks’ most honored step from male friends to male-female lovers. The Hawks film in his lifetime, Sergeant York brought him his only screwball comedy is distinctive in that the hero and heroine are Academy Award nomination for best director….Another as much friends as lovers and as much fighting opponents as wartime alternative to Cary Grant was Humphrey Bogart. The spiritual kin; it is a comedy of ego in which two strong Bogart quality Hawks exploited—quite the opposite of Cooper’s personalities fight because they love. open warmth—was a tendency to hide the heart behind a tough Hawks’ first work in this genre Twentieth Century mask of emotional indifference and vocal taciturnity. Hawks had (1934), was adapted from a stage play by Ben Hecht and Charles always liked characters who did and felt more than they said and MacArthur. Along with Frank Capra’s , Bogart became an especially effective partner for Hawks’ newest made in the same year and at the same studio (Columbia), find, Lauren Bacall.... Twentieth Century was one of the films that defined the If the decade and a half from 1938 to 1952 marked screwball genre. The two warring egos of Twentieth Century are Hawks’ Cary Grant period, split by the war years, the final two the monomaniacal impresario Oscar Jaffe (played by the decades of Hawks’ creative career marked his John Wayne monomaniacal ham, ) and his actress Galatea, period. Red River (1948) was both Hawks’ first Wayne film and Lily Garland (played by Hawks’ own cousin, , in his first Western apart from The Outlaw, a film that her first major comic role). The film demonstrated several Hawks Hawks began in 1941 but quit on account of conflict with its traits, including breakneck dialogue that refused to soften or producer, Howard Hughes. Hughes’ resulting resentment had sentimentalize the combat, and the revelation of internal considerable impact on Red River, for he demanded that Hawks psychological states through concrete external objects—the Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—6 delete footage resembling scenes in The Outlaw or face a lawsuit. also lovers and opponents; reversal of conventional gender expectations about manly men and womanly women. Dressed as Red River was Hawks’ most epic film, the story of a cattle drive routine Hollywood genre pictures, Hawks’ films were from Texas to Kansas, in which the wanderers travel thousands psychological studies of people in action, simultaneously trying of miles, facing both the external challenge of the physical to be true to themselves and faithful to the group. In his classic universe and the internal struggle against their own psychological conflict of love and honor, Hawks was the American movie defects. Wayne plays the older rancher, Thomas Dunson, a man descendant of Corneille. whose will, determination, and courage have built a cattle empire; Montgomery Clift, in his first film role, plays the He died at the age of eighty-one in Palm Springs, younger partner, Matthew Garth_Duson’s adopted son, friend, California, from complications arising from a broken hip when and “lover.” When Dunson’s unswerving commitment to his own he tripped over one of his dogs. Even as he grew older he values threatens the success of the drive, Matthew usurps continued to ride his motorcycle and raise his martini. He was Duson’s command in a Western Mutiny on the Bouny. Dunson married three times, and had four children–two of whom work in swears to track Matthew down and kill him. He tracks him down, the film industry. His primary legacies are his films and his but as father faces son and friend faces friend, Dunson learns that persona as the modest professional in a bombastic business, a a vow spoken in haste and anger is not worth defending. In Red man who could make the structures and the strictures of that River Hawks shaped the essential John Wayne persona—the business work for him, so he could tell the stories he wanted to inflexible man of honor, courage, and will whom no adversary tell in the way he wanted to tell tem. can break but love can bend.

After Red River, Hawks and Wayne took three more trips to the Old West—in Rio Bravo (1959), El Dorado (1967), and Rio Lobo (1970). They also traveled to the wilds of Africa in Hatari! (1962), where Hawks’ extended sequences of tracking wild animals provide another masterly film document of courageous and knowledgeable professionals performing an exotically difficult job. As both Wayne and Hawks grew older, their films together showed their age while defying it, settling into a comfortable social landscape with comfortable friends to perform tasks beyond the capacity of younger, less experienced men….

