Bogart

Hold on to your hats kids but TCM is presenting some of Mr. Bogart’s greatest work. I am as you know prejudiced and think that all Humphrey Bogart pictures are worth seeing, even his circus picture Wagons Roll At Night. Luckily for you this not one of them being shown on Wednesday December 23. Some are worthy of burning to a disc and saving forever and some are just worth seeing. Almost of all of them are rentable.

Sahara 1943

Mr. Bogart is the commander of a tank crew. While crossing the Libyan desert in their tank “Lulubelle” they pick up five British soldiers, a Frenchman and a Sudanese man with an Italian prisoner crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their various armies after the fall of Tobruk. They, and the larger German forces who are stalking them, are greatly in need of water.
9:15 AM

Passage to Marseille 1944

It’s World War Two (again) and a French bomber crew prepares for an air raid from a base in England. It is through a long flashback that we learn the story of Jean Matrac (Humphery Bogart), a French journalist who opposed the Munich Pact. Framed for murder and sent to Devil’s Island, he and four others escape. They are on a ship bound for Marseilles when France surrenders and fascist sympathizer Major Duval (Sydney Greenstreet) tries to seize the ship for Vichy.
A large number of the cast(s) of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, members of what I call The Warner Brothers repertory company, the “usual suspects” if you will, are in this picture. This picture tried to recapture the magic of Casablanca, after all it was directed by Michael Curtiz. This is also one of the few picture that uses flashback within flashback within yet a flashback. One enormously important event happened during production of this picture. Lauren Bacall was brought to the set to meet Mr. Bogart and to test the chemistry between them. This was their first meeting. It looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. This picture is not on DVD, I strongly urge you to DVR it.
11:00 AM

Conflict - 1945

Mr. Bogart is Richard Mason, a man with the hots for his wife’s beautiful younger sister. After being slightly injured in a car accident he fakes a greater injury so he gets out of going with his wife Kathryn on a trip to the mountains. He does, however, kill her on a lonely mountain road. Or did he? He smells her perfume, finds her jewelry, sees an envelope addressed with her handwriting. Is someone out to get him? Is Kathryn still alive? does someone know what he did? The suspense is killing me. This is a rare good guy Sidney Greenstreet performance and a picture that Mr. Bogart reluctantly made. Although he fought against making it, it is still worth a look. Not on DVD,so do what you gotta do.
1:00 PM

Dead Reckoning - 1947

Another story told in flashback, Mr. Bogart plays Captain “Rip” Murdock who, along with his army buddy Sgt. Johnny Drake are soon to be Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. This does not sit well with Johnny who disappears while en route to Washington. Rip eventually tracks Johnny down to a small town called Gulf City. He also finds that there is a badly burned body in the morgue that is probably Johnny’s. He then discovers that his pal had enlisted with a fake name, the murdered husband of a singer in a nightclub owned by the local organized crime czar. Many discoveries, many good performances especially from Morris Carnovsky and Lizbeth Scott in a role originally intended for Rita Hayworth.
2:30PM

The Two Mrs. Carrolls - 1947

Mr. Bogart plays struggling artist Geoffrey Carroll who meets and is quite taken by the beautiful Sally Morton played by the beautiful Barbara Stanwyck. He spends more time sketching her than fishing. She is quite taken with him. Then she discovers he’s married. He tells her that his wife is an invalid and he is in the process of getting a divorce but had not up until now because of their daughter. The daughter is now at the appropriate age for her parents to split. Things go well for Geoffrey and Sally - his wife dies. She died right after he finished her portrait. Sally discovers some earlier Mrs. Carrolls who also had the portrait done by Geoffrey. Golly, Sally is having her portrait painted and why is Geoffrey using a fake name at the drug store? With these two in the lead roles the picture should have been better but it is still worth a look. Not on DVD, act accordingly.
4:15 PM

Knock On Any Door - 1949

This is the first picture to come out of Humphrey Bogart’s independent production company Santana Productions. The Santana was Mr. Bogart’s beloved yacht. This picture reflects the liberal political views that Mr. Bogart possessed. He plays Andrew Morton, a lawyer who rose out of the slums. He is representing Nick Romano (John Derek - husband of Bo) who has been charged with murder. In a dramatic appeal to the court Morton argues that it is the evils of slum life that lead Nick to a life of crime and to the kind of anger that would lead to murder.
Mr. Bogart chose Nicholas Ray to direct because he had greatly admired his directorial debut They Live by Night. When told that Nicholas Ray wanted to film the entire sentencing statement for the defense sequence in a single take, Mr. Bogart was concerned because he had never delivered such a long speech without cuts and feared he couldn’t do it. Mr. Ray calmed Mr. Bogart down, had him rehearse it several times, and much to Mr. Bogart’s surprise, Mr. Ray filmed the rehearsals, shooting most of what has become the famous and well played sentencing scene. The two, director and star, would collaborate again the following year with 1950’s In A Lonely Place. This is currently not on DVD, so be warned.
6:00 PM

