Personal Quote: "I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages and it suffered. I don't regret it. You make choices. If you want a good marriage, you must pay attention to that. If you want to be independent, go ahead. You can't have it all".
To Have and Have Not (1944). Hot Romance/war/adventure film. Directed by Howard Hawks. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan and Lauren Bacall in her first film at the age of 19. Based on the novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway.
Howard Hughes sold the book rights to director Howard Hawks, who sold them to Warner Bros. William Faulkner, helped with the script. Hawks' wife "Slim" (whose nickname would be used for Bacall's character, Marie) noticed Bacall on the cover of Harper's Bazaar and showed the photo to her husband, who then signed her for the role.
After filming began, a romance developed between Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, despite the disapproval of Hawks. This romance ended of Bogart's marriage to Mayo Methot, his third wife and to Bacall and Bogart getting married. The onscreen chemistry between the two would continue in the classic films: The Big Sleep, Dark Passage and Key Largo.
Although Hawks had a high regard for Hemingway's writing, said, To Have and Have Not, was a "bunch of junk," so Hawks and Hemingway worked on the story together. The film uses the book's title and the names and characteristics of some of the characters.
The setting was moved from Cuba to Martinique, because of the Roosevelt administration, whose "good neighbor" policy did not to want to show Cuba in a bad light. This change, of the plot made the film similar to the film, Casablanca.
Other changes from the book, was introducing the piano player (Hoagy Carmichael), who had not appeared in the Hemingway book but was in the film, Casablanca.
Several cast members from Casablanca, also appear in the film such as, Dan Seymour, who plays the French/Vichy official Renard - a similar name and position to Casablanca's Capt. Renault. The plotline of Bogart's character helping husband-and-wife resistance fighters was also similar to Casablanca.
Hawks, recognizing the star-making potential of the film for Bacall, emphasized her role, downplaying Dolores Moran's, role the film's other female lead.
The story begins, shortly after the war in Martinique, an American named Johnson hires professional fisherman Harry Morgan, to take him deep sea fishing on his charter boat. Johnson, complains about everything including the cost of the expedition and the other passengers Eddie, a drunk and native Horatio.
During the trip Johnson, carelessly loses a rod and reel belonging to Harry. Harry, who has had enough of him, cancels the rest of the trip and wants Johnson pay him for his lost equipment. Johnson, says he will pay what he owes, after the banks open the next morning.
Back in Fort de France, bartender Frenchy asks Harry, to rent him his boat to smuggle in an important underground leader, but.. Harry does not want to become involved in any political activities.
Later, in the hotel bar, Harry witnesses Marie Browning pick Johnson's pocket and follows her to her room to demand that she return Johnson's wallet. In the wallet Harry, finds enough traveler's checks to pay his fees and also that Johnson, was planning to leave before the banks open.
After Marie, whom Harry has nick named Slim, returns the wallet to Johnson, Harry wants him to sign off some of the checks, but... instead Johnson is shot and killed. The police detain everyone at the bar for questioning, slowing down their plans.
Later that night, Harry needing money and wanting to help Marie return to America, he agrees to pick up Frenchy's friends and buys Marie a ticket on the first plane leaving that afternoon for the United States.
After picking up Helene and Paul De Bursac, Harry is seen by a patrol boat and Paul, is wounded before they escape. Harry, is surprised to find that Marie, did not leave on the plane. Harry removes the bullet from De Bursac's shoulder and learns that the De Bursacs, are supposed to help a man escape from Devil's Island. De Bursac asks for his help, but... will Harry risk his life to help someone he does not know?
The is a wonderful adventure film, where sparks fly between Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who is amazingly cool and smooth at the age of 19... Lauren Bacall, has become one of our favorite classic movie stars of the 1940s.
More Fun Facts:
The most famous scene in To Have and Have Not is undoubtedly the "you know how to whistle" dialog sequence. It was not written by Ernest Hemingway, Jules Furthman or William Faulkner, but by Howard Hawks. Hawks wrote the scene as a screen test for Bacall, with no real intention that it would necessarily end up in the film. The test was shot with Warner Bros. contract player John Ridgely acting opposite Bacall. The Warners staff, of course, agreed to star Bacall in the film based on the test, and Hawks thought the scene was so strong he asked Faulkner to work it into one of his later drafts of the shooting script.
