Henry Hathaway (March 13, 1898 – February 11, 1985) was an American film director and producer. He is best known as a director of Westerns, especially starring Randolph Scott and John Wayne. He directed Gary Cooper in seven films.
Background
Henry Hathaway was born Henri Léopold de Fiennes, in Sacramento, California.
His title of Marquis was inherited from his paternal grandfather, a Belgian nobleman in service to King Leopold I of Belgium. When his grandfather failed in his commission to secure the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) for Belgium, the disgraced elder Marquis self-exiled to San Francisco in 1850. There he established a law practice and married, the union of which produced Hathaway’s father, Rhoady (1868–1944), who carried the title of nobility. Rhoady became a theatrical manager and married Hathaway’s mother, a Hungarian-born Belgian of aristocratic ancestry, born the Marquise Lillie de Fiennes (Budapest, 1876–1938), who acted under her maiden name Jean Hathaway.
Early career
Juvenile roles and film technician, 1908-1917
In 1908, at 10-years-of-age, Hathaway began appearing as a child actor with the American Film Company under the mentorship of director Allan Dwan. Dyan’s prolific output of one and two-reels shorts, filmed near the U.S.-Mexico border between 1908-1912, influenced Hathaway’s later interest in Western-themed movies productions.
Hathaway left school in 1912 at the age of fourteen to become an assistant property master at Universal Pictures, and began playing adolescent roles in 1917. With the entry of the United States into World War I, Hathaway served as a gunnery instructor at Fort Wingfield in San Francisco for the duration of the conflict.
Assistant director, 1921-1932
After his discharge from the U.S. Army in 1919, Hathaway made a brief but unsuccessful foray into high finance with the Morris Audit Company. He returned to Hollywood in 1921 as property man for producer/director Frank Lloyd, the latter notable for his adaptation of literary classics.
In 1923, Hathaway began working in silent films as an assistant to directors such as Victor Fleming and Josef von Sternberg and made the transition to sound with them. He was the assistant director to Fred Niblo in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur starring Francis X. Bushman and Ramon Novarro. During the remainder of the 1920s, Hathaway continued as an assistant, helping direct actors such as Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Adolphe Menjou, Fay Wray, Walter Huston, Clara Bow, and Noah Beery.
First films as director
Randolph Scott Westerns
Henry Hathaway made his directorial debut with a Western film production at Paramount, Heritage of the Desert (1932). Based on a Zane Grey novel, Hathaway gave Randolph Scott his first starring role in the film leading to his lengthy career in cowboy roles.
It began a series of Hathaway-directed Scott Westerns from Grey novels, Wild Horse Mesa (1932), The Thundering Herd (1933), Sunset Pass (1933), To the Last Man (1933), Man of the Forest (1933) and The Last Round-Up (1934).
Hathaway directed an action film set in the Philippines, Come On Marines! (1934) starring Richard Arlen and Ida Lupino, followed by a drama The Witching Hour (1934), and an early Shirley Temple film, Now and Forever (1934). The latter also starred Carole Lombard and Gary Cooper
Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and Action Films
Hathaway's next film was with Cooper, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). Encouraged by director Paul Bern, Hathaway traveled to India for nine months in the 1920s to collect documentary footage on Hindu religious pilgrimages. The project was never completed, but Hathaway’s experience with the Far East earned him an offer to direct The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.
Hathaway got the job because the film changed directors and Cooper, who had director approval, admired Hathaway's films. The movie was a hit and received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and for which Hathaway won his only nomination for the Academy Award for Directing.
Hathaway was now established as one of the main directors on the Paramount lot. He made another with Cooper, Peter Ibbetson (1935). This was followed by The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), his first color movie, for which Walter Wanger borrowed him, paying him $1000 a week. He also worked on the troubled I Loved a Soldier (1936) which was never finished, and did a Mae West movie, Go West, Young Man (1936).
Hathaway was back with Cooper for the anti-slaving adventure story, Souls at Sea (1937), co-starring George Raft. With Raft and Henry Fonda he made Spawn of the North (1938).