The MPAA also objected to the following ending, in which Dude and Stumpy walk down the street at night while Chance and Feathers are upstairs in her hotel room:
STUMPY
Looks like our sheriff just switched from one trouble to another.
DUDE
He’s good at trouble.
Hawks shot this finale, but the censors still didn’t like it, so he substituted
his alternate in the release version of the picture.
Up to and during the shoot, Hawks continued to make small changes, but they mainly consisted of tinkering, almost always for the better. The dialogue in the finished film is uniformly smarter, more assured, and insolent than that in the final screenplay, attesting to Hawks’s continual vigilance in these matters, as well as his constant openness
to others’ ideas at all times.
Hawks’s major contribution in the late phase of writing was devising the opening sequence to eliminate dialogue. The four-minute interlude establishes all the important plot dynamics: the pathetic Dude will do anything for a drink, Chance is still inclined to help his old friend, Joe Burdette kills an unarmed man, and the men are willing to stand alone against the
Burdette gang to see justice served. It all seems simple, but that is its beauty; it is a reduction to the essence of filmmaking, to the basic tools and lessons of the silent cinema, a demonstration of total mastery so subtle and confident that the casual observer doesn’t even notice it. It is the kind of artistry that would disappear from the Hollywood cinema over the next two decades as the directors
with origins in the silent days faded out, and its elemental strength would never be recaptured. Hawks acknowledged that he deliberately withheld dialogue from the picture until it became absolutely necessary, as a way of “getting back” to the fundamentals from which he may have strayed. At the same time, he admitted that he was inspired to create this prologue by the way television shows
hooked the viewer and established a basic dramatic situation through the use of opening teasers.
In trying to regain “a little of the spirit with which we used to make pictures,” Hawks focused on a few principles. Since
The Big Sleep
, he had
shown increasing disdain for the primacy of a linear, logical plot. He remained committed to the overarching importance of telling a story, but he had now
come to prefer almost covertly telling a story through the desires and motivations of his characters. Hawks had been leaning in this direction for more than a decade—particularly in
Red River
, and
The Big Sky
—but now the arrival of television was pushing him further away from wanting to rely upon plot. Because of television, he reasoned, audiences were becoming tired of plots, making them feel
that they’ve seen it all before. “But if you can keep them from knowing what the plot is you have a chance of holding their interest.” This approach made the writing process more difficult, but also more challenging. It is from this perspective, then, that the remainder of Hawks’s films should be viewed, to judge how well he accomplished this tricky task he set for himself; there is, after all, a
fine line between the rigor of concealing a story within characterization and the laziness of not sufficiently developing a story line, and disagreement over which side of the line his late films fall on has persisted ever since they were made.
Hawks determined to inject comedy into his work when at all possible, something he felt was a hallmark of the movies’ early days more than recently, when,
as he said, “I think we got too serious about it.” While in one sense Hawks was becoming more conservative by retreating to the traditional values of the silent cinema, finding solutions in his past work and comfort in established genres, in another he was becoming more daring in his narrative methods. When it worked perfectly, as in
Rio Bravo
, the result could easily and justifiably be called
“classical.” Subsequently, in
Hatari!
, he went so far in working without a net that it often looked radically modern, while when the elements didn’t gel, as in
Man’s Favorite Sport?
and
Red Line 7000
, his style simply looked stiff and archaic. In any case, it becomes clear that, in the final decade of Hawks’s career, his greatest fun came from the challenge of devising fresh and inventive narrative
strategies, the antidote to the conventional view that he was tiredly rehashing the same old stories.
Perhaps surprisingly, given the acrimonious dispute between Hawks and Jack Warner that provoked the director’s lawsuit, there was never a question of this new project being made anywhere but at Warner Bros.; in fact, the film served as a way of settling the suit. Warner was not overly excited
by the idea of Hawks doing a Western, but with John Wayne in the package he couldn’t go too far wrong, and the prospect of Hawks shooting much of the picture on the soundstages in Burbank seemed like protection against the director’s going too much over budget or schedule. Hawks set up a new company, Armada Productions, and the deal with Warner Bros.
stipulated for the dismissal of Hawks’s breach
of contract and fraud suit, the cancellation of the second picture under the old Continental Company deal with Warners, a budget for
Rio Bravo
of $1.95 million, and $100,000 up front to Hawks, with Warners and Armada splitting the profits fifty-fifty after distribution, production, and advertising costs. To settle the nagging matter of the money Hawks had invested in the
Africa
script, $50,000
of the
Rio Bravo
budget was slipped to Hawks in the guise of Continental.
