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 Key West and Cuba in the 1930s, and provides a social commentary on that time and place. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers describes the novel as heavily influenced by the Marxist ideology Hemingway was exposed to by his support of the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War while he was writing it. The work got a mixed critical reception. The novel had its origins in two short stories published earlier in periodicals by Hemingway ("One Trip Across" and "The Tradesman's Return") which make up the opening chapters, and a novella, written later, which makes up about two-thirds of the book.