To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not (1945)

Timing: 1:40 (100 min)

7.452/10
479

All about film

Video 1

Photo 21

Actors and characters

Release date

1945-01-20

Country

United States

Production

Warner Bros. Pictures

Genre

Adventure, Romance, War

Budget

$0

Revenue

$3 650 000

Website

Director

Howard Hawks

Actors

Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall, Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael, Sheldon Leonard, Walter Szurovy, Marcel Dalio, Walter Sande, Dan Seymour
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Howard Hawks, Jack L. Warner

Operator

Sidney Hickox

Composer

Franz Waxman

Artist

Audition

Editing

Christian Nyby
All team (38)

• At the funeral of her husband, actor Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), Lauren Bacall (1924-2014) placed a whistle in his coffin. This was seemingly a reference to the famous line from the film where she says to him, "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow."
• Director Howard Hawks (1896-1977) bet Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) that he could make a good film even from the worst of all Hemingway's novels. Hawks chose the novel "To Have and Have Not" (1939) and won the bet, removing almost the entire novel from the film's plot and making the main characters younger than in the literary source.
• The scene with the line "You know how to whistle…" is undoubtedly the most famous in the entire film. It was written by Hawks himself, not Hemingway or the screenwriters Jules Furthman (1888-1966) and William Faulkner (1897-1962). He wrote it for Lauren Bacall's screen test and initially didn't even think of using the line in the film. During the screen test, Bacall played the scene with John Ridgely (1909-1968) as her partner. After the screen test, Bacall was cast in the role, and Hawks asked William Faulkner to insert the line into the scene.
• While Walter Brennan (1894-1974) was preparing to play Eddie, his friend, sound effects artist Jack Foley (1891-1967), suggested he put a pebble in his boot. Brennan did so, hence his limp, which is indistinguishable from a real one.
• The script had to be rewritten, and in the new version, Bacall's role was significantly expanded to capitalize on public interest in the romance between Bacall and Bogart, which began simultaneously with the start of filming.