The final fifteen years of Hawks’ life brought him wider public recognition than he had ever known in his busiest years of studio activity. Respected inside the industry as one of Who the Devil Made It Conversations with Legendary Film Hollywood’s sturdiest directors of top stars in taut stories, Hawks Directors. . Ballantine Books NY 1997 acquired little fame outside it until the rise of the auteur theory in France, England, and America between 1953 and 1962. To some . . .I liked almost anybody that made you realize who in the devil extent, it was the auteur theory that made Hawks a household was making the picture. . .Because the director’s the storyteller name and Hawks that made auteur theory a household idea. In and should have his own method of telling it. Howard Hawks their campaign against both European “art films” and solemn adaptations of literary classics, articulators of the auteur view— Among American directors, referred to François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Peter Wollen, V.S. Perkins, Hawks as “certainly the most talented.” French critic Henri Agel Ian Cameron, Andrew Sarris, John Belton, William Paul— wrote: “Hawks is one of the rare patricians of the screen and his looked for studio directors of genre films whose work displayed ethic is of human nobility.” Offbeat critic Manny Farber said: both a consistent cinematic style and consistent narrative motifs. “Howard Hawks is the key figure in the male action film because Hawks was the model of such a director. He spent he shows a maximum speed, inner life, and view, with the least fifteen years in interviews denying any serious artistic aspiration, amount of flat feet. His best films have the swallowed-up claiming that all he wanted to do was tell a story. But a Hawks intricacy of a good softshoe dance.” But French director Jacques story had an unmistakable look, feel, and focus. His style, though Rivette nailed it: “If Hawks incarnates the classic American never obtrusive, had always been built on certain basic elements: cinema, if he has brought nobility to every genre, then it is a careful attention to the basic qualities of light (the lamps that because, in each case, he has found that particular genre’s always hang in a Hawks frame); the counter-point of on-frame essential quality and grandeur, and blended his personal themes action and off-frame sound; the improvisationally casual sound with those the American tradition had already enriched and made of Hawks’ conversation; the reluctance of characters to articulate profound.” The great variety of Hawks’ pictures—there really their inner feelings, and the transference of emotional material isn’t any kind of movie he didn’t make—speaks for a restless from dialogue to physical objects; symmetrically balanced desire to challenge oneself, perhaps almost as a kind of renewal. frames that produce a dialectic between opposite halves of the His characters do that—it is a part of their professionalism as frame. So too, Hawks’ films, no matter what the genre, handled well as of their bravery. Hawks put it simply: “For me the best consistent plot motifs: a small band of professionals committed drama is the one that deals with a man in danger.” to doing their jobs as well as the could; pairs of friends who were Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—7

movie that Mr. Hawks can not make, and has not made, and there [Bogdanovich of Hawks] He said to me once—and I is almost nobody at all who can make them better than he does." remembered it quite often on every picture I’ve made: “Always It was a perfect introduction, as lean and spare and cut on movement, and the audience won’t notice the cut.” honest as a Howard Hawks movie - and without, as Hawks observed later, a lot of flowery crap about Art. Hawks never Comedy and drama were often interchangeable with consciously aimed for art in his films, and was perhaps quietly Hawks: he said that when he read a story, he first tried to see if a amazed that people found it there. But they did. He was never as comedy could be made of it and if not, he made a drama. well known with the public as some of his contemporaries, like Hitchcock and DeMille and Ford. But if you loved movies, you So many things Howard said to me echo in my head, lost a friend the other day. and did on every film I made. In 1965, on the set of El Dorado, Hawks directed some of the greatest entertainments ever he told me: “An audience doesn’t know the geography of a place made, and fundamentally shaped the way we perceive many of unless you show it to them. If you don’t show them, it can be the great stars. Humphrey Bogart was partially the creation of anything you want it to be.” In other words: a movie is the world Howard Hawks, In “The Big Sleep” (1946) and “To Have and you make it. And Hawks made his worlds his way, was an Have Not” (in which Lauren Bacall told Bogey: "If you want amazingly modern picture maker—his work stays in tune with anything, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you? You changing times far more than most. He also had a sharp eye for just pucker your lips and blow."). human archetypes, a nearly flawless sense of human nature’s Cary Grant was partially the creation of Hawks, in contradictions in mythic form. He also had an almost infallible “Bringing Up Baby” and “His Girl Friday” (which was “The nose for movie mistakes: