The Big Sleep: Production History and Authorship

THE BIG SLEEP: PRODUCTION HISTORY AND AUTHORSHIP Peter Lev Studies of authorship in cinema have largely ignored questions of production history, of exactly how individual films are made. The authorship debate has focused on other issues: the definition of an author, the description of personal style, the placement of an author code in relation to other semiotic codes. 1 Nevertheless, authorship is clearly an historical, as well as a critical and theoretical , problem. Any reasonable account of creative responsibility for a particular film must investigate the history of that film's production. What is the division of labor between producer, director, writer, actor, cinematographer, and so on? Which collaborators strongly influence a film, and at what stages of production? What are the institutional structures that shape a filmmaking project? Such questions are vital to an understanding of film authorship, but they are rarely asked. 2 This article presents a process of authorship in one well-known Hollywood film, The Big Sleep (1946). It outlines a structured collaboration, with a number of prominent film workers joining together to make the film. Novelist Raymond Chandler, producer-director Howard Hawks, screenwriters William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett, and actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were all a part of The Big Sleep's genesis. The article follows the production history of The Big Sleep from original source (Chandler's novel) to script, filming and post-production . The individual contributions of the various participants as well as the contractual, artistic and personal relationships between participants are discussed. 2 Peter Lev The Big Sleep is a provocative film for analysis because it is both a commercial studio product and a collaboration between distinguished artists. Some aspects of the film's production do depart from 1940s Hollywood studio norms, and these will be noted. For example, The Big Sleep had an unusual, last-minute revision in January, 1946-before its domestic release, but several months after a 1945 release to American servicemen abroad. The existence of 1945 and 1946 versions of the film aids the discussion of authorship, because it clarifies when decisions were made, and by whom. Howard Hawks's contract also had some unusual features which affected the production of the film. In many ways, however, The Big Sleep fits a familiar profile of 1940s Hollywood filmmaking, structured by genre, the star system, and the characteristics of a particular studio (Warner Brothers, in this instance). A study of authorship in The Big Sleep must therefore consider not only the tensions and accords between filmmakers but also the pressures and possibilities of working within the studio system. An extended look at one film cannot provide a general model for authorship in Hollywood. The analysis that follows does, however, at least suggest the level of complexity required to describe authorship within production history. I . Raymond Chandler Raymond Chandler's dream was to write detective stories that were something more than pulp fiction. He thought the hard-boiled detective story, the genre in which he worked, could aspire to artistic merit as well as popular appeal. Chandler had written for London literary journals from 1908-1912, twenty years before he turned to American detective,stories. His background as an ''Edwardian man of letters' '3 explains some of his later interests: a concern for the moral and aesthetic virtues of literature, a need to create works of lasting value. Chandler was aware of the limit ~ ..., r 11> < The Big Sleep l l example, when an angry Vivian toys with her leg in Marlowe's office, Marlowe tells her to go ahead and scratch, which she does. In the same scene, Marlowe and Vivian take turns confusing an exasperated policeman on the telephone. This entire scene does not exist in the Faulkner-Brackett script of September 26. Marlowe flirts with other women as well in scenes that were added or altered to highlight witty, sexy dialogue. The violent, threatening context of Chandler's novel does not disappear, but it is balanced by a new sense of romance and fun. The loose, open-ended approach allows Hawks to inject some of his own concerns into The Big Sleep. Like Raymond Chandler, Hawks realizes that the conventions of a genre are only a starting point for artistic expression, and that they can be treated playfully. The scenes revised during production add humor to the basic situation of the detective on a case, and they subtly move the film toward emphasis on the couple. Hawks is even able to add personal digressions to the film. For example, The Big Sleep's first half hour can be seen as a series of screen tests for young actresses. Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone and a few other actresses in tum play a scene with Bogart. Director-producer Hawks, who took credit for discovering several major stars, is auditioning new talent! The open-ended approach to production also makes the situation of the filmmakers more or less equivalent to the situation of the characters. The characters of The Big Sleep must act spontaneously to survive and find pleasure and self-definition in a complex and dangerous world. Similarly, the director, actors and writers of The Big Sleep must act spontaneously to meet the complex challenge of making a film without a final script, but with style, wit, coherence and conviction. Like the characters, the director, actors and writers can measure ''how good they are,'' a phrase frequently used in Hawks films, by how well they meet every day's challenge. The Hemingwayan (and Hawksian) virtue of grace under pressure becomes the key to both situations, and the unpredictability of the filmmaking process gives an exciting edge to the finished film. One of the paradoxes of the "director-as-individual-author" debate in film studies is that a film director is always a coordinator and facilitator of others' work. Even a fresh and innovative approach to directing a commercial feature film will still rely on the contributions of actors, writers, cinematographers and many others. Hawks's preference for working out the details of a film during production is unusual (at least in degree) within the Hollywood system, and does give The Big Sleep something of an author's signature: the informal elegance characteristic of many Hawks films. But Hawks can arrive at this informal elegance only by relying heavily on the talents of his collaborators. In particular, the success or failure of an open-ended film depends on the contributions of its stars: in this case, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. 5. Actors Humphrey Bogart's contribution to The Big Sleep film illustrates a contradiction in the "place" of actors in the classic Hollywood studio system of the l930s 12 Peter Lev and 1940s. Artistically and economically, Bogart was a crucial collaborator. He was the key perlormer in The Big Sleep, present in every scene and the primary focus of audience identification. His presence· also gave the film economic viability, since large audiences could be expected for a proven star in a familiar role. Nevertheless, by contract, Bogart was simply a highly-paid employee of Warner Brothers, and was obliged to follow the studio's orders. He was not consulted about scripts, and he had no control over the films to which he was assigned. Bogart's only recourse when given an inferior script was to refuse assignment by going on suspension without pay. He frequently exercised this option. Bogart's crucial status on The Big Sleep can be gauged by the crisis he engendered by not showing up for work on the day after Christmas, December 26, 1944. Bogart at this time was painfully breaking with his third wife, Mayo Methot, and beginning a relationship with his co-star, Lauren Bacall, who in 1945 became the fourth Mrs. Bogart. On the 26th, Bogart did not appear for work. He was eventually found at Mayo Methot's house, drunk and incoherent. Eric Stacey, writing his daily production memo, feared for Bogart's mental stability. and felt that the entire production of The Big Sleep might be held up for an indefinite period. 23 The film could have been completed without Hawks, but it absolutely required the presence of Bogart, the star, in front of the camera. Fortunately, Bogart was able to return to work on December 28, and to complete the film. 24 Bogart's contribution to The Big Sleep film includes both a complex star image and excellent performance skills. The role of Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep is a synthesis of Bogart's great roles of the 1940s. It repeats the image of Bogart as the tough, hard-boiled detective established by The Maltese Falcon (1941); it draws on the new, romantic Bogart of Casablanca (1943); and it reprises the competent but relaxed Bogart trading wisecracks with Lauren Bacall of To Have and Have Not (1944). Virginia WrightWexman has analyzed how, with subtle alterations of performance, Bogart has changed the ''cynically defensive loner'' of The Maltese Falcon to the more romantic and relaxed figure of The Big Sleep. 25 In The Maltese Falcon, a twitching cheek muscle and other mannerisms suggest the detective hero's inner tension; in The Big Sleep, Bogart creates a calmer, more reflective character who likes to pull on his ear when thinking. Bogart also changes the detective character's social attitudes from one film to the other. In The Maltese Falcon, the detective is a suspicious, working-class type, with the self-protective impulses of someone who fears anyone different from himself; in The Big Sleep, the detective is socially mobile, neither rich man nor crook, but comfortable with both. 26 Since he was the one proven star of The Big Sleep, Bogart's cooperation with Hawks and with Bacall was essential. Bogart thought so highly of Hawks after To Have and Have Not that he refused assignments to other films so that he could work on Hawks's next picture. Bogart seems to have enjoyed the teamwork aspect The Big Sleep 13 of working with Hawks: he asked questions, requested changes, and even befriended the reclusive Faulkner. 