Only Angels Have Wings
HOW HOWARD HAWKS REACHED FOR THE SKY
WORDS RICK BURIN
HOWARD HAWKS WAS flying around Mexico with a bush pilot when he first heard the story.
His companion had been to a dinner where a former showgirl was celebrating a year of marriage to “a fellow with a burnt face and great eyes”. During the party, a friend stood up and regaled the audience with the full narrative of the couple’s nuptial night —complete with timings. “You son of a bitch, you were peeping!” the girl said. “No,” the friend replied, bringing out a graph made by an airplane vibration monitor that had been strapped to the underside of the wedding bed.
“The girl hung up the graph,” recalled Hawks later, “she was so proud of it. That’s where I got the story of Only Angels Have Wings.”
That’s one version, anyway. Hawks told tall tales; sometimes he’d claim to have known the couple, even to have been at the dinner. What’s certainly true is that he was visiting fellow director Frank Capra on the Columbia lot in mid1938 when he was summoned by Harry Cohn. The studio chief was planning a first teaming of stars Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, but hadn’t found the right project. Hawks handed him an outline of ‘Plane Four From Baranca’ [sic], which dealt with outcast pilots flying mail through the Andes. Two hours later, Cohn greenlit the film.