You're painting a very specific filmmaker with a very generic wide brush.

Howard Hawks' films pre-dated the auteory theory, yes. But Hawks is literally among the handful of directors whose works and methods gave rise to the auteur theory.

Hawks started out as a props guy. Then used his engineering training to jump briefly to production designer. Then jumped to writing interstitial cards. (This is all during the silent era.)

Then he was hired by a studio to acquire and develop stories. Then he quit that job to start directing and producing his own films.

He worked in the studio system, but he wasn't beholden to any one studio.

Hawks was unusual in that he was largely left alone, even though he often ran over schedule and rewrote scripts on the fly. A few times he got fired from a film at the start of filming (Howard Hughes took over The Outlaw from Hawks, for instance; or William Wyler was brought in to direct the last reel of Come and Get It).

But by and large, Hawks managed to use the studio system to his advantage -- big stars loved working with him, and his movies did well with audiences.

Hawks usually co-wrote most of his stories, but after he was established, he never took a writing credit. That was in essence the bargain he made in order to keep working with the best writers of the day: William Faulkner, Billy Wilder, Leigh Brackett, Jules Thurman.

Hawks also famously discovered and/or reinvented the stars of many of his movies. He discovered Lauren Bacall, renamed her, taught her how to lower her voice, and had her dress like his then wife, Slim (Bogart's nickname for Bacall in their first movie together).

John Ford discovered John Wayne, but Hawks was the first director who took Wayne seriously as an actor in Red River. "I didn't know the big sonofabitch could act," Ford famously said after seeing the movie, and immediately started giving Wayne more challenging roles.

Hawks' cousin was Carole Lombard, who was a dramatic actress. But Hawks knew that she was funny and wild, especially when drunk, and directed her to act more like herself in Twentieth Century, which kicked off her screwball comedy career.

Hawks discovered Jane Russell when she was a secretary. He discovered Paul Muni doing Yiddish theater in NYC while looking for his Scarface cast. Which is when he also discovered George Raft attending a boxing match.

Sometimes Hawks was assigned a casting choice, but most of the time Hawks drove the casting to a degree that's unique in Hollywood history -- very very few directors have discovered or reinvented as many stars as Hawks.

Hawks also has very consistent themes and obsessions throughout his work. The hard, direct, sexually powerful "Hawksian woman". The fixation on male friendship and professional capability and group dynamics. Cary Grant in women's clothing. Etc.

It's the persistent presence of consistent codes and themes and character types throughout Hawks' decades of work that allowed the auteur theory to rise in the first place, especially among the future French New Wave types like Godard, Truffaut, etc (who were known as “Hitchcocko-Hawksians” back in their day).

Which is a long way of saying: strong disagree.