27 Late in the filming of The Big Sleep, Hawks and Bogart's relationship soured, probably because of Bogart's turbulent personal life. Although one of Stacey's memos reports that Bogart's performance was suffering, 28 this is not evident in the finished film. Bogart was extremely helpful to Bacall. Relaxed, receptive and sympathetic in his scenes with her, he adjusts his own timing and reactions to match her work. Critic Alan Eyles attributes Bogart's receptive performance to Hawks: "Director Howard Hawks realized the only way to make sense of [Bogart and Bacall's] dispaiity in age was to have the girl dominate Bogart and to have Bogart allow it because he enjoys her extravagant performance. " 29 However, one can equally credit Bogart's professionalism and his willingness to help a young co-star. Bogart is thoroughly capable of dominating a scene; in fact, he does dominate the succession of gangsters and drifters who populate The Big Sleep. But in scenes with Bacall, Bogart leaves plenty of room for her performance. Lauren Bacall was not a movie star with a proven image during the filming of The Big Sleep. She was, rather, a deliberately "created" star, a movie personality shaped by Howard Hawks. ''Slim" Hawks, Howard's wife, had shown her husband Bacall's work as a model in Harper's Bazaar.30 Howard Hawks, impressed, signed Bacall to a contract with Hawks-Feldman Productions. Hawks then brought her to Hollywood, worked on her voice, and even changed her first name (from "Betty" to "Lauren"). He had a vision of Bacall as a beautiful, leggy young woman with a provocative rnixture of innocence and worldliness. He wanted her to be insolent, as insolent as the young Marlene Dietrich. Bacall's autobiography comments: "What a fantastic fantasy life Howard must have had! " 31 Bacall had successfully portrayed an impudent, sexy girl in To Have and Have Not, but in that film she was credibly cast as a precocious teenager. In The Big Sleep, she is supposed to be more mature and more forceful as Vivian Stemwood (Martha Vickers, as Carmen, has the sexy teenager's role). This transition might have been difficult under normal circumstances. It was enormously complicated because the role of Vivian was evolving during production. In the Faulkner-Brackett script, Vivian is a cool, cynical rich girl who somehow has some feeling for Marlowe. During production, Hawks and company inflected the character toward a more sympathetic personality, but problems remained. For one thing, the coITect balance between warmth and cynical independence was hard to find. In the 1945 version of The Big Sleep, Vivian's sharp tongue occasionally breaks the romantic mood of a scene. "I don't know why I cared," she says tiredly, after saving Marlowe's life in the showdown with Eddie Mars's henchman Canino. This and other cynical comments were removed from the 1946 version of the film. Another problem was Vivian's appearance, especially her wardrobe. In some of the opening scenes she wears simple, demure clothes, often white, and looks very young. Perhaps Hawks is trying to accentuate the age 14 Peter Lev difference between Marlowe and Vivian, thus making their later romantic involvement all the more intriguing. But the demurely-dressed Vivian seems almost drab in relation to the many attractive women Marlowe meets in The Big Sleep. The Vivian character has much more impact in the scenes where she is elegantly and strikingly dressed: tailored jackets, tight skirts, contrasts of color and texture. The final characterization of Vivian was reached by a proc~ss of trial and error. The character in the script was changed, with many false starts, during production . Scenes with Bacall were re-shot a number of times. The trial and error approach suggests another weakness of Hawks' s open-ended method: if there is a problem in the basic framework of the script, scene-by-scene changes during production will deal with the problem only piecemeal. Although some unevenness of character and perfonnance remain, Hawks and company did eventually arrive at a satisfactory concept of Vivian. The 1946 version of the film shows a high-spirited Vivian who can trade barbs with Marlowe but who is also warm, caring and trustworthy. Most of the cynicism has disappeared. Bacall's performance in The Big Sleep was also influenced by her personal situation. She was involved during production in an on-again, off-again love affair with the much older Bogart, a married man. Additionally, her increasing closeness with Bogart estranged her from her mentor and employer, Howard Hawks. The unevenness of Bacall's perfonnance is hardly surprising when one considers her difficult personal circumstances plus the unevenly-written character she portrays. There is, however, a positive side as well to the mixture of personal and professional relationships in The Big Sleep. Bacall's scenes with Bogartespecially in the latter part of the film-have an intimacy, spontaneity and sexual tension that must be related to their off-screen romance. Was Lauren Bacall as Vivian Sternwood the creation of Howard Hawks, finetuned to meet his needs? Or was it Bacall who mastered the complex character of Vivian? The great interest of Bacall-as-Vivian lies neither in the director's vision nor in the actress's perfonnance, but in the interaction between