Movies - To Have and Have Not

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	Movies - To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not (1944), is a film directed by Howard Hawks that is nominally based on the novel To Have and Have Not
by Ernest Hemingway.

The film moved the story's setting from Key West to Martinique under the Vichy regime. In this exotic location, a world-weary character (Harry Morgan, known as "Steve") played by Humphrey Bogart is urged to do the right thing politically. In this and other ways the film is reminiscent of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca
. This similarity was noted when the film was first released.

Harry ends up working for the French Resistance and falls for a pickpocket, "Slim," played by Lauren Bacall. It was her first film, at the age of 20. It can be noted that in choosing the lead actress for this film, Bogart and his present wife Mayo Methot, also an actress, perused through hundreds of head shots in search of the perfect woman to play "Slim." Methot brought Bacall's picture to Bogie's attention. This was the beginning of what was to become a long and beautiful marriage between Bogie and Bacall, and the demise of the tumultuous marriage between Methot and Bogart.

The film is most remembered for the onscreen chemistry between Steve and Slim, and Slim's erotic insolence, epitomized when she reminds Steve "You know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together, and blow." The chemistry continued offscreen, causing Bogart's divorce and subsequent marriage to Bacall; they would later play opposite one another in The Big Sleep
and other films. In the movie, Bacall sings "How Little We Know" by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. Hoagy plays the piano player, Cricket, who is actually composing that song. He also wrote another song in the movie, "Hong Kong Blues", with Stanley Adams. "Am I Blue?" was written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke.

Although Hawks had a high regard for Hemingway's works in general, he considered To Have and Have Not his worst book, a "bunch of junk". The film preserves the book's title, and the names and characteristics of some of the characters, but nothing from beyond the first fifth of the volume.

Source

Mast, Gerald. Howard Hawks, Storyteller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

To Have and Have Not To Have and Have Not Category:Romance films Category:Adventure films Category:Films based on fiction books To Have and Have Not

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