terrific advice I didn’t always heed and Front Page,” rewritten by Hawks to give one of the male roles regretted when I didn’t…. to Rosalind Russell). John Wayne is another mythic presence created in If you had to pick your own favorites, which would you say they several Hawks films. Marilyn Monroe was never more sexy or were? more vulnerable than in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” Dean I think Scarface is the favorite, because we got no help Martin and may have thought they knew how to from anybody—we were outlawed....Also, I like Red River. And play drunks - but they played their definitive drunks for Howard Rio Bravo was fun. And Bringing Up Baby. I like the Hawks, in “Rio Bravo” and “El Dorado”. comedies—I like it when you go and hear people laugh and you Those last two Westerns, made in 1959 and 1967 know they like it. respectively, had a little something in common with Hawks' last film, “Rio Lobo”, made in 1970. They all had the same plot, about the out-of-town gunman who rides in and meets his old friend, the drunken sheriff, and teams up to help him clear out the bad guys. To Hawks, it didn't matter that the story was the same: It wasn't what happened that made a movie good, but the way people behaved toward each other, the way they looked and spoke and moved and lit a cigarette. Onstage at the film festival, Hawks poked a little fun at himself over those three Westerns. "I made “Rio Bravo” with John Wayne," he remembered. "It worked out pretty well and we both liked it, so a few years later we decided to make it again. Worked out pretty good that time, too. So now I'm preparing “Rio Lobo”. I called up Duke and asked him if he wanted to be in it. Sure, he said, Roger Ebert: “In Memory: Howard Hawks,” December 29, he'd do it with me. I asked him if he wanted me to send the script 1977 over. 'Hell, Howard,' he said, 'I've already done the goddamned script two times'." When Howard Hawks came to visit the Chicago Film Festival in Now he'll never do it again. But Howard Winchester 1968, they asked Charles Flynn to get up on the stage and Hawks, who died Monday at the age of 81, had not retired. He introduce him. And Flynn, who was helping to run Doc Films at was planning another Western up until a few weeks before his the University of Chicago at the time, gave an introduction that death. Wanted to get John Wayne to star in it. It was about… was so simple in its eloquence that I remembered it the other day, hell, you know what it was about. when I learned Hawks had died. Scarface "Howard Hawks makes movies about airplanes," Flynn said. "He makes movies about fast cars. He makes movies about from Public Enemies Public Heroes Screening the Gangster men who do things: Soldiers, and cowboys, and private eyes, and from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil. Jonathan Munby U hunters, and racing car drivers, and the men who built the Chicago Chicago & London 1999 pyramids. Mr. Hawks makes movies about men and women and sometimes the battles in those are bigger than the ones in his war The early 1930s gangster film was singled out for censorship. . . . movies. Mr. Hawks makes Westerns and war movies, comedies Significantly, it is the cultural historian rather than the film and dramas, backstage romances and melodramas, and he has studies scholar who has highlighted the more seditious features been doing it since 1926. There is, in fact, almost no kind of of Hollywood’s gangster. Situating the gangster film in the Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—8 context of the Depression, Richard Pells, for example, interprets environmentalist (disinterested, objectivist, and historical realist) the gangster as “a parody of the American Dream. . . a representation of the world of the criminal “other” (like Public psychopathic Horatio Alger. . . a reproach to both the principles Enemy), Scarface declares itself as a deliberately subjective and of the market place and the reigning values of American life.” allegorical view of gangsterdom. Like Little Caesar, Scarface’s narrative is structured For what made Little Caesar, Public Enemy, and around a rise and fall motif. The mythology of capitalist Scarface so different from anything that had come before was opportunity and success is given distinctly public marking in the that their protagonists spoke in ethnic urban vernacular voices. form of a travel company’s neon billboard towering above the urban landscape that announces “The World is Yours.” Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar), Just as Rico in Little Caesar (Public is ascetic and intensely jealous Enemy), and Paul Muni of Olga (his partner’s lover) (Scarface) were stars of a and just as Tommy Powers in stock entirely different Public Enemy cannot make from what had come love to Gwen (), before. Most obviously, Tony also cannot fit into the they were not Anglo- heterosexual economy. Saxon Protestants. Edwin Scarface, building on its G. Robinson’s real name predecessors, takes the was Emmanuel Goldberg, problem of the gangter’s and Paul Muni’s real sexuality to a new level of name was Friedrich Muni intensity through the Meyer Weisenfreund. suggestion of incest. Tony Both were New York makes the wrong object choice Lower East Side in falling for his own sister, immigrant Jews who had gained their formative theatrical Cesca (Ann Dvorak). Insanely jealous