Henry Hathaway

As the archetypal studio professional, director Henry Hathaway spent five decades directing over 60 Hollywood films, leaving behind a large body of work that featured frequent collaborations with Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power and John Wayne. After getting his start as a child actor and assistant director, Hathaway began directing adaptations of a series of Zane Gray stories before gaining critical attention for the action film "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" (1935) and the backwoods melodrama "The Trail of Lonesome Pine" (1936). By the time he directed Wayne in "The Shepherd of the Hills" (1941), Hathaway had developed a solid reputation for technically accomplished films while becoming a pioneer of location shooting with a number of quality Westerns. Following the war, he took a dark turn into film noir and innovated further with the used of a semi-documentary approach to such thrillers as "The House on 92nd Street" (1945), "The Dark Corner" (1946) and "Call Northside 777" (1948). Hathaway directed solid films with "The Black Rose" (1950) and "Niagra" (1952), but struggled for the remainder of the decade with interesting, but ultimately forgettable films. He returned to his favored genre with "How the West Was Won" (1962), "The Sons of Katie Elder" (1965) and "Nevada Smith" (1966), while guiding Wayne to his only Oscar with "True Grit" (1969). Though his career came to an end five years later, Hathaway had amassed a solid body of work while earning status as a consummate professional.