The fact that the sheriff’s character in the initial treatment was actually called John Wayne left no doubt as to who would play the role. Nonetheless, before Wayne signed, a list of eleven actors was prepared in case of unforeseen circumstances, including Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, and Sterling Hayden,
but it is impossible to imagine any of them playing Chance with anything approaching Wayne’s authority.
The other parts were wide open, and the many possible alternate castings of Dude, Feathers, Colorado, and Stumpy provide fodder for endless speculation as to what
Rio Bravo
would have been like had other actors played the roles. Would there have been a painful, Brechtian second level of meaning
to Dude’s alcoholic torture if Hawks’s first choice, Montgomery Clift, had played him? Possibly Clift recognized the character’s trials as too close to home, or maybe he just didn’t want to mix it up with Wayne and Hawks and the rest of the macho bunch again, but he turned it down. Ironically, he had just acted with Dean Martin in
The Young Lions
, and one can only wonder if a hit on the order
of
Rio Bravo
would have helped turn his career and life around in any way.
At all events, Hawks then made a list of nineteen potential actors for Dude, and Martin was not among them. Heading the list, in fact, was Frank Sinatra; others included James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Richard Widmark, Edmund O’Brien, Rod Steiger, and, surprisingly, John Ireland; a subsequent list also included Robert Mitchum,
Spencer Tracy, Tony Curtis, Lancaster, Douglas, Glenn Ford, William Holden, Henry Fonda, Van Johnson, Ray Milland, and, most intriguingly, Cary Grant. Jack Warner was all in favor of Cagney, but Hawks, despite his great regard for his long-ago leading man, remained undecided. When Dean Martin’s agent urged Hawks to meet his client, Hawks agreed, provided Martin would meet him in his office
early the next morning. Martin turned up looking bedraggled; he apologized, explaining that he was working in Las Vegas and had had to get up early, charter a plane, and fly down for the meeting. This effort made a big impression on Hawks, who hired him on the spot. “I
knew
that if he’d do all that, he’d work hard and I knew that if he’d work hard we’d have no trouble
because he’s such a personality.”
Hawks sent the actor down to wardrobe, which outfitted him like “a musical comedy cowboy,” whereupon Hawks instructed him to go back and get something that made him look like a real drunk. He did, finding the outfit he wore in the film.
For the hired gun Colorado, originally envisioned as an older man, Hawks first considered twenty-one possibilities, including Mitchum, James Garner, Jack Lemmon,
Tony Curtis, Lee Marvin, Lloyd Bridges, Chuck Connors, and Jack Palance. By March, having reconceived the role as much younger, he was looking into such pretty-boy candidates as Michael Landon, Rod Taylor, and Stuart Whitman, and the football player Frank Gifford. But then Hawks had a brainstorm. He had known the former bandleader Ozzie Nelson for some time, and at that moment,
The Adventures
of Ozzie and Harriet
, the family show starring the Nelson parents and their two sons, was at the peak of its popularity. Over the previous year, the younger son, seventeen-year-old Ricky, had also become a rock ’n’ roll singing sensation; after the box-office muscle Elvis Presley had recently demonstrated, it seemed logical that Nelson might have similar pull. Hawks asked Ozzie to send over the
most recent episodes, liked what he saw, and signed the boy up, even though Ozzie was demanding $150,000, an astronomical fee for a virtual screen newcomer.
Although, like Chance, the role of ornery old Stumpy seemed conceived for one actor and one actor alone, there were many initial candidates for it, including Arthur Hunnicutt, Gabby Hayes, Burl Ives, William Demarest, Lee Marvin, Buddy Ebsen,
and Lee J. Cobb. But it was no surprise when the part went to Walter Brennan, who, like Ricky Nelson, was now a big TV star because of the downhome program
The Real McCoys
, which was just finishing its first season.
