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Howard Hawks

The Grey Fox of Hollywood

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Howard Hawks

By: Todd McCarthy
Narrated by: Ryan Horn
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About this listen

The first major biography of one of Old Hollywood’s greatest directors. Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Howard Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks’s greatest creation may have been himself. As The Atlantic Monthly noted, “Todd McCarthy. . . . has gone further than anyone else in sorting out the truths and lies of the life, the skills and the insight and the self-deceptions of the work.”

©1997 Todd McCarthy (P)2024 Cherry Hill Publishing Direction & Production Entertainment & Celebrities Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV

Critic reviews

"Excellent...a respectful, exhaustive, and appropriately smartass look at Hollywood's most versatile director."—Newsweek

"McCarthy does a good job of distilling not so much a style as an unflinching philosophy of life.... He gives us the stoic, comic essence of Hawks and his films."—Entertainment Weekly

"Spectacular.... McCarthy's thick, rich biography...chronicles in vivid detail how perhaps the last great popular artist in the movies worked."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
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Most relevant
Before we begin, let me admit, I did not finish. I couldn't.

Some important points:

Firstly, Howard Hawks is a hero of mine. What an amazing film director! So much talent.

Secondly, Todd McCarthy has done his homework and is a credible and talented writer.

However, the narration is abysmal. Horn's dication is completely off. He pauses at the wrong time, his voice is monotone, and his pronunciation is mindboggling - Peter Bogdanovich is suddenly Bongdanovich! Repeatedly.
I really wanted to enjoy this book. It is exactly the type of biography I love listening to. Maybe this is why I feel so aggrieved.

Truly Awful Narration

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This book was fantastic. Good story of life,marriages,affairs and most of all the films that he made and the actors and actresses he worked with. Up the speed and you’ll enjoy it too

Hawk

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The book itself is spectacular. A really well researched profile of the man and well written.

The narrator however is dreadful. DREADFUL. I hate to be unduly mean, but it’s like they gave the gig to Cletus from The Simpsons. He pauses in weird places, puts the emphasis in the wrong spot, stumbles over words several times and evidently didn’t always bother with retakes, although on occasion he’s clearly spliced in corrections and those edits stick out like a sore thumb.

His pronunciation of any unusual or foreign words is always a massacre (“bon vi-vunt”). He’s also made no effort to check pronunciation of key people’s surnames properly either, so Carl Laemmle, one of the most important figures in the history of American film becomes “Carl Le Mel”

It’s all pretty distracting and makes for an incredibly frustrating listening experience. I wouldn’t want to spend more than 5 mins chatting to this prat in a bar and here you’re stranded with him for nigh on thirty hours.

But, as I say, the book itself is fantastic. What a shame you’ll miss so much of it as you repeatedly mutter “for f—k sake” every few minutes at the butchering of the text.

Great book derailed by a dreadful narrator

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