Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood by Todd McCarthy Page B
Authors: Todd McCarthy
Tags: Biography
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usual grade-school curriculum, gave special attention to industrial arts; this marked the beginning of Howard’s lifelong hobby of wood and metal crafting. The average class size was sixteen students, and the school prided itself on the special attention givento the children, who advanced to the next level in each class not according to the calendar but by virtue of their success in the current grade.
Howard Hawks was a thoroughly average student at Poly. His standard courses were English, arithmetic, geography, German, art training, manual arts, penmanship, music, and gymnasium; he later added French and substituted history for geography. Four grades—excellent,good, medium and low—were given, and in his sixth-grade year, Howard received seventeen Ms, thirty Gs, and six Es. In the seventh grade, his grades dipped slightly; he got thirty Gs, twenty-four Ms, and no Es. In the eighth grade, his marks slipped further, with four Ls, including two in arithmetic, only two Es, in English and art training, twenty Gs, and twenty-three Ms. He scoredbetter in German than in French, did not excel at gym, was good in the reading section of his English classes.
School photos of Howard at the time—one of which shows him in a typical pose, holding a tennis racquet and slouching against a building—reveal him to be slim and on the short side compared to most of the other boys, always with a very serious, rather suspicious air that was accentuatedby his tight little mouth. Howard was not among the winners in the school’s tennis tournaments, nor was he among the many contributors to the year-book of Poly’s first eighth-grade graduating class in 1910. It is likely, however, that he participated in one of the local boys’ favorite sports: “coaster” racing, in which large but motorless race cars were piloted downhill on dirt roads in nearbyAltadena. Fifteen boys, including Chuck “Roughhouse” Hunt, the son of Myron Hunt by his first marriage, and five girls made up the class, and the inscription beside a portrait of a grim-looking fourteen-year-old boy in a double-breasted suit reads, “Howard Hawks—‘Our English descendent.’”
During the same period, three other Hawks kids were following right behind Howard. Despite being two yearsyounger, Kenneth entered Poly in the fifth grade in 1907, and after a rough start he made solid Gs. William, who was three years behind Kenneth, performed similarly well in school, getting Gs all around. Grace entered in 1907 and was by far the best student among the Hawks children, earning many Es and being singled out on her third-grade report card as “A fine worker.”
In May 1911, the mosthorrible of tragedies hit the Hawks family, the first of three to befall the children of Frank and Helen Hawks. On May 4, Helen Bernice, their youngest child, then five years and four months old, ate a bad piece of fruit and suddenly died. The cause of death was officially listed as acute enteritis, but it seems likely that the fruit, described as “unripe” on her death certificate, was actuallysomehow infected or poisoned. In accordance with her Christian Scientist beliefs, the girl’s devastated mother instructed the funeral director to cremate the remains, and the ashes were interred at Mt. View Cemetery two days later. Typically, the family kept its grief subdued and as controlled as possible, and what happened to Helen was rarely spoken about subsequently.
For his freshman, sophomore,and first quarter of his junior years of high school, from September 1910 through December 1912, Howard went to the public Pasadena High; decades later, the facility evolved into Pasadena City College, which currently occupies the same site at Hill and Colorado. Freshman year, he earned “good” marks across the board in English, algebra, wood shop, freehand drawing, mechanical drawing, and gym,though only a “medium” in French. Sophomore year, when the grading system was changed to percentages, he managed
Howard Hawks was a thoroughly average student at Poly. His standard courses were English, arithmetic, geography, German, art training, manual arts, penmanship, music, and gymnasium; he later added French and substituted history for geography. Four grades—excellent,good, medium and low—were given, and in his sixth-grade year, Howard received seventeen Ms, thirty Gs, and six Es. In the seventh grade, his grades dipped slightly; he got thirty Gs, twenty-four Ms, and no Es. In the eighth grade, his marks slipped further, with four Ls, including two in arithmetic, only two Es, in English and art training, twenty Gs, and twenty-three Ms. He scoredbetter in German than in French, did not excel at gym, was good in the reading section of his English classes.
School photos of Howard at the time—one of which shows him in a typical pose, holding a tennis racquet and slouching against a building—reveal him to be slim and on the short side compared to most of the other boys, always with a very serious, rather suspicious air that was accentuatedby his tight little mouth. Howard was not among the winners in the school’s tennis tournaments, nor was he among the many contributors to the year-book of Poly’s first eighth-grade graduating class in 1910. It is likely, however, that he participated in one of the local boys’ favorite sports: “coaster” racing, in which large but motorless race cars were piloted downhill on dirt roads in nearbyAltadena. Fifteen boys, including Chuck “Roughhouse” Hunt, the son of Myron Hunt by his first marriage, and five girls made up the class, and the inscription beside a portrait of a grim-looking fourteen-year-old boy in a double-breasted suit reads, “Howard Hawks—‘Our English descendent.’”
During the same period, three other Hawks kids were following right behind Howard. Despite being two yearsyounger, Kenneth entered Poly in the fifth grade in 1907, and after a rough start he made solid Gs. William, who was three years behind Kenneth, performed similarly well in school, getting Gs all around. Grace entered in 1907 and was by far the best student among the Hawks children, earning many Es and being singled out on her third-grade report card as “A fine worker.”
In May 1911, the mosthorrible of tragedies hit the Hawks family, the first of three to befall the children of Frank and Helen Hawks. On May 4, Helen Bernice, their youngest child, then five years and four months old, ate a bad piece of fruit and suddenly died. The cause of death was officially listed as acute enteritis, but it seems likely that the fruit, described as “unripe” on her death certificate, was actuallysomehow infected or poisoned. In accordance with her Christian Scientist beliefs, the girl’s devastated mother instructed the funeral director to cremate the remains, and the ashes were interred at Mt. View Cemetery two days later. Typically, the family kept its grief subdued and as controlled as possible, and what happened to Helen was rarely spoken about subsequently.
For his freshman, sophomore,and first quarter of his junior years of high school, from September 1910 through December 1912, Howard went to the public Pasadena High; decades later, the facility evolved into Pasadena City College, which currently occupies the same site at Hill and Colorado. Freshman year, he earned “good” marks across the board in English, algebra, wood shop, freehand drawing, mechanical drawing, and gym,though only a “medium” in French. Sophomore year, when the grading system was changed to percentages, he managed
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