these two. The Lauren Bacall character in The Big Sleep (and, for that matter, in To Have and Have Not) presents a tough and insolent surface, but has a more innocent vulnerability underneath. Vivian plays at being sophisticated, and both Marlowe and the audience are amused by the playacting. The character and the actress merge, at least to some extent and for a limited purpose, as Bacall's mixture of precociousness and inexperience gives Vivian a unique blend of toughness and nai'vete. Hawks deserves credit for setting up a character so closely matched to Bacall's abilities; Bacall deserves credit for making the characterization work. 6. Revision With filming completed, The Big Sleep went through a rapid, efficient postproduction . Christian Nyby worked on the editing. Max Steiner, who had scored Casablanca and many other Warner Brothers films, composed the music. The The Big Sleep 15 film's first test before an audience came on February 22, 1945, in the Los Angeles suburb of Huntington Park. Jack Warner, pleased with the preview, wrote a memo congratulating everyone who had worked on the picture.32 Hawks wrote a page of··cutting notes'' suggesting several minor changes (speeding up scenes, changing volume levels), and one major change: the elimination of the scene where Carmen visits Marlowe's apartment.33 The Big Sleep was ready for general release in early March, but at this point circumstances relating to the wartime economy of 1945 held up release and opened the way for further revision of the film. During World War II, the Hollywood film companies' practice of holding a film back for the best possible release date was greatly extended, for several reasons. First, films typically played long runs during the war years; therefore a backlog was created. Second, a worldwide shortage of film stock limited the number of prints the Hollywood studios could make at any one time. Third, with the end of the war clearly approaching in 1944 and 1945, the Hollywood companies rushed their war movies into exhibition, and delayed release of films in other genres. Fourth, the film companies stockpiled some films in order to increase income when the wartime excess profits tax was repealed.34 The combination of these factors accounts for Warner Brothers' decision to delay release of The Big Sleep through 1945. However, that decision had an unpleasant and unintended consequence in November, I945 when Confidential Agent, starring Lauren Bacall, was released. ConfidentialAgent (made after The Big Sleep, but released earlier) was rushed into a New York opening because its theme was somewhat topical. 35 Critical response was mixed, but Bacall's performance was panned by most reviewers. The reviews endangered not only a successful release of The Big Sleep, but also Lauren Bacall's fledgling career. At this point, Charles Feldman wrote to Jack Warner from New York suggesting that, in view of the unfavorable reviews for ConfidentialAgent, Warner Brothers should safeguard its investment in Bacall by shooting additional scenes for her in The Big Sleep.36 Feldman was Howard Hawks's partner in H-F Productions, associate producer of The Big Sleep, and Lauren Bacall's agent, yet he is rarely mentioned in the critical literature on The Big Sleep-except in Bacall's autobiography, where he plays a prominent part. Feldman, not Hawks, seems to have taken the lead in requesting additional shooting.37 He thus had a key part in· one of the creative decisions shaping The Big Sleepfilm. Jack Warner approved the shooting of retakes for The BigSleep. Filming began on January 21, 1946, ·and was completed a week later. The crucial scene shot during retakes presents Vivian and Marlowe meeting in a fancy restaurant and discussing first the Sternwood case and then horseracing. The horseracing references are sexual double entendres, ending with the line from Vivian "It all depends on who's in the saddle." The restaurant scene was apparently written by Hawks; racing was one of his passions.38 Bacall is elegant, self-assured and marvelously at ease in the restaurant scene. It shows definitively that her range as B . This scene was cut from the 1946version of The Big Sleep . It was replaced by the restaurant scene. The Museum of Modem Art/Film Stills Archive. et.. ;p 0 '"I t""" n <: C. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the restaurant scene from The Big Sleep, filmed in January, 1946. The Museum of Modem Art/ -, :r ni 0::, !JC (/) rp" (1) "O Film Stills Archive. -...J 18 Peter Lev an actress extends beyond the sexy teenager of To Have and Have Not. Hawks also used the week ofretakes to build up, in several scenes, the romantic attraction between Marlowe and Vivian; to adjust a few transitions; and to shoot a new version of the scene where Carmen visits Marlowe's apartment. The retakes were then added to the film, and a few scenes of exposition were cut from this version. The retakes and related changes did not drastically alter The Big Sleep, but they did make Vivian Stemwood a more consistent and more likeable character. They therefore served Warner Brothers' main objective in commissioning the added scenes-protecting the screen career of Lauren Bacall. The retakes also gave Howard Hawks the opportunity to refine and improve a film one year after it was supposedly finished. Without the unusual conditions of film distribution in 1945, that opportunity would not have existed, and the extraordinary restaurant scene of The Big Sleep would never have been filmed. 