Humphrey Bogart in "Watch on the Rhine". The film vaulted Bogart from fourth place to first in the studio's roster, finally overtaking James Cagney. By 1946 he'd more than doubled his annual salary to over $460,000, making him the highest-paid actor in the world. Between 1943 and 1944, Bogart went on the United Service Organizations and War Bond tours accompanied by Methot, enduring arduous travels to Italy and North Africa, including Casablanca. Bogart met Lauren Bacall while filming "To Have and Have Not" (1944), a loose adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel. The movie has many similarities with "Casablanca"—the same enemies, the
Humphrey Bogart her life." Just months after wrapping the film, Bogart and Bacall were reunited for an encore, the film noir "The Big Sleep", based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, again with script help from William Faulkner. Chandler thoroughly admired Bogart's performance: "Bogart can be tough without a gun. Also, he has a sense of humor that contains that grating undertone of contempt." The film was completed and slated for release in 1945, then withdrawn and substantially re-edited to add new, juiced-up scenes exploiting both the box office chemistry that shone between Bogart and Bacall in "To Have and Have Not",