Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael, Dolores Moran, Sheldon Leonard, Walter Szurovy, Marcel Dalio, Walter Sande, Dan Seymour
In the year 1940, French island colony Martinique is ruled by the pro-Nazi Vichy government, and the United States is not yet involved in the war spreading across the world. Harry “Steve” Morgan (Bogart) is an American operating a for-hire yacht in which he and his boozy companion, Eddie (Brennan), take vacationers on Caribbean fishing trips. Frenchy (Dalio), the manager of a local hotel, involves Morgan in a business deal to arrange a suspicious trip for some of the locals. Morgan meets an attractive young drifter, Marie (Bacall), at the hotel. The pianist at the hotel lounge, Cricket (Carmichael), helps Marie get a job as a singer, and Morgan starts a stormy relationship with her. The suspicious trip involves smuggling French partisans Hellene (Moran) and Paul de Bursac (Szurovy), who are sought by police agents. It is a dangerous undertaking, and Morgan must decide whether to play it safe or support the French conspirators. The screenplay by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman features lively repartee between Bogart and Bacall, including Bacall’s line “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.” Bogart and Bacall (then 19 years old) fell in love during filming and later married. Based loosely on the Ernest Hemingway novel of the same name.
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