To Have and Have Not
The first Bogart/Bacall movie, and one of the best of its kind.
To Have and Have Not (1944). Grade: B+
It’s time for more True Hollywood Stories! Probably a true one. Director Howard Hawks was Man Time-ing it around with friend Ernest Hemingway; Hawks boasted to Hemingway that he could take his worst novel and make it into a hit movie. Which novel would that be, Hemingway asked. To Have and Have Not, Hawks replied. Hemingway admitted, yep, it wasn’t his best work, and he churned it out pretty quickly ‘cuz he needed the money.
It did become a hit movie, but Hawks completely cheated on the idea to make it a hit. He threw out almost everything in the book! The book’s about smuggling; this isn’t. The only part of the book that survived, a long ending passage where the smuggler, having been shot, muses about his possible death, doesn’t even show up in this movie — it’s shoehorned into the ending of 1948’s Key Largo. (There were later adaptations that were closer to the book, and each of them had a different title, so as not to be confused with this movie.)
The script’s by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman, who’d both later write on Hawks’ The Big Sleep, which also had Bogart + Lauren Bacall, and was written/shot quickly to capitalize on the success of this one. It’s a little better; it has more jokes and more naughtiness; maybe adding gifted writer Leigh Brackett to the mix helped. But this is still tremendous fun, in its own right.
The plot is, Bogart runs a charter-fishing boat in Martinique, which is under control of the buddies-with-Germany Vichy France government. Bogart’s French friend, “Frenchy” (how creative) wants Bogart to help out the brave Resistance movement. Bogart’s sympathetic, and doesn’t like the Vichy officials either, but he doesn’t want to take risks. Meanwhile, he’s caught the eye of a gorgeous American lady, Lauren Bacall. Who’s in a bit of a pickle, and might need some help. And Bogart’s old pal/shipmate, Walter Brennan, is always craving his next drink to keep the shakes away. Something William Faulkner and every Hollywood writer of the time would be plenty familiar with.
Does the “helping Vichy” plot sound like Casablanca to you? How about having much of the movie take place in a bar, where there’s a guy always crooning away at the piano? OK, yes, this has some ripoff elements. But they’re not terrible. Hoagy Carmichael isn’t as good a singer as Dooley Wilson, and the songs are a lot worse,1 but Carmichael himself has a winning personality. (He wrote the music to “Stardust” and “Georgia on my Mind,” which unfortunately aren’t in this movie — I think “Stardust” might have fit, at least a few verses.) And the Vichy plot stuff’s resolved in a pretty satisfying way.
There’s a great scene, near the end, where we see Evil Bogart — the dark, angry one we got hints of in The Maltese Falcon (and would later see taken to its extreme in Treasure of the Sierra Madre). But in this case, it’s not because he’s a bully, or delusionally paranoid — it’s because people have been cruel to his friend. Sure, Bogart’s a litle scary in the scene, but he’s doing it to protect the people he loves. And you love him for it.
A whole lot is said and made of the fact that Bogart and Bacall met on this movie, and fell in love, and would be married until Bogart’s death in 1957. There’s a little featurette on the library DVD we got about their romance. With critic Leonard Maltin gushing about how you can see their love on the screen. This… is a little ooky, and a little much. I also believed Bogart’s romantic performance in Casablanca, because he’s just a darn good actor. Same with The African Queen. Plus, there’s a bit of an elephant in the room here.
James Fraley’s very good and informative article about the movie writes, “Who cares if he was 44 and she, in her first role, only 19?” Umm… let’s just say that she was an unusually smart 19-year-old, and got pretty lucky about what older man to fall for here. It’s very likely that Howard Hawks, whose wife (Nancy Keith) discovered Bacall on the cover of a magazine,2 had eyes on the young lady from the start — and NOT with the intention of marriage. He was rather ticked off that Bacall and Bogart got together, and warned her Bogart would dump her, and that the relationship would ruin her career. Sounds pretty jealous-guy to me. Bacall forgave him for it, praising his skill as a director on this and The Big Sleep.
