Warner Bros. made the movie To Have and Have Not back in 1944, which rather famously brought together Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Some years later, the studio heavily reworked the script for a remake, called The Breaking Point. That remake shows up on TCM tomorrow, May 31, at 3:00 PM.
The action is moved from the Caribbean to the Pacific coast. John Garfield plays Harry Morgan, the captain of a charter boat working out of Newport Beach and taking rich people on fishing trips, at least when he can drum up business. That hasn't been as much as he'd like, leading him to have trouble supporting his loving wife Lucy (Phyllis Thaxter) and kids. He's even having trouble keeping the boat, as he's got payments on the boat as well as all the dock fees.
So he and his assistant Wesley Park (Juano Hernández) are pleased when Leona Charles (Patricia Neal) and her husband charter the boat to go down to Baja California for some fishing. When they get down to their destination, however, things go sour. First is that there's an obnoxious lawyer Duncan (Wallace Ford) who tries to get Morgan to smuggle stuff back to America. Worse is that Leona seems to be hitting on Harry; she is a sort of femme fatale, after all. And it turns out that not only is she not married, but the man she was with snubbed both her and Harry and Wesley by blowing all his ready cash betting on cockfighting and then drawing on his bank account to buy one plane ticket for himself back to California!
So now Harry has to go back to Duncan because he neeeds to make money. Worse is that he finds out that what he's asked to smuggle is actually humans, not any sort of inanimate contraband. And of course, both Duncan and Sing (Victor Sen Yung), the Chinese underworld boss who wants the Chinese illegal immigrants smuggled into the States, try to stiff Harry. This leads to Sing getting killed, the immigrants having to wade back to shore, and all sorts of legal complications when Harry gets back to California.
And then there's the fact that Duncan survived all of this. Leona did too, and she's still hanging around for some reason, leading Lucy to get the impression that perhaps Harry isn't being faithful with her. No wonder she's been begging him to give up the idea of being a sea captain and go into her father's lettuce farm business up in the agricultural part of California.
Finally, as if Harry doesn't have enough problems, Duncan returns, this time wantng Harry to smuggle some gangsters and their ill-gotten loot from a racetrack heist out to sea for the pick-up. Harry doesn't want to do it, but doesn't exactly have much choice considering the extent to which Duncan has been blackmailing him to this point.
I'm not the biggest fan of either Lauren Bacall or Ernest Hemingway, so To Have and Have Not isn't exactly a favorite of mine. The Breaking Point, on the other hand, feels like a more modest remake of the movie. John Garfield is just the sort of actor for this sort of role. Patricia Neal has hair dyed blonde, and frankly, it doesn't suit her. That having been said, it does enhance the sort of trashiness of the character and she also pulls her role off well. Also of note is the complete lack of mention of any "race issues" despite the Wesley Parks character being played by Juano Hernández. He's the copilot, not the man bravely confronting the racism and segregation of the day that poor Sidney Poitier had to do over and over. Everybody treats the Wesley character in what feels the same way they'd treat any ship's second officer.
The Breaking Point is definitely a movie to watch, and tomorrow is your chance.
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