At the funeral for her husband, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall put a whistle in his coffin. It was a reference to the famous line she says to him in their first film together To Have and Have Not: "You know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and blow.".
When Howard Hawks discovered Lauren Bacall, he gave her the choice to work with either Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. She was very tempted to work with Grant, but Hawks ended up casting her with Bogart in To Have and Have Not, and one of Hollywood's greatest romances was started.
"To Have or Have Not" was remade as "The Breaking Point" with John Garfield and "The Gun Runners" with Audie Murphy…
Dolores Moran (January 27, 1924 – February 5, 1982), brief career as a film actress began in 1942 with a uncredited role in, Yankee Doodle Dandy.
By 1943 she had become a popular pin-up girl and appeared on the cover of such magazines as Yank. She was given supporting roles in films: Old Acquaintance (1943) with Bette Davis and Warner Bros. attempted to increase interest in her, promoting her along with Lauren Bacall as a new screen personality when they co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944). The film made a star of Bacall, but Moran languished and her subsequent films did little to further her career, this probably had something to do with Howard Hawk's decision to marginalise Moran in order to boost the screen presence of Bacall, excising some of Moran's scenes.
The Horn Blows at Midnight, gave her a leading role with Jack Benny and Alexis Smith but her film appearances after this were sporadic, and she suffered ill health that reduced her ability to work.
Her film career ended in 1954 with a featured role in the western film, Silver Lode. She was married to the film producer Benedict E. Bogeaus in Salome, Arizona, in 1946. They divorced in 1962. Moran had an affair with director Howard Hawks while filming, To Have and Have Not, which Hawks undertook mainly as revenge for his rejection by Bacall in favour of Bogart.
Casablanca, 1942 Directed by Michael Curtiz Nominated for 8 Oscars, Won 3
Synopsis: Rick Blaine is an exiled American, living in Casablanca, Monaco, during World War II. He is running a hot nightclub in the city, which attracts all sorts of different people. It attracts Europeans who are trying to flee their homeland, to Lisbon so they may get to America. It attracts those selling Exit Visas for the desperate. It attracts Nazi's, who are seeking a man named Victor Laszlo, a Czech Underground leader who has escaped from a Concentration Camp. And it attracts Victor Laszlo himself, and his pretty lady friend, Isla. Rick is shocked to see Isla, a one-time lover, when he (and she) lived in Paris. He's very bitter towards her, for she left him, but there are many secrets between them, and those around them. Rick has been handed some important Travel Letters many people are desperate to have, and could be helpful in aiding Victor in his escape from the Nazi's. But Isla just may have more shocking secrets than Ricks...
Merry Christmas everyone! Happy Boxing Day! Happy Holidays, etc, etc. This is my first, of what will be many reviews, over the next few weeks as I'm off for the holidays! I settled down this Boxing Day Evening after a day of Christmas with family.
Opening up on this film I had absolutely no idea what this film was about. I didn't know Casablanca was a place, or that it was set in WWII, or anything. All I knew was that Humphrey Bogart was in it, it looked romantic, and is said to be a classic. Other than that I went into this film with very little expectation.
Like many films, this was in black and white (I didn't know this either, before starting it). It opened up, showing the nightclub, introducing the circumstances and political climate of the time, and why so many people flocked to Casablanca (it was easy to get to Lisbon, and Lisbon was constantly shipping people to 'The New World'- or America). We see those desperate Europeans, and we see the arrival of the Nazi's. And we are quickly introduced to our main characters, Rick Blaine, Isla, Victor Laszlo, and the Nazi's.
This story was told with suspense. We slowly learn bits and pieces about each character, and nothing is revealed quite off the bat. My mother and I were constantly trying to guess at what was going on, and what these characters were about. They were all portrayed with much mystery, which can be quite crucial. Nothing was obviously told to us, and it was very well written.
