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) 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