Howard Winchester Hawks, popularly known as Howard Hawks, was one of the greatest American directors, whose career spanned from the ‘silent’ era through the ‘talkies’, to the early 1970s when the directors emerged as ‘auteur’. Even though his films were well-liked by the masses and featured the leading actors of the American film industry, his work was seldom appreciated by the Academy of Motion Picture. He is remembered as the maker of some of the best Hollywood films, yet he never won an Oscar for Best Director; he was nominated only once—in 1941 for ‘Sergeant York’. The Academy finally made up for the mistake in 1974, by granting him an honorary Academy Award. He was able to enforce his signature style on every possible genre like westerns, comedies, epics, film noir, etc. In all, he made 33 talkies without ever signing up with a studio. Nevertheless, he did source almost his entire cast from carefully selected studio talent. He defined a good film as having “three great scenes, no bad ones” and a good director as “someone who doesn't annoy you”. He is undeniably one of America's greatest directors, along with his friends, John Ford and Orson Welles.