Hamburg Noir

HISTORY

To Have and Have Not

Short stories
One Trip Across (Ernest Hemingway, 1934)
The Tradesman's Return (Ernest Hemingway, 1936)

Book
To Have and Have Not (Ernest Hemingway, 1937)

Films
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)
The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz, 1950)
The Gun Runners (Don Siegel, 1958)

The original adaptation of this brutal but tender tale is really just a Bogey vehicle. It took a remake to convert Ernest Hemingway’s original story into a classic noir film.

According to Hemingway himself, To Have and Have Not was his worst novel. Many critics agree. Some even suggest he was drunk when he wrote it. In any case, the style is unpleasantly hard and flat, even for Hemingway. And the wanton use of the N-word is excessive, even by prewar standards, especially coming from the mouth of the protagonist in confidential voiceover.

Despite these nontrivial shortcomings, the novel follows the classic hardboiled pulp template, complete with an anti-hero and a femme fatale. It tells the story of Harry Morgan, an otherwise honest man forced by dire circumstances into the black market. After a rich customer (a “have”) disappears without paying for a three-week fishing trip on Harry’s charter boat, the hard-working seaman (a “have not”) is stuck in Havana with no way to support his family back in Key West. This rich vs. poor theme was, of course, common during the Great Depression.

Against his better judgement, Harry agrees to transport Chinese emigrants from Cuba to Florida. Then, when push comes to shove, he kills the head of the smuggling ring and dumps the emigrants back in Cuba, setting in motion a chain of events that pull him further down into the dark world of crime. Before long, he’s smuggling alcohol to Florida and revolutionaries to Cuba.

Harry justifies his illegal activity by contrasting the wealth of yacht owners he runs across in Havana with the poverty of his neighbors in Key West. This class conflict is highlighted by a love affair he has with a lounge singer who preys on rich men without apology. The subtle ironies of this relationship blur the line Hemingway has drawn between the “haves” and “have nots.”

Like many pulps of the time, To Have and Have Not began as a short story in magazines. It first appeared in Cosmopolitan as “One Trip Across” and then in Esquire as “The Tradesman's Return.” Both are available in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Tellingly, neither story appeared in Black Mask, home to hardboiled pulps in the 1930s.

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The novel might have been forgotten if it had not been adapted into a noir film by Howard Hawks in 1944. William Faulkner completely rewrote the story, moving it from Cuba to Martinique under the Vichy regime, removing its social justice themes and overt racism, and transforming it into a romantic thriller starring Humphrey Bogart as Harry (“Steve”) and Lauren Bacall as Marie (“Slim”). Released two years after Casablanca, the film feels like Casablanca II, with a reluctant Bogart once again battling the Nazis and their Vichy henchmen.

Especially interesting is the budding romance -- both on screen and off -- between Bogart (45, working on his third marriage) and Bacall (19, acting for the first time), who met on the film set. This romantic tension hits a high point when Bacall throws down the sexual gauntlet: “You don't have to do anything. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together, and blow.”

Bogart and Bacall continue their flirtation with the Hayes Code two years later in The Big Sleep, which was also written by Faulkner and directed by Hawks. By that time, the two actors were married for real. Oddly enough, Bacall seems older -- or at least more confident -- than Bogart in both films.

Appearances can be deceiving, particularly with actors. Bacall was so nervous on the set of To Have and Have Not that she had the shakes. She overcame them by keeping her chin down and her eyes up, giving her the sultry look that became her trademark.

And then there’s Walter Brennan, who plays Harry’s alcoholic sidekick, Eddie. As Hemingway describes the character: “I saw Eddy coming along the dock looking taller and sloppier than ever. He walked with his joints all slung wrong.” Somehow, Brennan manages to maintain a strange -- and believable -- off-balance shuffle, accompanied by periodic body twitches, throughout the film. In the process, he turns delirium tremens into light comedy.

By softening the hard edges of the book, the film allows viewers to enjoy themselves. This is no longer Hemingway’s ugly tale of class consciousness. It’s a Hollywood blockbuster so boisterous it feels colorized. The cheerful music and lyrics by Hoagy Charmichael and Jonny Mercer help. “How Little We Know” and “Am I Blue?” were sung by Bacall and Charmichael themselves.

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Six years after the Bogey/Bacall treatment, Hemingway’s story was brought to the screen a second time in The Breaking Point, written by Ranald MacDougal (of Mildred Pierce fame) and directed by Michael Curtiz (best known for Casablanca).

