To Have and Have Not (film) To Have and Have Not (film) To Have and Have Not is a 1944 American romance-war-adventure film directed by Howard Hawks, loosely based on Ernest Hemingway's 1937 novel of the same name; however, the story was altered for the film. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan and Lauren Bacall in her film debut; it also features Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael, Sheldon Leonard, Dan Seymour, and Marcel Dalio. The plot centers on the romance between a freelancing fisherman in Martinique and a beautiful American drifter which is complicated by the growing French resistance in Vichy France. Ernest Hemingway and Howard Hawks
To Have and Have Not (film) although elements of Hemingway, Faulkner, and "Casablanca" can be found in the film, it represents Hawks's capacity for expression, claiming it is, "beyond doubt, exactly the work its director intended it to be, and would have been nothing like this in the hands of anyone else." Cricket, the piano player in the hotel bar, was played by the singer-songwriter Hoagy Carmichael. In the course of the movie, Cricket and Slim perform "How Little We Know", by Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, and "Am I Blue?", by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke. Cricket and the band also perform "Hong Kong Blues", by