of the love his partner experiences on the Yiddish stage. James Cagney was also a city Guido (George Raft) feels for her, Tony kills him. boy from the Lower East Side (of Irish Catholic stock) who had honed his performance skills on the vaudeville stage, and who Questions of literacy and elocution are understood as prided himself on having learned Yiddish to survive in the ghetto questions of power. street culture. The collusion of real and cinematic identity had everything to do with the refinement of the gangster as an Scarface’s producers came under pressure to add a “authentic” American type. scene featuring a moral diatribe by a press representative and moral custodians against the gangster. It was hoped this would Fears about Hollywood’s contributions to the general help temper the movie’s encouragement of sympathy for such breakdown of social mores that had been spawned in the 1920s criminals. Scarface was prohibited from release until censors’ took on even more intensity in the aftermath of the Crash. More demands were met. The theme of incest was problematic enough, significantly, if this fear was directed at issues of sex and nudity but worse still the film seemed to condone Tony’s behavior. The during the 1920s, it found a new target in the glorification of film simply glorified the gangster and offered no moral lesson. lawlessness in 1930. Here was the most obvious sign of Structurally, this arose, as I have argued, from the problem of Hollywood’s capacity to facilitate social degeneration. having a decentered hero as the primary figure for audience Furthermore, to valorize gangsterdom and bootlegging in the identification. . . . After protracted argument producer Howard context of the early Depression years could only intensify such Hughes gave way to the intervention, which involved not only objections. adding scenes but cutting a major (and violent) action sequence. To temper things, Hollywood introduced a form of self- What resulted, however, was not a successful (re)moralization of censorship that suited, ultimately, its own interests. The gangster the plot. film disclaimer was the most obvious example of this. The (Howard Hawks refused to participate in the shooting of rhetoric of civic responsibility comes to form a frame narrative, added scenes.) as it were, which attempts to impose a preferred reading on the rest of the text. Such an imposition, however, had to compete The ending of Scarface features our protagonist with a range of other meanings, including precisely a rejection of suddenly turning yellow, which is entirely out of character with moral and civic norms. Tony’s general portrayal as someone cool in the face of fire.

SCARFACE: “THE WORLD IS YOURS” (ONLY IF Sound’s introduction to the gangster film was an YOU CAN “TALK NICE”) essential element in lending sanction to the perspective of the ethnic cultural “other” on the American screen. The contentious To the extent that it is clearly based on the exploits of meaning of these early 1930s gangster films was contingent not (even including the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre), only on the time they appeared (on the back of the Wall Street we might call Scarface an attempt at documentary Crash and in the last years of Prohibition) and the medium in expressionism. But rather than pretend to execute an which they appeared (the mass cinema), but on the irony of how Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—9 sound helped expose the cultural prejudice involved in their own fire that Tony is forced to exit the building, guns blazing. He is censure by civic and moral pressure groups. sprayed with police gun fire but appears unfazed. Upon noticing the police officer who had been arresting him throughout the Censorship in Scarface (Wikipedia) film, he fires at him, only to hear a single "click" noise implying Scarface was produced and filmed before the Motion Picture that his gun is empty. He is then killed after being shot several Association (MPAA) was founded and before the "R" rating was times by said police officer. A repeated clicking noise is heard on established. Will Hays was the chairman of the Motion Pictures the soundtrack implying that he was still attempting to fire while Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) at the time. he was dying.[45] This board later became known as the Hays Office. The goal of the Hays office was to censor out nudity, sexuality, drug use and “Al Capone” (Wikipedia) crime.[40] More specifically, the Hays Office wanted to avoid the Alphonse Gabriel sympathetic portrayal of crime by either showing criminals Capone (January 17, 1899 – recognizing the error of their way or showing the criminals get January 25, 1947), sometimes punished.[41] J.E. Smyth called Scarface, "one of the most highly known by the nickname censored films in Hollywood history."[42] Howard Hawks "Scarface", was an American believed the censorship office had personal vendettas against the gangster and businessman who movie specifically, while Hughes believed the censorship was attained notoriety during due to "ulterior and political motives" of corrupt the Prohibition era as the co- politicians.[43] However, James Wingate of the New York censor founder and boss of the Chicago boards rebutted that Hughes was preoccupied with "box office Outfit. His seven-year reign as publicity" in producing the film.