Of the nominations that year, this film racked up noms for Best Cinematography (Black and White), Original Score, Editing, Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, and Best Writing. All of which were very much deserved. Humphrey Bogart was great, and did a truly wonderful job as the mysterious, irresistible man, all while pulling off the heartbroken man, that is still in love with Isla. The Original Score was really great, and I really noticed it. It played up every moment really well. Swooning music for the love scenes, suspenseful music for the heightened scenes, and so on. The cinematography was also quite good; the film overall looked really nice, and well filmed.
In the end, I enjoyed the film, though it wasn't my favourite. It was well-told, and had enough romance, but didn't over do it. I liked it, it was a classic, though I don't find the need to watch it again. But that's just me.
It's taken me more than one viewing to warm completely to In a Lonely Place. In the film Humphrey Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter who finally gets the chance to work on an adaptation of a best-selling novel. Unfortunately, the novel is clearly trash, and the assignment clearly hack work. Still, it just might jumpstart his failed career. After Dix is wrongfully implicated in the murder of a hatcheck girl from the Hollywood bar he frequents, he begins a romance with Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), a neighbor in the Hollywood bungalow court where he lives, who gives him an alibi but isn't really sure he's innocent. (Grahame, who was married to Nicholas Ray at the time, is quite good in one of her rare lead roles—watch the way emotions subtly register on her face in close-ups.) To complicate matters further, during the war Dix was the commanding officer of the detective investigating the murder (Frank Lovejoy), a man whose contented family life and straightforward view of the world are the opposite of Dix's isolation and tangle of confused attitudes.
I think what initially distanced me from the film is something I now see as one of its prime virtues—that while it contains elements of familiar genres of the time, in the end it doesn't really conform to any one of them. It resembles those pictures like A Star Is Born and Sunset Blvd. that show the unflattering side of Hollywood. Like those films, it depicts life in the motion picture industry as a precarious one where it is too often necessary to sell out to achieve career success, where success can turn to failure with one flop, where those branded as failures are shunned as pariahs. It is a story of postwar alienation, of a man who seems unable to return to civilian life and simply resume where he left off. It is also in part a murder mystery, a police procedural, and one of those films in the Hitchcock/Lang vein that show a falsely accused man trapped in a web of circumstance. It is at the same time the story of an unlikely romance between two people very different from each other. Yet the film never settles completely into any of these predictable genres.
Equally unpredictable and category-defying is Bogart's interpretation of Dix. In the end, though, it is his character that ties all those disparate elements together, for ultimately the movie is a character study of one of the most intricate and compelling men to be found in films of the era, a man whose personal and professional lives have hit bottom and whose greatest obstacle to his way back is himself. Bogart makes the most of the role and delivers one of his most intriguing performances. He seems to bring something of nearly every part he had ever played to Dix. With his sudden rages and explosive aggression, Dix can be as scary as any of Bogart's early gangsters, even though these outbursts are always followed by remorse. Dix is as coldly cynical as Bogart's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, as disappointed and bitter—but still susceptible to the allure of love—as his Rick in Casablanca, at times as caustically witty as his Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. This is a man whose self-loathing is projected onto the entire world around him and whose mistrust of other people approaches the paranoia of Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Yet Dix is not merely a synthesis of Bogart's previous roles, but rather a unique creation that advances Bogey's screen persona further into anguish and ambiguity than he had ever taken it before.
By the end of the movie, most of Dix's problems have sorted themselves out. But the one thing that can't be put right is his relationship with Laurel. His need to control her—his suspicion, possessiveness, and demands for total, unquestioning loyalty—eventually prove too much for her. "Dix doesn't act like a normal person. . . . I'm scared. I don't trust him," she finally admits, realizing the relationship is doomed. Cleared of a murder charge and with his script finally completed, Dix may be a free man with a revived career. But that freedom and success will not be shared. Dix is a man driven by self-destructive inner forces beyond his control, a man destined to be marooned by his own inability to trust others.
