To Have and Have Not (film) James Agee liked the film but felt "Going My Way" was better, because "To Have and Have Not" focused too much on "character and atmosphere" rather than on plot. Agee was far more interested in Bacall's performance than the anti-Fascist themes in the film. The film was one of the top thirty grossing pictures of 1944. According to Warner Bros records the film earned $3,652,000 domestically and $1,605,000 foreign, coming close to the high earnings of "Casablanca". "To Have and Have Not" received an award from the National Board of Review. Screenwriter and film critic Paul Schrader classified the film
To Have and Have Not (film) were close friends and on a fishing trip, reluctant to go into screenwriting, Hemingway was told by Hawks that he could make a great movie from his worst book which Hawks admitted was "To Have and Have Not". Jules Furthman wrote the first screenplay, set in Cuba like the novel, but the screenplay was extensively altered to be set in Martinique instead of Cuba because the portrayal of Cuba's government was believed to be in violation of the United State's Good Neighbor policy with Latin American countries. Hawks's other good friend William Faulkner was the main contributor to the screenplay