To Have And Have Not - 1944

One day in the early 1940’s, Howard Hawks’ wife was looking through a magazine when she came across an advertisement that featured a striking young woman. She shows him the picture and the ball starts rolling. Just before this event, Ernest Hemingway had a bet with Mr. Hawks. The bet was that Mr. Hawks could make a movie out of the worst thing that Mr. Hemingway wrote. The ball that started rolling hit a bump named Lauren Bacall. Looking to cast the female lead in the picture that grew out of the bet, Mr. Hawks summoned the soon to be immortal Ms. Bacall west to Hollywood. She tests for the role. Humphrey Bogart sees the test and is introduced to the young actress who was waiting outside the screening room. “We are going top have a lot of fun” is what he said. They did and the rest is for me the absolute pinnacle of Hollywood magic. If there is a god of Motion Pictures, he or she was in the best mood ever that day.

To Have and Have Not is the picture and it is a record of a courtship, a romance that has lived on since the day they shot the first kiss between Ms. Bacall and Mr. Bogart. Knowing what we do now about them I almost feel like a voyeur. Mr. Bogart had only recently established himself as a not only a great actor who could carry a picture (and get Oscar nominated for his work) but also as a romantic leading man as well. In a recent post I quoted a song lyric that I feel summed up Ms. Bacall; “you’re one in a million baby, you’ve got to burn to shine”. In this film she burns. She effortlessly moves through the picture spilling out an aura of sexuality and maturity far beyond her 19 years. No one ever in my opinion has ever had a motion picture debut such as hers in this picture. Oh my god, never. If you’ve seen the picture consider yourself lucky; if you haven’t, now is your time. And I’ll say this, there never ever will be a debut like it again. Ever.

The story is not necessary for me to go into here. It has to be seen. There are shades of Casablanca; the Nazi’s / bad guys here are the Vichy French. Mr. Bogart is still the uninvolved ex-pat American who is forced by events to become involved. What is necessary for me to mention are the great performances from the terrific Warner Brothers stable of character actors. Walter Brennan as Eddie is a great example of a tragic / comic performance at it’s best. Hoagy Carmichael appears as almost as the “Sam” character of Casablanca. Mr Carmichael does a couple of his classic numbers and is accompanied by Ms. Bacall on two of them. As far as Mr. Bogart’s great performances go, his Harry Morgan is one of them.

This is truly a classic. It is only by a stoke of luck that Mrs. Hawks was looking at that magazine. This is a great picture and it’s a lot of fun. It’s safe for the kids and I wanted it to be required viewing when someone joined Movie Place. It was a constant on the screen at the store and I never ever got tired of it. I am not kidding when I say that I have seen a picture a hundred times. I have seen Sweet Smell Of Success close to 400 times. Although I have not seen To Have and Have Not close to the Sweet Smell Of Success level, the number is up there. If you have not seen this picture yet, you will understand when you see it.

8:00 PM

Big Sleep - 1946

I always liked Phillip Marlowe better than Sam Spade. He is a little nicer, a little smarter and a good deal funnier. Mr. Bogart in one of his defining roles, plays Marlowe who is hired by a very wealthy family. Before this complex case is over Mr. Marlowe has seen murder, blackmail and what might be true love. While working on the script, writers William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett couldn’t figure out from the novel who murdered a particular character. So they phoned Raymond Chandler, who angrily told them the answer was right there in the book and hung up. Chandler soon phoned back to say that he looked at the book himself and couldn’t figure out who killed the character, so he left it up to them to decide. In the original cut, shown to the armed services, this question is resolved; in the film as released, it isn’t.
The scene where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall make suggestive talk about horses was added almost a year after filming was otherwise complete, in an attempt to inject the film with the kind of risque innuendos that had made To Have and Have Not so popular two years earlier.
The last bit of trivia is my favorite. Eddie Mars’ henchman are named Sidney and Pete, a tribute to Mr. Bogart’s frequent costars Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre
10:00 PM

Dark Passage - 1947

Dark Passage was another constant in the Movie Place rotation of what was on the screen. It has a murder, a prison break out, a slightly insane back alley plastic surgeon, an incredibly villainous woman and a love story all rolled into one great 106 minute picture. It has everything one could possibly want in a movie, good clean sex and violence and a trippy surgery scene that Tim Burton seriously referenced in his 1989 Batman.

