The movie Johnny Depp called “a marriage of three of my favourite things”
Life imitating art can often be a double-edged sword, something Johnny Depp discovered after channelling the love he held for one of his favourite movies into a relationship that would ultimately fall apart in the most heavily-publicised of circumstances.
When asked to name the films he deemed “essential”, one of Depp’s selections was a classic romantic adventure from the legendary Howard Hawks. Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, the 1944 epic To Have and Have Not ended up inspiring the actor’s personal and professional life in more ways than one.
Explaining his love for the star-crossed epic as “a marriage of three of my favourite things”, Depp succinctly named three of the key aspects that made it an inevitable part of his essential list: “Bogart, 1940s film noir, and Hemingway. I don’t know how you’d beat that,” he said. “It’s not fair on anyone else really, is it! Oh, yeah… and Lauren Bacall as the dream girl of every man with a pulse and then some.”
To Have and Have Not marked the first meeting between stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who fell in love during production, generating intense tabloid scrutiny in part due to the 25-year age difference between them. That was exacerbated when Bogart divorced his then-wife and married Bacall before they played on-screen love interests again in Dark Passage and Key Largo.
Not only did Depp experience something similar when he fell for Amber Heard during shooting of The Rum Diary – complete with a 22-year age gap of their own – but following their marriage, they would channel the spirit of To Have and Have Not through their nicknames for each other.
As was revealed during court proceedings, Depp was saved as ‘Steve’ in Heard’s contact list, while he would refer to her as ‘Slim’. Those are the personas taken on by Bogart’s Harry Morgan and Bacall’s Marie Browning during the course of the story, with Depp expanding on the connection during his testimony, saying: “I was the old craggy Bogie, and she was this beautiful creature, this stunning creature.”
Of course, Bogart and Bacall remained married until his death at the age of just 57 in January of 1957, something that can’t be said of Depp and Heard. The former Pirates of the Caribbean and Fantastic Beasts star has always been a noted fan of film noir, although it would be fair to say that none of them would go on to have quite the same impact as To Have and Have Not for obvious reasons.
Three of his favourite things it may contain, then, but it also remains inextricably linked to a period of his life that he’s now trying to put firmly behind him.
