RARA-AVIS: To Have and Have Not

From: Dan Alban ( frimp13@yahoo.com)
Date: 17 Jan 2002


>From: abc@wt.net
>Subject: RARA-AVIS: book/movie

>William Faulkner worked on the screenplay.

Making this the only film to have a Nobel Prize-winning author adapt the screenply from a book by another Nobel Prize-winning author.

>From: "M Blumenthal" < blumenidiot@21stcentury.net>
>Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: To Have and Have Not
>
>Granted the movie has virtually no connection with the book, However,
>it's a very good movie. I know a lot of critics consider it better
>than Casablanca.

I don't know of many critics that have said it's better than Casablanca, though some do think of it quite highly. I thought it was a bit disappointing after having heard it compared to Casablanca all the time, but it is a solid Hawks classic, with some fantastic racy dialogue. ("You know how to whistle, don't you Steve? You just put your lips together...and blow.")

>(Why is Harry Morgan called Steve?).

Hawks inserts a lot of stuff from his own life in his films. Marie Browning (Bacall) and Harry Morgan (Bogart) refer to each other as Slim and Steve because those were the pet names that Hawks and his wife Nancy Gross called each other. Hawks liked Bacall because she reminded him of Gross, though he sort of had to train Bacall to act more impudent and talk with a deeper, more husky voice.

Gross was apparently very sassy, and Hawks would often ask her what she'd say at certain points in a script, and then tell the screenwriters to replace the dialogue with her zippy one-liners or sultry double-entendres. I believe Faulkner said, semi-seriously, that she deserved a cowriting credit for the script of The Big Sleep.

-Dan

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