Page "Howard Hawks" Paragraph 19

A Girl in Every Port is considered by film scholars to be the most important film of Hawks's silent career because it is his first film to introduce many of the Hawksian themes and characters that would continue until his final films.

It was his first " love story between two men " where two men bond over their duty, skills and careers while considering their friendship to be more important than any affection towards a female.

Hawks wrote the original story and developed the screenplay with James Kevin McGuinness and Seton Miller.

In the film Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong play two merchant seamen who are arch rivals when it comes to conquest women, with McLaglen constantly finding Armstrong's tattoo on the women that he is attempting to seduce.

Eventually the two rivals become friends and develop a heterosexual mutual admiration for each other.

Louise Brooks plays the cabaret singer that the two men fall in love with.

The film was filmed from October to December 1927 and released in February 1928.

It was successful in the US, and very successful in Europe where Louise Brooks was developing a cult following.

In France, Henri Langlois called Hawks " the Gropius of the cinema " and Swiss novelist and poet Blaise Cendrars said that the film " definitely marked the first appearance of contemporary cinema.

" However Hawks once again went over budget with this film and his relationship with Sol Wurtzel became worse.

After an advance screening that received positive reviews, Wurtzel told Hawks " This is the worst picture Fox has made in years.