14 - To Have and Have Not Adapted a Film from a Novel

Summary

Ernest Hemingway and I were very good friends … I said to him, “I can make a picture out of your worst story.” He said, “What's my worst story?” I said, “Why, that goddamned piece of junk called To Have and Have Not….

– Howard Hawks

This chapter describes some of the ways in which Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (Warner Brothers, 1944) cannot, and some of the ways it can, be regarded as an adaptation of the Hemingway novel. It analyzes some important respects in which the film differs in perspective and position from the novel, indeed constitutes a critique of it. And it concludes with some general observations about Hawks's films.

Robin Wood asserts that Hawks cheated in his demonstration that he could make a film of Hemingway's worst story. “His movie is in no real sense a version of the novel. Only the first ten minutes – the scenes involving Mr. Johnson, the would-be big-game fisherman – have anything much to do with the original.” Although this assertion cannot ultimately be accepted, it is important to recognize its plausibility.

For one thing, the Bogart–Bacall romance at the heart of Hawks's To Have and Have Not departs drastically from the relationship of Harry Morgan and Marie Browning as Hemingway presents it. Physically, Hemingway's hefty, middle-aged ex-prostitute is poles apart from the young world-traveler Bogart insists on calling “Slim” (as she insists on calling him “Steve,” although his name is Harry).