7. Conclusions To describe adequately the authorship of a Hollywood feature film, one must examine the production process. A Hollywood film is made in several distinct stages, with intervention from different collaborators at different stages. How can one discuss authorship without having as much information as possible on who did what, and when? Authorship cannot be abstracted from production history. The Big Sleep film has no individual author. A more interesting question is "How does one define the group of authors?" Chandler, Hawks, Faulkner, Brackett, Bogart and Bacall each had a prominent part in the production process and an important influence on the finished film. But what about Jules Furthman, who reworked the ending; Jack Warner, who functioned as gatekeeper; Charles Feldman, who lobbied for Bacall; Sid Hickox (cinematographer) and Carl Joseph Weyl (art director), who achieved the film's visual style; Christian Nyby, who did the editing; and Max Steiner, who wrote the music? I have chosen to concentrate on Chandler, Hawks, Faulkner, Brackett, Bogart and Bacall because many characteristics of the film can be derived from the interaction of these six. However, a critic with strong visual interests might concentrate on Hickox and Weyl; a critic of film music might single out Steiner. Other analysts might see the film as an embodiment of social and economic conditions in the United States of 1944-1945, leading to a consideration of "social authorship." The emphasis on group authorship in The Big Sleep should not be seen as an attack on the critical reputation of Howard Hawks. Using the model of authorship as artistic collaboration within the studio system, Hawks's contributions become more specific and more limited, but they do not disappear. Indeed, many of the unique qualities of The Big Sleep film can be attributed to Hawks's ideas, his working methods, and his independent status. The reputations of Hawks, Ford, Lubitsch and other directors might actually benefit from production histories of their films. However, even a great producer-director is only one of several main participants in the production process. The Big Sleep 19 Authorship in The Big Sleep seems to be additive, with contributions from the director, screenwriters, actors and others coming together in a synthesis that is greater than the sum of the parts. 39 Hawks deserves some of the credit for this, since it was his job to blend the talents of the others. But one can also point to affinities between authors as an explanation of the film's merits. Chandler wrote unpretentious genre fiction, yet he aimed for artistic quality as well as popular appeal. His dual goals were shared by all the collaborators on the film. Chandler. Hawks, Bogart and Bacall all presented a mixture of toughness and playfulness to their audiences. Lauren Bacall took on some qualities of Hawks's fantasy of an audacious young girl, and the personal love story of Bacall and Bogart influenced (and was influenced by) the film's love story. As the film was put together through the various stages of production, affinities between authors came to the fore, while differences of approach were resolved. The result is an exceptional film that works on many levels. The Big Sleep is a serious film and a genre film, a novelist's film and a star vehicle, a director's film and a studio product. It is not a Hawks film or a Bogart film or a Chandler film, but rather a collaboration between these and other talented filmmakers within the Hollywood studio system of production. Notes 1 The best introduction to authorship in film is the anthology Theories of Authorship, ed. John Caughie (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul/British Film Institute, 1981). 2 Robert Carringer's The Making of Citizen Kane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) is a recent study which does describe authorship in the context of production history. See also John Stubbs, "The Evolution of Orson Welles's Touch of Evil from Novel to Film," Cinema Journal 24, no. 2 (Winter 1985): 19-39; and Mark Langer, •'Tahu: The Makin2: of a Film." Cinema Journal 24. no. 3 (Sorin2: 1985): 43-64. 3 Eric Hamburger, ,-.The Man ·of Letters (1908-1912)," in. The ~Worli of Raymond Chandler, ed. Miriam Gross (New York: A & W Publishers, 1977), 11. 4 See The Letters of Raymond Chandler, ed. Frank MacShane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). 5 Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (New York: Knopf, 1939). Page numbers in the text refer to the Vintage Books edition, 1976. 6 See Philip Durham, Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), 79-98. 7 Parker Tyler, The Hollywood Hallucination (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944), 3-21. Tyler, The Three Faces of the Film (New Jersey: A. S. Barnes, 1960), 81-85. 