Howard Hawks' narrative story structure

Some notes on narrative story structure employed by Howard Hawks, as gleaned from Gerald Mast’s biography Howard Hawks, storyteller.

Howard Hawks is famous for using Ben Hecht or Charles Lederer or William Faulkner as screenwriters on his films, and is not well-known as a screenwriter himself. None-the-less, he write many of his earliest films, and was known to rewrite many others. For example, the idea to make Hildy female (as in his version of The Front Page that Hawks titled His Girl Friday) was his, although Charles Lederer (and uncredited Ben Hecht) wrote the script. A quick look at his filmography will show you he kept writing into the 1960s (fyi, he was born in the 1890s). Mast’s book describes Hawks’ four part screenplay structure:

• Part 1: The prologue. This part either (a) establishes conflict in the past or present of the major characters, or (b) initiates a conflict among the major characters.
• Part 2: Develop this central conflict from the point of view of one of the major characters, or let the perspective (or lifestyle) of one of the major characters dominate the action.
• Part 3: Either (a) allow another one of the major characters to dominate the action, or (b) develop conflict by allowing two (or more) major characters to work together.
• Part 4: Resolve the central conflict, often by returning to the physical setting in the prologue, but now the opposing characters see each other in a new light.

The first and last part match up well with most other “screenplay structure” suggestions, parts 2 and 3 seems to me like more of a stylistic structural component that he superimposed on a script. In any case, here is an example using one of my favorite movies. Example: His Girl Friday. Part 1 involves (a) Hildy’s divorce from Walter and her planned marriage to Bruce, (b) the important to-be-written newspaper story of the execution of an innocent man. Part 2 involves Walter scheming behind Hildy’s back to (a) get Hildy to work on the newspaper article for him, (b) to block Bruce’s efforts to get him out of town. Part 3 involves Hildy writing the article (and in the process discovering how much she loves being a good reporter) and helping to save the innocent convict. Part 4 involved Bruce leaving, and Hildy and Walter becoming reunited.