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On and off the screen Bogart and Bacall caused a chemical reaction rivaled only by that of Tracy and Hepburn. The start was not promising: "He [Howard Hawks] said he thought he'd like to put me in a film with Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. I thought, 'Cary Grant—terrific! Humphrey Bogart —yucch.'"
Yet when she describes the moment that their relationship became serious, one can almost hear a director shout "Cut and print": "It was about three weeks into the picture—the end of the day—I had one more shot, was sitting at the dressing table in the portable dressing room combing my hair. Bogie came in to bid me good night. He was standing behind me—when suddenly he leaned over, put his hand under my chin, and kissed me. It was impulsive—he was a bit shy—no lunging wolf tactics. He took a worn package of matches out of his pocket and asked me to put my phone number on the back. I did." His love letters too were everything a girl could want.
Their eleven-year marriage produced two children, a son Steve, named after the leading character in To Have and Have Not, and a daughter Leslie, after Leslie Howard, the British actor killed during the war.
Hollywood in the '40s was good duty.
Though actors worked hard for the national morale and propaganda effort, the Garden of Allah life does not appear to have been greatly curtailed. The West Coast version of Stage Door Canteen took place at Cole Porter's house, where "he always had a few soldiers who had no place to go." Bogart did his part in the Coast Guard. Once a week he cruised the coastline off Balboa, keeping an eye peeled for the Japanese. Never have so few...
Bacall is not overly reflective about her times. She has a few standard warnings about the danger of Communist witch hunts. But mainly she clicks off the events and people in her life with the diligent rhythms of the Twentieth Century Limited, which she had boarded in 1943 to start her film career. The exception is when she recounts Bogart's stoic struggle with terminal cancer. Here her prose becomes spare and piercing: "I sat with him, had coffee—he still couldn't forget the night before. I asked him if he felt better. 'It's always better in the daylight.' Sun day School was short, I had to collect my babies—I said I'd be right back and kissed him as I always did. Newspapers later printed that he said, 'Goodbye, Kid,' mak ing it seem overly dramatic and pointed.
It was not like that—it was just 'Good bye, Kid,' in a most ordinary way under most extraordinary circumstances." In such passages the props of career and success are suddenly swept away, and To Have and Have Not becomes much more than a movie title.
—R.Z. Sheppard