Warer Bros. struck gold with Casablanca in 1942 and their blatant attempt to recapitalize on
that success came in the form of To Have
and Have Not in 1944. It was very loosely based on the Hemingway novel of
the same name and bears far more resemblance to the tale of a defiantly neutral
anti-hero eking out a loving in Vichy Morocco during WWII than it does to
Hemingway’s tale of a tough fisherman in Cuba running contraband to Key West.
The Howard Hawks film transplants the story to Vichy Martinique and has Bogart’s
Harry Morgan frequent a nightclub with a friendly piano player (played by Hoagy
Carmichael) and then brings in a dame, Maria Browning, played by Lauren Bacall
in her first screen appearance and first of four alongside her future husband.
Like Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca,
Harry tries not to take sides for or against the Vichy government. He’s a man
trying to make a living until he is pulled into a deal that has him actively
aiding rebels fighting against Vichy. The parallels to Casablanca are so remarkable I can’t believe it’s considered an
adaptation of Hemingway’s work rather than Curtiz’s film. There’s a Captain
Renard, a police inspector played by Dan Seymour, whom you can almost hear
announcing, “Round up the usual suspects.”
One significant, though unnecessary, addition is Harry’s
fishing boat partner, a comically bumbling alcoholic played wonderfully by
Walter Brennan. Were it not for the history-making pairing of two legendary
movie stars who generate some fiery on screen chemistry with the aid of
fantastic and sizzling line penned by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman,
there wouldn’t be much left here to call classic. To Have and Have Not should have been relegated to Hollywood’s
dustbin except that Bacall made such a huge impact on the film’s director and
star. Together they impacted the world and became forever solidified in the
public consciousness as one of the great Hollywood couples.
