Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 46

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Popular Culture Review

were ‘‘ballistics experts” having a lengthy “professional discussion” on “trajectory
and deflection” because Bogart was “about to knock off one of the villians” and
“wanted the execution to be boner proof’ when firing a bullet thiough a table top.
It capitalized on his experience with guns on- and ofif-screen, stating “in real life,
naturally” Bogart suggested a “laboratory experiment” conducted using a “real
slug” according to “authentic specifications.” '^ Another piece (obviously aiming
to target a male combat/retuming military veteran audience) read: “Actor Qualifies
As Machine Gun Expert” and “Bogart Demands Perfection In Film Gun Fight.”
An effort was also made to exploit his earlier gangster roles and reformulate his
tough guy persona toward wartime combat, weapons and women. In “Pistol Packin’
Bogart Changes Role, Not Weapon,” the actor “escaped gangster roles but not
tommy guns.’' But “since his reformation,” Bogart was doing “more shooting” and
“getting more romance.” (Thus capitalizing on heightened sex and violence.) It
quoted the star: “You can always find a Bogart set. Just follow the sound of gunfire.”
Citing “fusillades” using “.45 automatics to .30 caliber machine guns,” he “couldn’t
remember doing a picture without firearms and shooting.”
Further, in promotion interchanging weapons and women, female romance
“rivalry matches the tommy guns in explosiveness.” The press book cites “action”
and “torrid romance” in an “exciting tale of love that smolders” in a “web of political
intrigue that is woven” by the “hands of Vichy’s Gestapo” amid “smoky cafe”
scenes “drenched in cigarette and gun smoke.” The story involves a “dangerous
night” and “running gun battle at sea” where an “underground leader is desperately
wounded by Vichy machine gun bullets.” In this wartime setting, the couple are
described as “two Americans, sick with themselves and the rotten world that lay
bleeding all about them.” It refers to Bogart as a “lusty, gnarled sea w o lf’ who is
‘iough and nonchalant” and Bacall as “sultry,” a “siren” and “New York tough
gal” who “slithers” as a “throaty serpentine blonde” and gets her “ears slapped
back in Hollywood” noting Bacall’s violent slap across the face by Vichy police
(while Bogart voyeuristically “watched”). The red meat discourse continues: Hawks
“said he was sorry. They had to do the scene again. They did it four more times.
Miss Bacall took the slaps without flinching although they obviously stung.” Again,
the violence, often m isogynistic violence, is pitched not only to sell and
sensationalize, but also to justify and naturalize its narrative exploitation in the socalled effort to increase verisimilitude and “realism.” This promotion strategy
certainly related to the rough, tough, stark images of “raw” wartime violence in
newsreels, documentaries and combat footage—or rather the studios’ effort to
capitalize on this with a more lenient PCA..'^
The tight-paced narrative action of To Have and Have Not and The Big
Sleep was certainly accentuated by Hawks’ reworking of Warner Bros.’ lean,
masculine crime and war films to bump up the romance. This reformulation of