In interviews decades later, Hawks painted over all the melodrama and never let on to his own hurt feelings; he even pretended that he had helped engineer the romance and urged it along for the sake of the picture: “Without Bogie’s help I couldn’t have done what I did with Bacall. Not many actors would sit around and wait while a girl steals a scene. But he fell in love with the girl and the girl with him, and that made it easy.” One of Hawks’s more astounding claims, given Bacall’s perceptions of his anti-Semitism, was his later insistence that he warned Bogart to curb his own slurs against Jews if he wanted to have a chance with Bacall; according to this story, Bogart had no idea Bacall was Jewish at the onset of their romance and only learned when Hawks told him. Ironically, Bacall was doing everything she could to prevent Hawks from finding out, lest he lose interest in her professionally. Knowing details of Bogart’s life with Mayo Methot, Hawks also boasted that he instructed Bacall never, but never, to fight with Bogart if she wanted to keep him.
If things didn’t go Hawks’s way with Bacall, nor was his life with Slim altogether to his liking at this point. Bacall felt that Hawks was not so much in love with Slim as he was “very proud of her. He loved the way she looked, she was so beautiful and classy.” But Bacall “never felt a sense of fun or sex between them,” and she learned that Slim knew all about her husband’s affair with Dolores Moran, whom Slim derisively referred to as “Dollarass Moron.” It is possible that Hawks launched into this casual relationship partly out of spite when he realized he would be getting nowhere with Bacall. During the shoot, he also had a fling with a tall, brown-haired extra named Dorothy Davenport, whom Dan Seymour remembered as “a Slim type.”
Despite the deceit and ill-feeling revolving around Hawks, the contagious thrill sparked by Bogart and Bacall’s romance defined the prevailing mood of the shoot. Despite the pressures they were under, the two stars joked around constantly at work and met surreptitiously at the end of the day and sometimes at night. William Faulkner, who would receive his first screen credit in eight years on To Have and Have Not, achieved new regard in Hollywood thanks to the picture, and he and Meta Carpenter found a measure of the happiness they had once shared, until he abruptly announced to her that his wife and daughter would be coming out for the summer. Walter Brennan was a joy as always, Dan Seymour and Marcel Dalio were delighted to be playing prominent parts in a major picture, and Hoagy Carmichael could hardly believe that he was actually acting in a film; as Bacall said, the songwriter “looked up to Howard so much, and Howard made an image for him that he’d never had before.”
For her part, Bacall couldn’t get over the irony of being a virginal, nineteen-year-old “nice Jewish girl” cast as a sexually knowing woman of the world and thrown in among these tough, seasoned men. Like the persona that was being created for her, The Look, as it came to be known around the world, began as a false pose as well. Because she was so nervous at first, Bacall held her head down to minimize her shaking, then would look up with her eyes without lifting her chin. When enhanced by Hickox’s lighting, this proved so provocatively sexy that Hawks would just instruct Bacall to give Bogart The Look and she would know what to do.
It took Bogart to wake Bacall up to the fact that much of what Hawks had been regaling her with for months was purest fiction. “Very early on, Bogie said, ‘You don’t believe the stories Howard tells, do you?’ I said, ‘Of course I do. Why not?’ Bogie told me that he made things up as he went along. Bogie never believed any of the stories Howard told.” After this, Bacall was able to deduce that Hawks “had quite an active fantasy life. In his stories, he always won, he always came out on top. He got his release through his work and his inventions. His inventions in his work, I think, meant everything to him, and I guess he more or less succeeded in making them his life.
“He was a great director, as long as I did the work,” Bacall reflected. “I thought he was the best real movie director I ever worked with. I think he was really way ahead of anyone else in terms of dealing with men and women. He had great wit in dealing with them. The films don’t date at all, they’re completely modern. He believed that women should behave like men. He gave you a great sense of security that made you feel like you’d come out on top. And it was fun.” Pranks were the order of the day. Hoagy Carmichael played the whole picture with a toothpick in his mouth, which added a memorable aspect to his character. “It was a gimmick, like George Raft and his nickel,” he observed. “I thought of it and Howard didn’t say he liked it, but didn’t say he didn’t.”
