To Have and Have Not

Harry Morgan, who runs a boat in Martinique, is trying to stay out of politics. He is asked to carry men for the resistance. Meanwhile he meets a woman at the hotel called Slim. Howard Hawks directed. The film started as a bet: Hawks told Hemingway he could make a good film out of the novel Hemingway considered his weakest. Hawks called the book a bunch of junk. Jules Furthman and William Faulkner wrote the screenplay, making it the only film story two winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature worked on. The setting moved from Cuba to Martinique to comply with Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy. It was Lauren Bacall's first film. The eighteen-year-old model was spotted on a magazine cover by Hawks's wife. Her line entered film history: you know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow. It ranks 34th on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest movie quotes. The romance on screen became real during the shoot, and the two married in 1945. Seeing the chemistry, Hawks expanded Bacall's part. On a 1.68 million dollar budget it grossed 5.3 million and finished among the top ten earners of 1944. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 95 percent. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood and films built on dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a Hemingway adaptation. Almost nothing of the novel survives, and Hawks does not pretend otherwise.