In 1936 Humphrey Bogart got a contract at Warner Bros. on the basis of his sizzling performance as the gangster Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. For the next five years Warners couldn't figure out what to do with him, typecasting him as a vicious thug in pictures like Dead End (1937) or giving him roles for which he was clearly unsuited, like the stableman (complete with unsteady Irish brogue) besotted with Bette Davis in Dark Victory (1939). It wasn't until Bogart got the lead in High Sierra (a part he campaigned hard for after several other actors turned it down) that he got a role which allowed him to showcase the paradoxical qualities of toughness and vulnerability in the same character that later became a trademark of his screen persona. The movie made him a star.
In High Sierra Bogart plays Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a jailed criminal who has seen better days. His former gang boss bribes corrupt officials to pardon Earle so that he can lead one last big heist, a jewel robbery at a swanky mountain resort in California, that will set them up for the rest of their lives. From the beginning, it's clear the plan has big problems. The inside man at the resort (an unrecognizable Cornel Wilde) is clearly unreliable. The two men who are supposed to help Earle in the robbery are rebellious and, worse, at odds over a woman (Ida Lupino) who ends up falling for Earle. And Earle becomes enamored of a handicapped young woman (Joan Leslie) he meets on the way to California who doesn't return his affection but is willing to let him pay for a healing operation before dumping him.
The screenplay was co-written by John Huston. High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, which Huston wrote and directed later the same year and which also starred Bogart, are seminal forerunners of film noir, the genre that dominated American films of the late 1940s and early 1950s and was a huge influence on the French New Wave. These two pictures are the transitional works between the two studio genres that prefigure noir—the gangster movie and the private detective movie—and full-blown film noir of the postwar period. Between them they contain most of the key elements of film noir: a self-sufficient outsider as the movie's hero, criminal activities (High Sierra's focus on a heist anticipates noir masterpieces like The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing as well as countless other examples of the genre from the late 40s and early 50s), treacherous comrades, lurking danger, pervasive cynicism, and external circumstances that lead to a tragic outcome from which there is no escape. Add to the proto-noir sensibility of these two movies the high-contrast Expressionistic look of Citizen Kane, also released in 1941, and a good case could be made that this was the year American film noir was born.
Aside from its importance as a defining moment in Bogart's career and in film noir, High Sierra is tremendously entertaining. Bogart lands on his feet in this movie, and as an actor he never faltered again. (Although plainly the main character, Bogart was second-billed after costar Ida Lupino and even received a lower salary, an indication of his status at Warners at the time and of the studio's uncertainty about him as a leading man. After this picture, he would always receive top billing.) Lupino, whose character, like Bogart's, is at once gutsy and sensitive, expertly conveys these contradictory traits. Like Bogart, she would become a specialist in this kind of role. Raoul Walsh's direction is typically forceful, creating a vivid atmosphere of isolation and doom against the landscapes of the Sierra Nevada. The end of the movie—as Bogart drives higher and higher into the mountains, pursued by the police, and the trap tightens—goes beyond the Production Code stricture that crime must be punished and pushes into the noir concept of a flawed but somehow noble man betrayed by people and by fate.
There’s a lot to like in “Virginia City” (1940), but it never quite comes together. There are some fatal casting problems, and the script is all over the place, but it’s all quite watchable and has the Warner Bros. professionalism stamped all over it. Still, despite being directed by the great Michael Curtiz, this is one of the lesser Errol Flynn entries of his starring years.
I would think some 1940 moviegoers must have felt terribly cheated after watching “Virginia City” if they were expecting a sequel to one of 1939’s biggest hits “Dodge City.”
Flynn had one of his biggest successes with “Dodge City”, a Technicolor town-taming western that holds up quite well today. At the end of that film he is asked to clean up another rough and tumble western town, Virginia City in Nevada. He agrees to the assignment, and the last scene shows him and frequent leading lady Olivia deHavilland off to Virginia City, accompanied by a triumphant Max Steiner music cue.
“Virginia City” appeared a year later, not as a sequel, but as a Civil War western, and based on an actual historic incident. It also boasts the same director (Curtiz), screen writer (Robert Bruckner) and composer (Steiner), but, alas, no Technicolor.
