Critical comparison of screenplay drafts with the final film product indicates just how little Faulkner contributed to several of the films he worked on during the 1930s and 1940s. Directors and producers involved in such films as Banjo On My Knee (1936), Slave Ship (1937), Submarine Patrol (1938), and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) felt that he spent too much time fleshing out characters and their troubled pasts. However, Faulkner made more substantial contributions to films such as Air Force (1943) and The Southerner (1945).  

The most memorable Faulkner/Hawks productions of this period were the adaptations of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (1944) and Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1946). Initially reluctant to permit a film adaptation of his short story, Hemingway eventually agreed, and Faulkner was chosen to write the screenplay. Faulkner changed the protagonist, Harry Morgan, from a Key West rum runner to an anti-Vichy smuggler on Martinique during World War II. This transformation allowed Hawks to enhance the similarities of Humphrey Bogart's character Rick from the recently released Casablanca (1942) with that of Morgan. It also provided Faulkner an opportunity to display his anti-fascist beliefs. The quick-witted scenes often resulted from Faulkner taking the recently finished script pages directly to the set and the addition of adlibbed lines by the actors. Final screenplay credit went to both Faulkner and Jules Furthman, and this case features the earliest published form of the Faulkner-Furthman text in a cheaply produced Japanese publication with the complete dialogue in both Japanese and English.    [go to page 4 >>]