As per Hawks’s policy, Jack Warner was not welcome on the set. Despite this, he called down one day to announce that he was bringing over the gossip columnist Louella Parsons. As Dan Seymour remembered it, the assistant director, Jack Sullivan, “told Hawks, who went out the door, got into his car and left the lot. Then Sullivan sent all of us home. By the time Jack Warner walked on the stage with Louella, Howard Hawks, Bogie and Bacall were gone. Jack Sullivan said, ‘We’re through for the day.’ Michael Curtiz heard about this and tried to get away with it, but he couldn’t. Warner and the others were afraid of Howard Hawks because he was so cool.”
Bacall remained surprised that Hawks actually wanted her to sing in the picture. Her vocal training was coming along, but no one knew if she would sound good enough for her singing voice to be used, so Hawks kept his options open. To find a singer whose voice would match up plausibly with Bacall’s husky tones was not easy, and quite a few were tried, including the deep-voiced black singer Lillian Randolph, Dolores Hope, and the teenaged Andy Williams. Williams finally prevailed, and it was his voice that emanated from the playback machine on May 1 when Hawks at last came to filming “How Little We Know.” As was customary, Bacall sang along while Carmichael tinkered away on the silent keyboard, and as she did, Hawks liked what he heard and told her to keep going. When she was done, he decided to record her again singing the song, so, despite the legend that has come down over the years that Andy Williams’s voice was dubbed over Bacall’s (a legend so generally accepted that it became a correct answer on Jeopardy), the truth is that Bacall sang her own numbers in To Have and Have Not.
As he preferred to do, Hawks shot as much in sequence as possible; with Faulkner rewriting as they went, it would have been difficult to do otherwise. Warner Bros. scheduled the production for forty-eight days, but with the playful approach brought to this picture, as well as the care Hawks lavished upon his new star, shooting was already six days behind schedule after just fifteen days of work. Hawks filmed the key pair of scenes in Marie’s and Morgan’s rooms, ending with the “whistle” line, over three days, March 27–29, at the beginning of the fifth week, a week or two after Bogart and Bacall had started their relationship for real. On some of the key shots featuring Bacall, Hawks made between nine and thirteen takes, an unusual number for him, but worthwhile to ensure that he got exactly what he wanted from her. Quite apart from his romantic interest in her, Bogart got a charge out of acting opposite Bacall: “She gives you back what you send. It’s like a fast game of tennis. If you put over a good ball and somebody muffs it, you can’t have a good game. But if somebody drives it back hard, you drive back hard, and pretty soon you have a good game.”
Shooting continued through April on the scenes set in the cellar and the San Francisco Café, with the two big musical numbers, “Hong Kong Blues” and “How Little We Know,” staged near the end. Filming finally ended on May 10 after sixty-two days, fourteen days behind schedule. The original budget of $1,056,182 was exceeded by some 50 percent, as the picture, including overhead, cost $1,557,655. Hawks received his $100,000 according to his Warner Bros. contract, $30,000 of which had been advanced to him up front to cover some pressing gambling debts. The egregious discrepancy between the two writers’ salaries bluntly points up the penuriousness of William Faulkner’s contract with Warners: Jules Furthman earned $47,750 for his work, while Faulkner received a mere $5,000, or less than Whitman Chambers and Cleve Adams got for their momentary a
nd insignificant contributions to the script. Warner Bros. issued Hawks and Feldman a flat $125 per week to cover their payments to Bacall.