Feathers, of course, was the plum, a perfect role for Hawks to fill with a terrific new actress. All the same, Hawks had been away for four years, had no American actresses under
contract, and didn’t have enough time to look around and then tutor a complete novice. Therefore, his list of contenders was dotted with actresses who had been around for a while, in addition to the up-and-comers: Rhonda Fleming, Jane Greer, Martha Hyer, Mari Blanchard, Diane Brewster, Beverly Garland, Carolyn Jones, Piper Laurie, Julie London, Sheree North, Janis Paige, and TV star Donna Reed were
initially considered.
Then someone new was brought to Hawks’s attention. For months, Chris Nyby kept telling Hawks about a great-looking young actress he had twice directed on television. Finally, Hawks watched Angie Dickinson in a
Nyby
Perry Mason
episode and immediately had her come see him. He may also have been spurred on by John Wayne, who had recently made a cameo appearance in the innocuous
comedy
I Married a Woman
, with Dickinson as his wife. She had also costarred opposite James Arness in the minor 1956 Western,
Gun the Man Down
, produced by Wayne’s company, Batjac. The twenty-six-year-old beauty from North Dakota, who had appeared unremark-ably in a handful of films since breaking in in 1954, came in for several meetings with Hawks before shooting a test in which Frank Gifford
played John Chance. The test went well, but Dickinson never believed she had a chance against Capucine, Charles Feldman’s protégée and girlfriend. But Capucine’s French accent was too heavy, so Hawks gave Dickinson the good news. Dee told her husband that she was surprised at his choice, and he said, “Good. I’m glad you’re surprised.” According to Dickinson, “He wanted something different.”
Enthusing to Hawks about having gotten the part, Dickinson confided to him, “I’d always been told, if I could do a picture with George Cukor or Howard Hawks, I’d be in clover.” Hawks said, “Do you know why that is? It’s because we do all your thinking for you.” The lean, leggy actress recalled, “Hawks said, ‘You’ve got a pretty good figure, but it could be better.’ So I got into pretty good shape for
the movie. But that was an order.” Hawks and Dickinson also discussed changing her name. Challenged by Hawks to come up with something, Dickinson agonized over it for some time. “I came up with one name,” she said. “I wrote it down, I couldn’t speak it to him. So I gave him a slip of paper with the name on it: Anna Rome. Howard said, ‘I like your own name better.’” To get the part, Dickinson had
to sign a personal contract with Armada, which Hawks then split with Warner Bros.; it also gave John Wayne the right to borrow her for one picture and specified Bill Hawks and Chris Nyby as “preferred borrowers.” So while it can’t truly be said that Howard Hawks discovered Angie Dickinson, he certainly gave her her big chance.
Although it is easy to overlook in retrospect, the cast of
Rio Bravo
was filled out with television performers to a remarkable degree; given the box-office calculation involved in the casting of Ricky Nelson, this can only have been deliberate on Hawks’s part. Ward Bond, who played the cattleman Wheeler, had to squeeze his work in between episodes of
Wagon Train
, then one of the most popular shows on TV. John Russell, the veteran character actor who portrayed Nathan
Burdette, had just completed the pilot to the eventual successful series
Lawman
when he reported to Hawks. Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, who appeared as the Mexican hotel proprietor, had
become famous a couple of years before on Groucho Marx’s
You Bet Your Life
, and Estelita Rodriguez, who played his wife, was a Cuban-born nightclub singer.
Hawks called on numerous familiar faces to fill out the crew:
the increasingly invaluable Paul Helmick came on as assistant director, Russell Harlan would man the camera (both for exteriors and interiors this time), and Meta Carpenter Rebner, now one of the leading and most senior women in her field, was back as script supervisor after not having worked for Hawks in well over a decade. As usual, Hawks decided to shoot the exteriors first and in March went
with John Wayne to Arizona to check out the facilities in Old Tucson, a replica of the original walled city of Tucson built in 1940 by Columbia for the film
Arizona
. Uninterested in scenic splendors for a story essentially confined to a single street, Hawks found everything he needed here but didn’t want the setting to resemble what had by then appeared in numerous other films, so he had the art
director, Leo K. (Kay) Kuter, spend five weeks and $100,000 building a new main street about four blocks long. Ultimately, Hawks found Old Tucson so congenial that he returned for
El Dorado
and
Rio Lobo
.