Howard Winchester Hawks was an American filmmaker. The director, producer, and writer worked on over 40 films, many of which are seen as defining films of their genre.http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Ha-Ji/Hawks-Howard.html He received an honorary Academy Award in 1975.

Hawks served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War I. Afterwards, he worked as a racecar driver, aviator, and designer in an aircraft factory before he began his filmmaking career.http://www.tcmdb.com/participant.jsp?participantId=83089 His first film-related job was during college, when he worked as a prop man for Famous Players-Lasky. He later wrote and directed several silent films for the studio, but received no credit.http://www.tcmdb.com/participant.jsp?participantId=83089 Hawks career rose to prominence with the advent of sound, and he was noted for a restrained visual style that gave more emphasis to the actors' gestures and the rapid-fire dialogue.http://www.allmovie.com/artist/howard-hawks-93764/bio His most famous works cover a wide selection of genres, including the gangster film Scarface (1932), the film noir The Big Sleep (1946), the Westerns Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959), the musical Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953), and the screwball comedies Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and His Girl Friday (1940).http://www.tcmdb.com/participant.jsp?participantId=83089 He is also known for igniting or redefining the careers of several major actors and actresses, including John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth, and Rosalind Russell.http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Ha-Ji/Hawks-Howard.html

Despite the variety in genre type, Hawks films are united by a theme of professionalism, in which honor-bound men are isolated and must fight to achieve a goal. His characters speak tersely, preferring to be defined by their actions.http://www.tcmdb.com/participant.jsp?participantId=83089 These actions often include significant gestures, with the way a character handles a particular object revealing an emotion or providing subtext. Examples include a gangster's nervous flip of a coin in Scarface or the lighting of cigarettes in a number of films.http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Ha-Ji/Hawks-Howard.html