Bacall was pretty nervous about acting when they started shooting; Bogart would ease her nervousness with jokes and helpful pointers. He was going through a terrible period at home. His third wife, Mayo Methot, drank as much as Bogart did, which was a lot — and became extremely unstable when she drank. She would harm herself and others. (One time, at a party, she insisted on singing to everyone, very wobbily. Filmmaker John Huston was among the guests; that scene would reappear in Key Largo. It’s the scene where Claire Trevor sings in front of everyone to get a drink. It’s the scene EVERYONE remembers from that movie.)
In any case, Bogart and Bacall ended up together, and by all accounts, were absolutely devoted to one another. And despite the age gap in the film, they play off each other very well. Fraley describes how Bacall impressed Hawks by telling him she’d insulted Clark Gable’s tie; the idea was, Bogart generally played one of the world’s cockiest characters, and Hawks wanted a woman who could cut him down a little. He told Bogart “every scene she plays in, she’s going to walk out and leave you with egg on your face.” Leading to one of the more weirdly famous moments in movie history:
You can tell it’s meant to be a double-entendre, but for WHAT? Oral hygeine? Taking a trip down south? I’m not entirely sure. The scene’s written by Hawks, who wrote it for Bacall’s screen test; she played it so well, Hawks had William Faulkner squeeze it into the movie.
Less effective is an annoying subplot where Bacall’s supposed to be jealous of Bogart’s attentions to a resistance damsel, Dolores Moran — who was basically cast in the part because her boobs were bigger than Bacall’s and studios really liked that look at the time. Actually much of the resistance plot is a drag, just like it was in Casablanca. It’s nice to stand up to totalitarians, and I wish more people did. But most French people didn’t, and I only feebly criticize them on sparsely-read blogsites, and it wouldn’t have made any difference in the war if more French people had. At least we get a decent, tense boat scene out of it.
Walter Brennan, who plays Bogart’s alcoholic first mate/buddy, had already won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar three times! (One of which was in another Furthman-written, Hawks-directed movie about, um, lumberjacks? With Frances Farmer in it? Does she have revenge on Seattle?) Brennan was only six years older than Bogart, but frquently played “old man” parts before he was older. He’d had an accident filming a fight scene and lost most of his teeth! So he wore false teeth, and could pull them out to look older. He’s quite good here — it’s a part that, for a hammier actor, could have easily slipped into self-pity. Brennan keeps you aware that the guy’s a wreck without overdoing it.
One who IS rather hammy is Dan Seymour, as the villainous Vichy police captain. He’s playing fey, which, at the time, fey=gay and gay=Evil. But it’s sneeringly fun hamminess. Also mentioned on Wiki’s cast list is one Cee Pee Johnson, the stage name of jazz musician/bandleader Clifton Johnson. My inner 12 year old loves the name Cee Pee Johnson very much.
The competent photography’s by Sidney Hickox, who would also shoot The Big Sleep and Dark Passage, the third film Bogart/Bacall did together (and the weakest, although it has a good gimmick for about a third of the movie, shooting everything from Bogart’s point of view). Bogart and Bacall would only make four films together, period, although they’d work together more on radio and television.
Basically, come for Bogart/Bacall, stay for the funny one-liners and tolerate the pseudo-Casablanca moments. You’ll very much miss having Claude Rains around, but you won’t mind missing Paul Henreid so much. And go see The Big Sleep, if you haven’t! This movie’s like a practice round for that one.
One of the songs, “Hong Kong Blues,” is full of foolish racial stereotyping that was common in this period. It’s a shame, because the actual dark-skinned people we run into in this movie are shown as sharp, reliable members of the resistance movement. They don’t get many lines, though.
The names “Slim” and “Steve” that Bogart and Bacall use for each other in the movie are the names Hawks and Keith used for each other.