All along the way, Hawks cagily held Bacall back from the press, carefully plotting to build public interest in a slow crescendo that would reach its peak with the film’s release. Two fabulously successful sneak previews convinced Warners that they had something special. The studio’s publicity chief, Charles Einfeld, went bonkers when he saw the film with an audience, reporting to his staff, “Nothing like Bacall has been seen on the screen since Garbo and Dietrich. This is one of the biggest and hottest attractions we have ever had. If this sounds like I’m overboard, well I am.” For months, newspapers and magazines stirred up interest in “The Girl with ‘The Look,’” while, in Hollywood, Bacall endured a summer during which she could find only furtive moments with Bogart, who was with his wife on his yacht off Newport. Hawks was convinced that he had been right all along in seeing that Bogart would never leave his wife for Bacall. Furthermore, he was so pleased with Bacall’s work in the film that he decided he could forgive her dalliance and agree to Jack Warner’s request for an immediate follow-up for Bogart and Bacall, certain that she would rebound to his sage influence.
Ever since giving the go-ahead on To Have and Have Not, the studio had been expecting Hawks to follow it with Dark Eyes, the stage piece that had three wonderful lead roles for women. Initially, Hawks and the intended producer, Robert Buckner, had been intrigued by the Warners’ intentions of casting Garbo, Dietrich, and Fanny Brice, but this fanciful idea had fallen by the wayside, and now the studio wanted to proceed with some combination of Alexis Smith, Faye Emerson, Ann Sheridan, and Jane Wyman, all-American girls totally unsuited to play sophisticated Continental “artistes.” Hawks momentarily turned his attention to two other projects, Pillow to Post, a wartime housing-shortage comedy, and Chicken Every Sunday, an adaptation of a play about a family boardinghouse in Tucson, circa 1900.
None of these projects were suitable for Bogart and Bacall, however, so, in his limousine riding back from the first To Have and Have Not preview, Jack Warner asked Hawks if he had anything in mind. In fact, Hawks had already kicked ideas around with Faulkner and had come up with the possibility of Raymond Chandler’s detective thriller The Big Sleep. As it happened, Warner Bros. had considered buying the book when it was published in 1939, but its sordid plot points involving pornography, nymphomania, homosexuality, police corruption, and unpunished murder seemed to pose too daunting a censorship challenge. Hawks glibly assured the studio chief that, as before, he could iron out any difficulties. Claiming that he already had the first half entirely blocked out, Hawks insisted that he could have a completed screenplay passable by censor chief Joseph Breen, who had succeeded Will Hays, ready within three or four weeks, and the entire picture finished before the end of the year.
Knowing Hawks, Warner can only have laughed to himself at this rash prediction, but he didn’t hesitate to give the go-ahead, feeling that the Hawks-Chandler-Bogart-Bacall combination was as close to a sure thing as he could get. Chandler at that moment was just entering his greatest vogue in Hollywood; Double Indemnity, which he cowrote with the film’s director, Billy Wilder, had scored a big hit that spring, and Murder, My Sweet, the second adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely, was already under way at RKO. With Chandler under exclusive contract as a screenwriter at Paramount, there was no possibility of hiring him for the adaptation. So Hawks engaged Faulkner, increasingly unhappy with his Warner Bros. enslavement, whom he knew would at least be able to break down the novel in a constructive way. But to speed things along, and for help on dialogue, Hawks wanted another writer. Hawks read little but mystery novels, and one that had recently impressed him was No Good from a Corpse, written by a first-time novelist named Leigh Brackett with a tough, hard-boiled prose style. Hawks called the writer in and was, as Brackett recalled, “somewhat shaken when he discovered that it was Miss and not Mister Brackett, but he rallied bravely and signed me on anyway, for which I have always been extremely grateful.”
Just twenty-eight years old, short, and taken to dressing in the simple, somewhat outdoorsy manner Hawks admired, Brackett had spent much of her childhood in Pasadena, not far from the Hawks home. Hawks was also won over by Brackett’s taste in literature, as her heroes were very close to his own—Hemingway, Kipling, and Steinbeck, in addition to Chandler and Hammett. Having been previously employed in Hollywood only by Republic Pictures on a cheap horror film, she was understandably stunned and a bit bewildered to be summoned by the likes of Hawks to work with the great Faulkner on a story by her god Chandler. “What have I got to offer? as it were,” she quipped. Hawks was willing to risk $125 per week on her, which was more than all right with Brackett: “I’d have done it for nothing.”