The plot is simple and one that has been used before and after but the fortunate combination of a good script, an interesting director/screenwriter and a legendary cast combine to make what is referred to as Hollywood magic. Humphrey Bogart plays Vincent Parry, a man convicted of murdering his wife who escapes from prison in order to prove his innocence. One of the things that make this picture special and a stand out over other pictures of it’s type is that the first third of this movie the camera is Vincent Parry. Other wise known as “point of view”, the camera is the character. Robert Montgomery wrote and directed himself in Raymond Chandler’s Lady In the Lake (which uses point of view through the entire picture) and although the picture was released a few months earlier than Dark Passage I will venture to say that the latter picture pulls off the gimmick of “P.O.V.” better. It uses this technique for just as long as it has to; up until Vincent finds the back alley plastic surgeon, who says that if he wanted to he could make a man look like a dog, makes Vincent look like Humphrey Bogart.

Lauren Bacall as always shines as the heroine – love interest of the picture. Only 22 years old when she made the picture and already a performing like an old pro. I have always said that she is of another world, no one looks like her, no one sounds like her. One afternoon in the store I was playing Key Largo and a bunch of high school students came in. The girls hung around the screen watching her. Finally one girl said “she looks so old”. I was a little surprised and said that Lauren Bacall was only 23 when she made the picture. What I told these kids is this: a star of her caliber does not look like a regular person, what you see as “old” is an intense air of confidence. There is a line in some song that I heard once that suits Ms. Bacall – you’re one in a million baby, you’ve gotta burn to shine. She doesn’t just burn, she smolders. Boys, when she rescues the recently escaped Vincent Parry, there will be a part of you that will want her to rescue you too. I think that I have gone on long enough about Ms. Bacall, but I am, as some of you know, prejudiced.

The always great Agnes Moorehead is the annoying and clingy Madge, friend to Irene (Lauren Bacall) and the lead prosecution witness against Vincent at his trial. She is responsible for his being sent to San Quentin. She is terrified and believes that Vincent is coming after her. Her annoying factor ultimately builds and morphs into spiteful villainy. Also on hand is Bruce Bennett as Bob, Irene’s current beau (but it ain’t going anywhere). Bruce Bennett was a solid performer who was great at playing heels (see Mildred Pierce) but also great as stand up guy who will do the right thing.

Delmar Daves directed some of my favorite movies of all time, the lurid and tawdry Summer Place, Parrish and Susan Slade as well as the testosterone injected Destination Tokyo, Demetrius and the Gladiator and The 3:10 to Yuma. Dark Passage is a lot of fun and safe for the kids.

Midnight

Key Largo- 1948

This was the fourth and final film pairing Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and it is great. Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) travels to a run-down hotel on Key Largo to visit the family of a friend who died bravely in his unit during WW II. His friend’s widow, Nora (Lauren Bacall) and wheelchair bound father, James Temple (Lionel Barrymore) manage the hotel and the three of them soon find themselves virtual prisoners when the hotel is taken over by a mob of gangsters led by Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) who hole up there to await the passing of a hurricane. They are prisoners of the weather and organized crime. Having become disillusioned by the violence of war, Frank is reluctant to act, but Rocco’s demeaning treatment of his alcoholic moll, Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor), and his involvement in the deaths of some innocent Seminole Indians and a deputy sheriff start to motivate McCloud take action.

The character of Johnny Rocco was obviously modeled on Al Capone (with shades of Lucky Luciano), who had moved to Florida after his stay in prison. His glory days behind him, he died there of complications due to advanced syphilis a year before this film was made.

The character of Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor) was based on real-life gangster’s moll Gay Orlova (gangster Lucky Luciano’s girlfriend), allegedly executed by a German firing squad. Miss Trevor’s performance (she was always great) and her particularly painful rendition of “Moanin’ Low” won her a much deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

The boat on which the final scenes take place is named Santana. This was the name of Humphrey Bogart’s yacht. An avid sailor, Mr. Bogart loved sailing since the days his father had taught him on Seneca Lake in the Adirondacks. He loved the Santana so much he named his production company after it.

Shot in a remarkably quick 78 days on the Warner Brothers back lot, Key Largo was the fourth (out of six) collaborations between John Huston and Humphrey Bogart. Based on a Maxwell Anderson hit play that had starred Paul Muni on Broadway. The movie version has little to do with the play however; the characters names, the time period and the setting were changed. This is a great picture that further perpetuated the Bogart / lone tough guy hero persona that we all came to love.
2:00 AM on December 24th

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