While filming To Have and Have Not, Humphrey Bogart became enchanted with Lauren Bacall. This became apparent, according to Bacall, about three weeks into the shooting of the picture. Immediately it presented problems, because Bogart was still married to Mayo Methot, who was as watchful and as jealous as ever. A few weeks earlier, when he was congratulating Bacall on her screen test (which consisted of the famous ‘If you want me, just whistle’ scene), his prescient comment had been ‘We’ll have a lot of fun together,’ but for a while it seemed as if fun was the last thing on their agenda: they would drive their cars to secluded residential streets and sit holding hands and talking, or write each other long, ardent, frustrated letters. And when shooting on To Have and Have Not was over, they had no further excuse for being together. Fortunately fate was quick to step in, in the kindly guise of Howard Hawks and Warners executives, who were so pleased with the on-screen chemistry between the two stars that they decided to waste no time before pairing them again. In October 1944 they began filming their second film The Big Sleep where they resumed their affair with a vengeance.
