Humphrey Bogart - looking at a true cinema icon
“.... this is Duke Mantee...and he's hungry." Such is actor Humphrey Bogart's introduction in "The Petrified Forest" (1936), his entrance showing a menacing cold stare. Bogart had played this role on stage, but Warner Brothers wanted their resident movie tough guy Edward G. Robinson to take the movie role. However, the film's other male lead, Leslie Howard, stated he would refuse to do the movie if Bogart was not hired. It solidified a relationship between the actor and Warner Brothers that went for the next ten years.
"The Petrified Forest" was not Humphrey Bogart's first movie, but it was the first role in which the audience really took notice. Warner Brothers built up his resemblance to John Dillinger, a recent public enemy who'd been gunned down in front of a movie theater two years earlier. Throughout the movie, Bogart anchors the Duke Mantee character in the same manner as he'd done on stage, moving very little and speaking in a lowered voice. His presence remains enormous, and despite offering so little, his character controls each scene.
Humphrey Bogart was shunted into a series of programmers, usually as the same type of bad guy. However, when today we see movies like "Bullets or Ballots (1936), "Kid Galahad" (1937), or "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse" (1938), all with Edward G. Robinson, we are impressed with Bogart's chilling portrayals. There was some minor deviation of roles. He was a good guy trying to reform The Dead End Kids in "Crime School"(1938), while his performance as a family man duped into embracing base prejudices in "Black Legion" (1937) resulted in one of his best earlier movies.Finally, three opposite James Cagney -- "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938), "Roaring Twenties" and "The Oklahoma Kid" (both 1939) -- while starring vehicles for Cagney also benefited from Bogart's performance.
Bogart's real rise to stardom began in the 1940s when actor George Raft turned down the role of Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), the third movie version Warner Brothers was to produced of that story. Bogart took the role and first-time director John Huston led him to one of his most iconic performances in a movie that helped define film noir. From that point, Bogart's stardom continued with Raoul Walsh's "High Sierra" (1941), the Oscar winning classic "Casablanca" (1942), "To Have and Have Not" (1944), and "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Key Largo" (1948) and "Treasure of Sierra Madre" (1948).
Throughout the 1940s, Bogart used elements of his tough guy character of the 30s to help augment his various roles, even though he most frequently played one of the good guys. As an actor, Bogart also responded well to good writing and talented direction, with Huston, Raoul Walsh, Michael Curtiz, and Howard Hawks among those at the helm of these enduring classics. Bogart met his future wife while they were filming To Have and Have Not. She was 19 years old. He was 45. They were later married and remain so until his death.
By the 1950s Bogart had migrated to Columbia Pictures, allowing his roles to age as gracefully as he did. Scoring in films like Nicholas Ray's "In a Lonely Place" (1950) and Edward Dmytryk's "Caine Mutiny" (1954), he even got back into pure bad guy mode for "The Desperate Hours (1955). Bogart received his first Oscar in John Huston's independent production "The African Queen" (1951), which was released through United Artists.
Bogart was still with Columbia when he contracted the esophageal cancer that would eventually kill him. His last film "The Harder They Fall" (1956) was completed under some duress, Bogart only able to work a few hours a day due to his illness. He still managed to turn in an excellent performance as a crusading sports reporter investigating corruption in prizefighting.
Humphrey Bogart was consumed by the cancer and unable to work after "The Harder They Fall." While on his way out, he would be visited by Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Marilyn Monroe, George Cukor, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Ustinov, Billy Wilder, Dean Martin, and Kirk Douglas. Lauren Bacall stated that even though he had never known either of them, two of the first people to send flowers and get well wishes when Bogart was convalescing were Fred Astaire and John Wayne. Humphrey Bogart died January 14, 1957.
Bogart had many aspects to his screen characters -- they were usually always hard-boiled and cynical, often courageous and noble, and sometimes playful. He also tapped into psychoses, not only with his Captain Queeg portrayal in "Caine Mutiny," but also in the many gangster films he made. He was particularly brutal and ruthless in "Kid Galahad," for instance.
Humphrey Bogart is a cinematic icon not only because he is one of the finest actors in 20th century American movies, but also because he may have starred in more films that have lived on as classics than any other noted actor.