Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 49

Bogart, Bacall, and Howard Hawks

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By October 10,1944, Los Angeles Times article (alongside a Woman in the Window
review) cited: ‘‘Lauren Bacall Selected to Portray Sinister Role in Bogart’s Big
Sleep.'' Originally, Bacall was to play the murderous fem m e fatale^ Carmen, in The
B ig Sleep. Bacall’s role was later shifted to Carmen’s more benign older sister, a
less meaty, more peripheral minor role. The B ig Sleep was then reformulated into
a co-star-vehicle changing Bacall’s role to retarget and capitalize on the appeal of
“The Look” on the tails of To H ave and H ave Not.^^
Warner Bros, purchased the rights to make one film of Chandler’s hot
property from Hawks for $20,000 on October 27,1944— with no rights to produce
a sequel or a television broadcast version of The B ig Sleep.~^ By 1944, following
the enormous success of To H ave and H ave N ot and D ouble Indemnity, writer
Leigh Brackett worked on The B ig Sleep as her first script at Warner Bros. Author
of numerous hard-boiled crime novels, Brackett polished her craft of “writing like
a man” in adapting the seductive misogynism of Raymond Chandler’s story and
penning tough women in collaborating with Hawks and William Faulkner, who
worked separately on the screenplay. Hawks and Jules Furthman then did significant
rewriting during production on the set of The B ig Sleep.
Stylistically, the influence of war-related newsreel “realism” conventions
had become increasingly pronounced in Warner Bros, productions—from To H ave
and H ave N ot (drawing on C asablanca) to The B ig Sleep. Cameraman Sid Hickox
shot both Hawks films. Yet, The Big Sleep's visual style was quintessentially film
noir, much darker than C asablanca or To H ave and H ave Not. The exterior of the
dark, rain-slicked, tree-covered road outside Geiger’s house resembled the body
dumping sets in Conflict, Woman in the Window, and the rain-pelted finale of
M inistry o f Fear. A November 9, 1944 Warner Bros, production memo fi-om Eric
Stacey to T. C. (“Tenny”) Wright cites the tarped set and rigging of the Brownstone
Street exterior and arranging for “necessary fog keys.” This enclosed, tented wartime
set is consistent with other wartime productions to enable a more controlled shooting
environment and accentuated claustrophobic noir style. A November 13 memo
cited filming was preempted because the script was being rewritten and (artificial)
rain had gotten the exterior set of Geiger’s house too wet to continue.-^ Production
was rough. There was tension between Hawks and Bogart over his romance with
the director’s discovery. (Relations between Hawks and Bacall even cooled, but
remained polite.) By November 24, 1944 “Bogart overslept” and had “not had a
day off for thirty-six straight days,” and Hawks was “seriously thinking of arranging
his work so that Bogie can get a little rest.”-^ The star’s marriage to estranged
Mayo Methot was falling apart. He was in and out of living at home and at the
Beverly Hills Hotel, and in and out of an alcoholic stupor. And all the while he was
seeing Bacall—on the sly initially, then he finally broke off his marriage and eloped
with his co-star during production of The B ig Sleep. Hawks apparently was not