8 "Beyond formula" is the title of a book on film genres. Stanley J. Solomon, Beyond Formula (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). 9 For a contemporary account of Warner Brothers' reputation in the 1940s, see Leo Rosten, Hollywood: the Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 61-63, 174, 243-244. 1°Contract between Howard Hawks and Warner Brothers Pictures, 12 February 1942. Howard Hawks contract file, Warner Brothers Collection, USC Library [hereafter WB, USC]. 11 Steve Trilling, memo to Jack Warner, 2 August 1944. Story file, The Big Sleep, WB, use. 12 Much of this information in this paragraph is taken from the story file, The Big Sleep, WB, USC. The best secondary source on Faulkner's screenwriting career is Bruce Kawin, Faulkner and Film (New York: Ungar, 1977). See also Leigh Brackett, "From The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye and More or Less How We Got There,'' Take One 4, no. 1 (1974): 26-27. 20 Peter Lev 13 A published version of "The Big Sleep" script is available in Film Scripts One, ed. George P. Garrett, 0. B. Hardison, Jr., and Jane R. Gelfman (New York: AppletonCentury -Crofts, 1971), 140-329. Page numbers in the text refer to this edition of the script. The Film Scripts One version of the script is the ''Temporary Screenplay'' (actually the second full draft of the script) by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett, dated September 26, 1944. Unpublished typescripts of the "Temporary Screenplay" are available at the USC Library, the UCLA Library, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. 14 "Sparkling and terrific" recalls many similar adjectival pairs in The Sowzd and the Fury. "Indomitable" is an adjective much favored by Faulkner. 15 Roger Shatzkin, "The Big Sleep," Take One 7, no. 2 (1979): 29. Leigh Brackett, No Good From a Corpse (New York: Coward-MacCann, 1944), 81, 138, 197-200. 16 William Luhr, Raymond Chandler and Film (New York: Ungar, 1982), 123-132. 17 Howard Hawks, Hawks on Hawks, ed. Joseph McBride (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 105. 18 Gerald Mast, Howard Hawks, Storyteller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 53 and note 20, 372. 19 Mast, 53-56. 20 Hawks on Hawks, 35-36. 21 Stacey's memos to Wright are full of complaints about Hawks's production methods. Production file, The Big Sleep, WB, USC. 22 Eric Stacey, memo to T. C. Wright, 29 December 1944. Stacey uses the word ''writers,'' which suggests that Brackett was also present-although only Furthman turned in script revisions after this date. Faulkner had already returned to Oxford, Mississippi. 23 Stacey to Wright, 26 December 1944. See also Lauren Bacall, By Myself (New York: Ballantine, 1980), 161. 24 Stacey to Wright, 29 December 1944. 25 Virginia Wright Wexman, "Kinesics and Film Acting: Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep," Journal of Popular Film and Television, 7, no. 1 (1978): 47. 26 Wexman, 42-55. 27 Bacall, 126-127, 159. Hedda Hopper, "They Call Her for Salty Dialogue" (Leigh Brackett interview), Los Angeles Times, 20 December 1965. Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: a Biography, v. 2 (New York: Random House, 1974), 1157-1158, 1160. 28 Stacey to Wright, 26 December 1944. 29 Alan Eyles, Bogart (London: MacMillan, 1975), 75. Eyles is discussing To Have and Have Not, but his comment applies to The Big Sleep as well. 30 Bacall appeared in Harper's Bazaar in January, February, March, April and May of 1943. 31 Bacall, 125. 32 Jack Warner memo, 23 February 1945. Production file, The Big Sleep, WB, USC. 33 "Cutting Notes," 23 February 1945. Production file, The Big Sleep, WB, USC. Although these notes are unsigned, only director-producer Hawks would be sending a list of needed changes to Nyby, Jack Warner, Trilling and other Warner employees. 34 Information on factors influencing filmdistribution is taken from the trade paper Variety, 21 June 1944; 19 July I944; 2 August I944; 9 August 1944; 15 November 1944; 22 November 1944; 7 February 1945; 16 May 1945; 15 August 1945; 22 August 1945; 21 November 1945; 19 December 1945;9 January 1946. 35 Jack Warner to Ben Kalmenson, 23 August 1945. lnside Warner Brothers (1935-1951 ), ed. Rudy Behlmer (New York: Viking, 1985), 248. 36 Charles Feldman, letter to Jack Warner, 16 November 1945. Production file, The Big Sleep, WB, USC. Reprinted in Inside Warner Brothers (1935-1951), 248-249. 37 A letter from Hawks to Jack Warner, dated December 18, 1945, responds to a meeting between Feldman and Warner about Bacall and The Big Sleep. Hawks in this letter offers to do "anything I can to help the picture"; unlike Feldman, he does not offer a plan. The Big Sleep 21 Hawks to Warner, 18 December 1945. Howard Hawks Collection, Brigham Young University. 38 No script pages for the restaurant scene exist in the story file for The Big Sleep at USC. Hawks takes credit for writing the scene in Hawkson Hawks, 105. 39 I realize that this is only one possible outcome of a collaborative filmmaking process. In some cases film production can be more aptly described as a battle for control between competing individuals and concepts; in such cases, the whole might be less than the sum of the parts. ...