Having escaped from Libby Prison with pals Alan Hale and Guinn “Big Boy’ Williams (also holdovers from “Dodge City” and the three would play together in “Santa Fe Trail” a year later), Flynn realizes the dying Confederacy needs one last daring plan to keep it going. The mining town of Virginia City is home to many Confederate sympathizers and its possible some of the gold and silver mined there will be used to refinance the Confederacy. It turns out he’s right, and it’s no less than Randolph Scott as the Libby warden who agrees to guide the treasure-laden ($5 million worth) wagon train from Nevada to the South. Randolph Scott is a welcome presence in any movie and he plays the Southern gentleman here to a T. Supposedly he was Margaret Mitchell’s choice to play Ashley Wilkes. I wish he had.
It’s a lot of fun to see Flynn and Scott recognize each other in a Nevada saloon, with both thinking the other was back East.
Of course there’s a woman both men love, a Confederate sympathizer played by Miriam Hopkins. I adore Hopkins in “Trouble in Paradise” (1932) and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1932) but she’s too brittle and harsh for the role and is arguably one of Flynn’s least effective leading ladies. They go together like pickles and milk. It’s not an enjoyable screen coupling, and her rendition of “Rally Round the Flag Boys” is also pretty rough on the ears. I prefer her singing “Jazz Up Your Lingerie” in Lubitsch’s “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931), one of the greatest songs ever written.
The second miscasting mistake is the Mexican bandit John Murrell, played by, of all people, Humphrey Bogart. Yikes! His Mexican accent is strictly of the Frito Bandito type, and why they had to make him Mexican I’ll never know. They should have just made him a regular black-clad outlaw, like his role in the marvelously entertaining “The Oklahoma Kid” (1939). Many people feel Bogart’s worst screen performance is in “The Return of Dr. X”, his only horror film, but I have to give the nod to “Virginia City.”
Despite the miscasting, and the often unwieldy script, there’s much to enjoy. Curtiz’s compositions during the action scenes remain a marvel, and Steiner provides some of the best traveling stagecoach music ever. Flynn and Scott provide some stirring self-sacrifice at the end and we even get a climatic plea to Abraham Lincoln that is corny but somehow fits.
The film runs 121 minutes, and, unusually for a Curtiz film, one feels the whole two hours. A little trimming would have helped.
But it’s not a bad film by any means, and I will no doubt re-visit it again in the years ahead. Errol Flynn and Randolph Scott in a big budget western is not something to be ignored.
“Across the Pacific” (1942) is a nifty spy melodrama that offers a pleasant reunion of three key players (Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sidney Greenstreet) and director (John Huston) from the previous year’s “The Maltese Falcon”, which was a big hit for Warner Bros.
The film takes place just before the bombing at Pearl Harbor and details how ex-solider Bogart gets swept up in a Japanese plot to blow up the Panama Canal. Much of the action takes place on a Japanese-owned passenger/cargo ship which seems to travel through heavy fog an awful lot in the evening (movie fog is a wondrous thing to behold in black and white). Of course the ship is rife with mysterious travelers and people whose identities are not what they seem.
It’s all most enjoyable, and moves along at a crisp 97 minutes. I continue to be amazed at the pace of these Warner Bros. “A” features. Of all the major studios of the era, most of the Warner Bros. features are as fast paced as a “B” movie. It’s just one of the many reasons why it’s my favorite studio from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
For Charlie Chan fans there is the additional fun of seeing Number One Son (Keye Luke) and Number Two Son (Sen Yung) in supporting roles.
The fine folks at Warner Home Video did a splendid thing when they released Humphrey Bogart The Signature Collection Vol. 2. Because that collection included one of his seminal roles, the private eye Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), Warners saw fit to include the story’s two previous versions, the 1931 version and the 1936 retread titled “Satan Met a Lady.”
I watched the 1931 version the other night and its not bad. The problem is the 1941 is so entrenched in our consciousness, and is one of the most perfectly cast movies of all time, that its odd to see other actors inhabit these roles and spouting that famous dialogue.