[44] After repeated demands for a crime boss ended when he was script rewrite from the Hays Office, Hughes ordered Hawks to 33. shoot the film, "Screw the Hays Office, make it as realistic, and Capone was born in New York City, to Italian grisly as possible."[45] The Hays Office was outraged immigrants. He was a Five Points Gang member who became a by Scarface when they screened it. The Hays office called for bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his scenes to be deleted, scenes to be added that condemn early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard gangsterism, and a different ending. They believed that Tony's and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal death at the end of the film was too glorifying. In addition to the syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the violence, the MPPDA felt that an inappropriate relationship Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione between the main character and his sister was too overt, Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental especially in one scene where he holds her in his arms after he in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North slaps her and tears her dress; they ordered this scene be deleted. Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Hughes, in order to receive the MPPDA's approval, deleted some Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly of the more violent scenes, added a prologue to condemn violent means, but his mutually profitable relationships with gangsterism, and wrote a new ending.[46] In addition, a couple mayor William Hale Thompson and the city's police meant he scenes were added to overtly condemn gangsterism such as a seemed safe from law enforcement. scene in which a newspaper publisher looks at the screen and Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the directly admonishes the government and the public for their lack cheers from spectators when he appeared at ball games. He made of action in fighting against mob violence and a scene in which donations to various charities and was viewed by many as the chief detective denounces the glorification of "modern-day Robin Hood". However, the Saint Valentine's Day gangsters.[47] Hawks refused to shoot the extra scenes and the Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad alternate ending so they were directed by Richard Rossen, daylight, damaged Chicago's and Capone's image, leading earning Rossen the title of "co-director".[48] Hughes was influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers instructed to change the title to The Menace, Shame of the to dub Capone "Public Enemy No. 1". Nation or Yellow to clarify the subject of the film; after month of The federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone haggling, he compromised by titling it Scarface, Shame of the and prosecuted him in 1931 for tax evasion, which was at that Nation and adding a foreword condemning the "gangster" in a time a federal crime; the prosecution was a novel strategy. general sense.[49] Hughes also made an attempt to release the film During a highly publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence under the title "The Scar" when the original title was disallowed Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes during prior by the Hays office.[50] Besides the title, the term "Scarface" was (and ultimately abortive) negotiations to pay the government removed completely from the film. In the scene where Tony kills taxes he owed. He was convicted and sentenced to 11 years Rinaldo, Cesca says the word "murderer", but she can be seen in federal prison. After conviction, he replaced his defense team actually mouthing the word "Scarface".[51] with experts in tax law, and his grounds for appeal were The original script had Tony's mother loving her son strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling, but his appeal unconditionally, accepting his lifestyle, and even accepting ultimately failed. Capone showed signs of syphilitic money and gifts from him. In addition, there was a politician dementia early in his sentence and became increasingly who, despite campaigning against gangsters on the podium, is debilitated before being released after eight years of shown partying with them after hours. The script ending had incarceration. On January 25, 1947, Capone died of cardiac Tony staying in the building, unaffected by tear gas and a arrest after suffering a stroke. multitude of bullets fired at him. It is not until the building is on

Hawks and Rossen—SCARFACE—10

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS SERIES 37 SEPT 11 DOROTHY ARZNER, , 1933 SEPT 18 OTTO PREMINGER, LAURA, 1944 SEPT 25 GIUSEPPE DE SANTIS, BITTER RICE, 1949 OCT 2 AKIRA KUROSAWA, RASHOMON, 1950 OCT 9 PIER PAOLO PASOLINI, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW, 1964 OCT 16 ROBERT BRESSON, MOUCHETTE, 1967 OCT 23 MIKE HODGES, GET CARTER, 1971 OCT 30 DAVID LYNCH, THE ELEPHANT MAN, 1980 NOV 6 KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI, THREE COLORS: BLUE, 1993 NOV 13 ALAN MAK AND WAI-KEUNG LAU, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, 2002 NOV 20 , THE DEPARTED, 2006 NOV 27 TOM MCCARTHY, SPOTLIGHT, 2015 DEC 4 , THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, 1975

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.