Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 44
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Popular Culture Review
discovered Lauren Bacall and signed her up for a $100-per-week contract at his inhouse independent H-F Productions to star opposite Bogart in To H ave and H ave
N ot and The B ig Sleep at Warner Bros. After incorporating Ella Raines in B-H
Productions (with partner Charles Boyer) and selling her contract to Universal for
Phantom Lady, Hawks formed another independent company, H-F Productions, in
1943 with agent Charles K. Feldman. Hawks was shrewd in gaining three hot
properties for H-F Productions which he then sold to Warner Bros.: Ernest
Hemingway’s To H ave and H ave N ot, Raymond Chandler’s The B ig Sleep, and
19-year-old Betty Bacall.
Originally, Howard Hughes (who had worked with Hawks producing the
gangster film S c a rf ace in 1931-32) had purchased the rights to the 1937 novel To
H ave an d H ave N ot from Hemingway on May 31,1939 for $10,000. By September
7, 1943, a Warner Bros, memo outlined the “Howard Hawks deal” to pay Hawks
$100,000 to direct the film for the studio plus 20% of the gross up to three million
and 30% thereafter, to star Bogart in the lead with newcomer Bacall—under contract
to Hawks— on a 50-50 split contract basis with Warners, and to purchase To H ave
and H ave N ot fi*om Hawks (and pay the director whatever he paid Hughes for it)
for a price not to exceed $100,000. Interestingly, an October 22, 1943 contract
stated that Hawks purchased the story from Hughes (for an unknovm amount on
an unknown day) in October 1943, and that Warner Bros, agreed to pay $92,500 to
acquire the property from Hawks. A June 3, 1944 production budget confirms the
sweet deal: a hefty $92,500 cost for story rights (with another $64,278 developing
the continuity and treatment), no producer, and $200,000 paid to director Hawks—
who insisted on producing his own films. After Warner initially opposed Bacall’s
casting in To H ave and H ave N ot (with ads promoting Bogart and not even
mentioning Bacall), her debut was so successful that Hawks then sold Bacall’s
contract outright to the major studio for future Warners projects—as relations
between star/s and the hyphenate director became strained due to Bogart and Bacall’s
oflf-screen romance and marriage (by the end of The B ig Sleep). Production on To
H ave and H ave N ot vein 62 days from February 29-May 10,1944 (following D ouble
Indem nity's production but before its release, and just after M ildred P ierce's
production at Warners)."
Production and promotion strategies capitalized on hyping heightened
sensational red meat sex and violence ‘a la Bogart as destabilized male star in
C asablanca, Conflict, To H ave and H ave N o t and The Big Sleep publicity. Warner
Bros.’ October 20, 1944 production notes press release for To H ave and H ave N ot
cited that the censorable “taint of rum running had been removed” from Ernest
Hemingway’s novel, but the “helping of gun powder and sex increased.” It described
star Humphrey Bogart as “hot as a Long Tom on the Siegfried front, after
C asablanca and the Academy Award.” Interestingly, the publicity credited Hawks’