Ricardo Cortez plays Spade in this version, and I don’t like him in the role. Cortez has always been one of my least favorite leading men of the 1930s. I’ve always found him irritatingly smug and superior and that’s how he plays Spade. The rest of the cast is better, with Dudley Digges essaying a fine Casper Gutman and Bebe Daniels a sympathetic femme fatale. Dwight Frye isn’t given much to do as Wilmer Cooke, and an actor unknown to me, Otto Mattieson plays Joel Cairo. They’re all OK, but when these roles are played by, respectively, Sydney Greenstreet, Mary Astor, Elisha Cook, Jr. and Peter Lorre, they come up short.
It’s odd seeing frequent Laurel and Hardy foil Walter Long play the straight role of Miles Archer, Sam’s partner. Thelma Todd plays Archer’s wife who’s enjoying a fling with Spade, and she’s always an enjoyable presence.
It’s a respectable enough movie and if it wasn’t for the 1941 version, it would probably be remembered as a respectable early talkie detective movie. But the 1941 version has relegated it to a curio at best.
The less said about “Satan Met a Lady”, truly one of the worst Warner Bros. films of the 1930s, the better.
Rating for the 1931 “The Maltese Falcon”: Two and a half stars.
Probably Humphrey Bogart’s strangest role is as a living corpse in “The Return of Doctor X” (1939) a 62-minute programmer and a sequel in name only to “Doctor X”, which had been a big hit for Warner Bros. in 1932.
Despite the similarity of the titled medico, the films have nothing in common, not even characters. The only similarity I can see is a pre-occupation with synthetic body parts. The 1932 film has to do with a mad scientist experimenting with synthetic flesh that he would don on his murderous prowls around town during the cycle of the full moon, while the 1939 flick has scientists experimenting with synthetic blood and its uses to raise dead people.
Bogart looks uncomfortable in his pasty white make-up with a white streak in his hair, and probably wishes he had never made the film, but he’s fine in it. He’s suitably creepy, and the climax involving the heroine (Rosemary Lane) strapped to a laboratory table in an old farmhouse while Bogart stands over her with a syringe is pretty good.
The heroes are played by a couple of likeable leads, Wayne Morris and Dennis Morgan, it moves along and it’s a relatively painless way to spend 62 minutes.
The DVD transfer, paired with the aforementioned “Doctor X” is a thing of beauty. Because some of these lesser-known films were not re-issued to theaters over the years, they look and sound better than many of the so-called classics.
I think what initially distanced me from the film is something I now see as one of its prime virtues—that while it contains elements of familiar genres of the time, in the end it doesn't really conform to any one of them. It resembles those pictures like A Star Is Born and Sunset Blvd. that show the unflattering side of Hollywood. Like those films, it depicts life in the motion picture industry as a precarious one where it is too often necessary to sell out to achieve career success, where success can turn to failure with one flop, where those branded as failures are shunned as pariahs. It is a story of postwar alienation, of a man who seems unable to return to civilian life and simply resume where he left off. It is also in part a murder mystery, a police procedural, and one of those films in the Hitchcock/Lang vein that show a falsely accused man trapped in a web of circumstance. It is at the same time the story of an unlikely romance between two people very different from each other. Yet the film never settles completely into any of these predictable genres.
The screenplay was co-written by John Huston. High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, which Huston wrote and directed later the same year and which also starred Bogart, are seminal forerunners of film noir, the genre that dominated American films of the late 1940s and early 1950s and was a huge influence on the French New Wave. These two pictures are the transitional works between the two studio genres that prefigure noir—the gangster movie and the private detective movie—and full-blown film noir of the postwar period. Between them they contain most of the key elements of film noir: a self-sufficient outsider as the movie's hero, criminal activities (High Sierra's focus on a heist anticipates noir masterpieces like The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing as well as countless other examples of the genre from the late 40s and early 50s), treacherous comrades, lurking danger, pervasive cynicism, and external circumstances that lead to a tragic outcome from which there is no escape. Add to the proto-noir sensibility of these two movies the high-contrast Expressionistic look of Citizen Kane, also released in 1941, and a good case could be made that this was the year American film noir was born.
