Reel Classics: ‘To Have And Have Not’ (1944)

Reportedly today’s Reel Classic came to be from a bet that well-known film direc­tor Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, Sergeant York, Rio Bravo to name a few) made with his friend and well-known author Ernest Hemingway.  They were togeth­er on a fish­ing trip and Hawks bet Hemingway that he could make a good movie from Hemingway’s worst novel. 

The nov­el was set in Cuba and the Florida Keys in the 1930s. Harry Morgan was a sailor who was also a booze run­ner.  The sto­ry line was very dif­fer­ent from what we find in the film.  One rea­son for the dif­fer­ences was the depic­tion of vio­lence and cor­rup­tion in Cuba.  At the time of the mak­ing of the film the Roosevelt admin­is­tra­tion had an Office of Inter-American Affairs and there was a “Good Neighbor Policy” in effect to ensure pos­i­tive coöper­a­tion between nations to pre­vent Axis influ­ence in these coun­tries.  The Office of Inter-American Affairs mon­i­tored motion pic­tures to “encour­age” pos­i­tive depic­tions of neigh­bor­ing countries. 

To keep the project from being can­celed, major shifts in the sto­ry line were cre­at­ed.  The site of the sto­ry was changed to the island of Martinique, which was under con­trol of Vichy France.  The screen play was writ­ten by Jules Furthman and William Faulkner.  With the changes, there is very lit­tle in com­mon with the orig­i­nal sto­ry in the novel. 

The film To Have And Have Not is set in 1940 dur­ing the war, and Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart)  makes his liv­ing tak­ing tourists out on his fish­ing boat. He is accom­pa­nied by his assis­tant and friend Eddie (Walter Brennan), who also tends to take to the drink quite a bit.  Because of the war, tourist trade is not boom­ing and Harry is not doing very well finan­cial­ly.  Harry resides in a room at a local hotel that also has a bar and a piano play­er known as Cricket (Hoagy Carmichael). 

It is in the bar that Harry first meets a young new­com­er to the island, a young American nomad who has just arrived from Rio.  Her name is Marie Browning (Lauren Bacall) but she goes by the nick­name “Slim.”  She is approached by a drunk who is try­ing to “put the move” on her, and she avoids him by join­ing Cricket and his group singing the song “Am I Blue.”

While watch­ing her, Harry sees her pick the pock­et of the drunk­en pur­suer and con­fronts her.  As it turns out, the drunk in the bar owed Harry mon­ey and had told Harry he did­n’t have it at the time.  The wal­let Slim picked had $1400 in trav­el­er’s checks and a plane tick­et out of Martinique for the next morn­ing.   Harry returns the wal­let to the man in the bar and insists he sign the checks. 

Unfortunately for Harry, at that moment a shoot­ing erupts out­side the bar between local police and mem­bers of the Resistance. It works its way into the bar and the own­er of the wal­let is killed.  Police take Harry, Slim and Frenchy, the own­er of the hotel, into cus­tody.  They relieve Harry of all of his mon­ey and his passport.

After their release, Frenchy approach­es Harry offer­ing to hire him to trans­port a cou­ple of Resistance mem­bers from a near­by isle to Martinique.  Harry has been adamant about not get­ting involved in the pol­i­tics but is now in need of mon­ey.  He reluc­tant­ly agrees.  The Resistance mem­bers are a mar­ried cou­ple, Paul de Bursac (Walter Surovy) and his wife Helene de Bursac (Delores Moran). 

In the mean­time, romance is begin­ning to blos­som between Slim and Harry.  She calls him Steve–a nick­name she has giv­en him.  Some obvi­ous flirt­ing and kiss­ing have helped to build her hopes that there was to be a rela­tion­ship with Harry. She finds her­self falling in love with him.  She is dis­ap­point­ed how­ev­er when she learns that Harry has tak­en a good part of the mon­ey he has received to smug­gle the Resistance mem­bers and bought her a plane tick­et back to America. 

Harry and Eddie take the boat out to get the cou­ple and are spot­ted by a patrol boat.  Gunfire  wounds Paul de Bursac, but all man­age to get back to the hotel.  To Harry’s sur­prise, Slim has not left on the plane but has stayed on to be with him.  Harry removes the bul­let from de Bursac’s shoul­der and asks Harry to assist in help­ing anoth­er Resistance mem­ber escape from a penal colony.  Harry declines.

As the sto­ry pro­gress­es we find Eddie detained by the local author­i­ties and Harry con­front­ed after the police indi­cate they rec­og­nized his boat.  How will the sto­ry resolve for Harry, Slim, Eddie, and the de Bursacs?  As usu­al, no spoil­ers here.

The most famous as well as most mem­o­rable scene in this movie is when Slim comes to Harry’s room in the hotel.  In her most sul­try fash­ion, as she walks toward the door­way leav­ing his room, she turns and says to him “You know you don’t have to act with me Steve.  You don’t have to say any­thing, and you don’t have to do any­thing.  Not a thing.  Oh, maybe just whis­tle.  You know how to whis­tle, don’t you, Steve?  You just put your lips togeth­er and...blow.” 

That scene was not orig­i­nal­ly in the screen­play.  It had orig­i­nal­ly been writ­ten by Howard Hawks him­self as a screen test for Lauren Bacall.  Warner Bros. staff were impressed and agreed to have Bacall star in the film.  Hawks too was so impressed that he asked William Faulkner to work it into the script. 