Hawks’s directive to his writers was, “Don’t monkey with the book—just make a script out of it. The writing is too good.” This was willfully perverse and, if true, self-deceiving, since never in his career was he content to simply transcribe an existing text on-screen. Unlike John Huston, who always insisted on fidelity to the original text, for Hawks irreverence was more like it, adherence to some preexisting literary standard quite irrelevent to what interested him. Hawks was invariably driven—by his creative urges, his need to put his own stamp on someone else’s creation, his ego, and his entire artistic process—to free himself from the constraints of literature, to spin a tale his own way, to make something organic gel from the combination of talents assembled on a particular picture. To be sure, The Big Sleep ended up resembling its source much more than did To Have and Have Not, but Hawks’s original instructions to hew closely to the novel stand as ironic, in that it was he, more than his writers, who strayed significantly from it.
Hawks rated Chandler, along with Hammett and Hemingway, among his favorite authors. He once remarked, “Chandler’s dialogue is in some ways just as good as Hecht’s and MacArthur’s, though it was more limited. He really wrote only about Marlowe, but it was awfully good.” Hawks also felt that Chandler, who was in his early fifties by the time his novels starting becoming popular, had an advantage in having written most of his important work before he began being taken seriously, so “he didn’t get a chance to be self-conscious about it.”
Due to the august literary names involved, the adaptation of The Big Sleep has been far more intensely scrutinized than that of any other Hawks film except To Have and Have Not; scholars specializing in Chandler, Faulkner, and Hawks have all taken close looks at it. Especially helpful is the work of Roger Shatzkin; the very title of his essay “Who Cares Who Killed Owen Taylor?” frankly addresses the issue no one can avoid when discussing The Big Sleep: that the plot is so complicated that even the original author couldn’t say who murdered one of the characters, but that it didn’t matter because everything else about it is so dazzlingly good. If there was a pivotal film in Hawks’s career, after which his storytelling technique became more discursive, more leisurely, and less tightly plotted, it is this one. As Hawks later stated: “I’m learning more about characters and how to let them handle the plot, rather than let the plot move them.” It could easily be argued that after The Big Sleep, Hawks’s films begin to suffer from loose, casual plotting and that their quality depends to a great extent simply upon how successful he is at getting away with it, or, on his terms, how good his scenes are. As Meta Carpenter so astutely noted, it was a risky way to make a movie, the equivalent of walking a tightrope without the net normally provided by a tightly knit, well-constructed story. It is perhaps not coincidental that the most convoluted, heavily plotted story Hawks ever took on was the one that triggered this significant change in artistic attitude.
Hawks-Feldman, of which Hawks was now president, bought The Big Sleep for twenty thousand dollars, with an agreement that Warner Bros. would in turn pay him $55,000 for the literary rights as well as a completed screenplay—Hawks could keep the difference if there was any. With his impeccable story sense, Faulkner was
entrusted to devise the structure, but the approach to the actual writing proved rather unusual. Brackett described her initial meeting with her partner on the lot: “Faulkner came out of his office with the book The Big Sleep … and said: ‘I have worked out what we’re going to do. We will do alternate sections. I will do these chapters and you will do those chapters.’ And that was the way it was done.… I never saw what he did and he never saw what I did. We just turned our stuff in to Hawks.” Brackett acknowledged, “It’s a confusing book if you sit down and tear it apart. When you read it from page to page it moves so beautifully that you don’t care, but if you start tearing it apart to see what makes it tick it comes unglued.” In fact, it is possible, with some difficulty, to fit all the pieces of the novel together, and Faulkner and Brackett actually went to considerable lengths to clarify some of the details left a bit vague by Chandler.
Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood Page 51