Although the plot of the remake is similar to that of the book, there are notable changes, such as the geographical setting. While the book is set in Florida and Cuba, The Breaking Point takes place in California and Mexico. Also, Harry ends up helping a band of gangsters escape a racetrack heist rather than running guns. Finally, Harry’s major conflict in the film is not with capitalists but with his own family.

The remake is both rugged and tender, grounded in the marriage of Harry and his wife (renamed Lucy), played by two top actors who work well together. John Garfield’s Harry has a quiet masculinity that can flash into physical violence without warning (something audiences would have remembered from his explosive lead role in The Postman Always Rings Twice three years earlier). Phyllis Thaxter’s Lucy is pretty in a schoolmarm sort of way, but she has an iron will that keeps Harry in check. Although polar opposites, the two are fiercely loyal to each other.

This loyalty is repeatedly put to the test by Patricia Neal’s Leona, a barroom singer who changes wealthy men as often as her stockings. Leona is a very good bad girl, who, despite her cynical front, seems to really be looking for love, albeit in the wrong places. She has her sights set on Harry, despite -- or because of -- his marriage to Lucy.

At one point, Lucy tries to match the hairdo of her rival, which leads to this telling exchange:

Harry: “You know, my wife dyed her hair.”

Leona: “Coincidentally I've been thinking of letting mine grow out. Speaking of coincidences, I live in Number Seven. My friends just kick the door open.”

Harry is tempted to go astray, but something always holds him back -- which drives Leona crazy.

A bigger threat to Harry’s marriage is his illegal activity. As he loads an old service revolver before taking his fateful run with a boatload of gangsters, Lucy makes it clear that she will not be there when he returns. He goes anyway.

The remake softens the brutal story with children, something not often seen in film noir. Harry and Lucy’s two young daughters, Amy and Connie, don’t just have pigtails and gappy teeth, they have attitude in spades.

When Lucy changes her hairdo, their hilarious critique is every woman’s nightmare:

Amy: “Oh, mother, how could you!”

Connie: “It’s just awful! What will the neighbor’s say?”

Harry’s first mate in the remake is not a “rummy” but Wesley Park, an extremely reliable business partner and friend, played by Juano Hernando. Like Lucy, he tries to talk sense to Harry, who brushes him off as well. In the background, Wesley’s shy young son is seen walking to school with Harry’s daughters. It’s easy to overlook him -- until the final scene.

When a badly wounded Harry returns from his final trip with the gangsters, the Coast Guard, police, paramedics, and family hover around him, with Leona watching at a distance. As the ambulance drives away and the credits start to roll, we see Wesley’s forgotten son, all alone on the dock, looking for his father. It’s one of the most poignant moments in film.

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The Gun Runners, a third film adaptation released in 1958, is hardly worth mentioning. Yes, it’s that bad. Even with a screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring (aka Geoffrey Homes, author of Build My Gallows High, which became Out of the Past), the film is so poorly cast -- with one big exception -- that it’s embarrassing to watch.

Despite being the most decorated U.S. combat soldier of World War II, baby-faced Audie Murphy doesn’t have the screen weight for the lead role. Although the script treats him like catnip for women, overdone scenes of him flirting with his on-screen wife, played by Patricia Owen, are awkwardly crude: “If I stayed you wouldn’t get any sleep.” To his credit, Murphy is said to have disliked them.

In his autobiography, the film’s director, Don Siegel, says he wasn’t happy with the studio’s choice of the overly shy Murphy. In fairness, he tells how the war hero wore a gun in his belt when they went out to dinner, just in case they ran into trouble. (This story turns a line from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead -- "We're actors! We're the opposite of people!” -- on its head.)

Of course, if you’re a film noir junkie in bad need of a fix on a rainy Sunday afternoon, you might settle for the equivalent of methadone, if only to see an over-the-top performance by Eddie Albert, who plays the cheerfully evil arms smuggler, Hannigan. Albert is very believable taking a swig of Aquavit over a fresh corpse, sighing contentedly, and saying: “I feel like a sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly.” Or, after facing down a heavily armed Cuban revolutionary, casually hitting on his pert young assistant: “I’ll bet you’ve got rhythm, kid.” He’s always up.

Such cult scenes aside, you’re better off (re)watching one of the earlier adaptations. Both feel like they were just made.