To Have and Have Not · reception & legacy

1945 · Howard Hawks

How To Have and Have Not has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A hit on release riding Bogart's post-Casablanca stardom, it was long dismissed as Casablanca-lite — now it's cherished on its own terms as the movie where the Bogart–Bacall electricity was actually happening in real time, on camera.

What's debated

The eternal fan debate: is it a great film or just a Casablanca retread rescued by the most palpable romantic chemistry ever filmed — and is it even better than Casablanca precisely because of that?

Its footprint

Bacall's 'You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow' is one of the most quoted come-ons in movie history, and 'The Look' — her chin-down, eyes-up gaze — became an instant icon of screen seduction.

Where it stands

Firmly canon as the Bogie-and-Bacall origin story — the film cinephiles cite when they want to argue that star chemistry is a real, filmable substance.

★ Did you know? The film began as a bet: Howard Hawks told Ernest Hemingway he could make a good movie out of Hemingway's worst novel, and Hemingway named To Have and Have Not — with William Faulkner then co-writing the screenplay, it's a rare film touched by two Nobel laureates in literature. Bacall, 19 and in her debut, invented 'The Look' by pressing her chin down to keep her head from trembling with nerves — and she and Bogart fell in love during the shoot and married soon after.