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart fell in love dur­ing the shoot­ing of this film and mar­ried not too long after­ward.  They remained mar­ried until his death from can­cer in 1957.  At his funer­al Bacall put a gold whis­tle in the cof­fin with Bogart.  It was inscribed with the words “If you want any­thing, just whistle.” 

At the time of the film­ing Bogart was 45 years old and Bacall was 19.  The attrac­tion was mutu­al and they went on to make anoth­er three films togeth­er:  The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948).    

Lauren Bacall first came to the atten­tion of Howard Hawks by way of his wife.  Bacall was a mod­el and had appeared on the cov­er of Harper’s Bazaar.  Hawks wife, Nancy “Slim” Keith, showed the pho­to to her hus­band.  Guess where Bacall’s char­ac­ter’s nick­name orig­i­nat­ed?   Being her first film, Bacall admit­ted she was extreme­ly ner­vous on the set.  She stat­ed that she learned to keep her chin down and her eyes up to keep her head from trem­bling.  It was that pose that gave her the famous “sul­try look.” 

Humphrey Bogart had starred in the infa­mous Casablanca, released in 1942.  There are def­i­nite­ly sim­i­lar­i­ties in the two sto­ries.  An iso­lat­ed indi­vid­ual not want­i­ng to get involved in the pol­i­tics of the time, Bogart’s char­ac­ter assist­ing in the escape of Resistance lead­ers and his attrac­tion to the lead­ing lady, and of course, Bogart him­self.  Hawks hoped that To Have And Have Not would expe­ri­ence the same lev­el of suc­cess because of these similarities.

Other ties to Casablanca include the actor por­tray­ing Frenchy (Marcel Dalio) who was Emil the Croupier  in Casablanca and Capitaine Renard (Dan Seymour) who was Abdul. 

We find anoth­er famil­iar face in the cast, Sheldon Leonard, who went on to appear in many films and was very involved as a pro­duc­er for many suc­cess­ful TV shows includ­ing The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show.  He por­trayed Lieutenant Coyo in this film. 

Walter Brennan played Eddie, the often intox­i­cat­ed side­kick of Harry.  In the film his char­ac­ter has a very dis­tinc­tive limp.  Preparing to por­tray the char­ac­ter, it was sug­gest­ed to Brennan that the best way to main­tain a real­is­tic limp was to put a rock in his shoe.  This was the advice of his friend and sound effects tech­ni­cian Jack Foley.  Brennan took his advice, and if you watch the movie you will agree that the limp is very authen­tic.  Brennan also appeared in many films through­out his career and may be best remem­bered as Grandpa Amos McCoy in the TV show The Real McCoys. 

Bogart and Bacall reprised their roles in a 1946 radio adap­ta­tion on Lux Radio Theater.  They also starred in their own radio show called Bold Venture from 1951–1952.  It was a 30 minute adven­ture pro­gram set in Havana  with the char­ac­ters very sim­i­lar to those from the film. 

To Have And Have Not was one of the top ten gross­ing films of 1944.  It’s total earn­ings, both domes­tic and for­eign, came close to that of Casablanca.  Critics were mixed in their reviews.  Some com­plained that the film was not true to Hemingway’s nov­el and some crit­ics were crit­i­cal of Lauren Bacall.  Some how­ev­er were pos­i­tive in their reviews.  Film crit­ic Pauline Kael wrote “Howard Hawks direct­ed this slick­ly pro­fes­sion­al, thor­ough­ly enjoy­able Second World War melodrama...Don’t be mis­lead;  it’s the Warners mix­ture as before—sex and politics—but bet­ter this time.” 

As we have seen before, crit­ics are more approv­ing as time pass­es.  The crit­ic for Turner Classic Movies (TCM) states:  “To Have And Have Not is admired today for its charged dia­logue and wit­ty scenes, estab­lish­ing Bogart as a roman­tic lead, as the debut vehi­cle for Lauren Bacall (and her first pair­ing with Bogart), and for pre­sent­ing the quin­tes­sen­tial Hawks hero, an indi­vid­u­al­ist who express­es his sense of jus­tice and moral­i­ty through action.”

British crit­ic Robin Wood writes To Have And Have Not “is one of the most basic anti-fas­cist state­ments the cin­e­ma has giv­en us.”  He states that the film empha­sizes indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty by way of Bogart’s char­ac­ter and its dis­play of peo­ple work­ing togeth­er.  The review from Rotten Tomatoes reads “With Howard Hawks direct­ing and Bogey and Bacall in front of the cam­eras, To Have And Have Not ben­e­fits from sev­er­al lev­els of fine-tuned chemistry—all of which ignite on screen.” 

In 1998, the American Film Institute nom­i­nat­ed it for their list of Top 100 Greatest American Movies, and in 2002 list­ed it in their Top 100 America’s Greatest Love Stories.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates the film at 7.8 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 95% and an Audience Score of 90%. 

In search­ing my Roku device I could find no free stream­ing sites, but there is a copy of the DVD on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library. 

Watching the dynam­ics between Bogey and Bacall is fas­ci­nat­ing, and to know that the sparks we see fly­ing are not act­ing but real is even more fas­ci­nat­ing.  There is also a pow­er­ful sto­ry line about stand­ing up for what you believe.  If you haven’t seen To Have And Have Not I encour­age you to check it out.  Romance, adven­ture, and even a bit of com­e­dy make it well worth your time. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

If you enjoy these clas­sic movies please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6:00 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.