Playin' it Bogart

He recites lines from a script in a believable way. He does it fluidly and realistically, and he's likable while he does it. Perhaps if you could define. I see absolutely no difference between "movie star" and "actor". Perhaps you mean good or bad, serious or amateur actor, but I can't see how he's bad or amateur.

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are not even remotely similar in the way they approach their lives and their cases. You haven't seen Casablanca? I think you may need to watch the original Sabrina. Bogart plays Linus, the same role that Harrison Ford does in one of your fave films.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I probably will one day, mark f. I own it and have seen quite a few clips from it here and there.

__________________

I don't think Sabrina is one of Bogart's better performances. He is very uncomfortable in the role, but he is still interesting to watch because it's not like anything he did before. Billy Wilder hated him because Bogart was always needling him. Bogart said to Wilder: Do you have any children? Wilder: I have a nine (?) year old daughter. Bogart: Did she write this?

The Maltese Falcon established Bogart as a leading man, but when he comes on the screen as Duke Mantee about halfway through The Petrified Forest, you know you are looking at a star! It wasn't Bogart's first film. He had come out to Hollywood once before and made a few films that went nowhere before going back to the New York stage. It's amusing how people now say "theater actor" like it's a throwaway term, something less than a movie star, but all the greatest movie actors--Dean, Brando, Bogart, Stewart, Steiger, you name 'em, got their start and best training on stage. Just because we cannot see the stage productions now, people dismiss them, but without that stage experience, you'd never have seen most of them on screen.

That's particularly true of Bogart who played Duke Mantee on stage in a very successful run of The Petrified Forest on Broadway. A Hollywood studio (I'm thinking Warners) bought the movie rights to Forest and wanted star Leslie Howard to recreate his stage role in the film. But Howard refused unless the studio also hired Bogart to repeat his role. The studio fought to have a movie star in that role, but Howard stuck to his guns and Bogart was brought out to Hollywood for his breakthrough movie role. Bogart has a relatively small part in that film flanked by stars Howard and Bette Davis and surrounded by some good character actors, but when he's on screen he's the one you instinctively watch. He was Duke Mantee--he owned both that role and the movie.

If Bogart is uncomfortable in Sabrina, I've never noticed it. He's great in the part of the serious steadfast older brother who finds love late in life. He didn't have to be a gangster or private eye to take command of a role and a film.

Besides, this wasn't the first time he'd played a relatively ordinary guy in love in a movie--look at his Michael O'Leary in love with Bette Davis in Dark Victory. If he were uncomfortable in any role, it would have had to be playing bandit Juan Murrell with that terrible Mexican accent against Western good-guys Randolph Scott and Errol Flynn in Virginia City. He was better but still miscast when he played Western outlaw Whip McCord essentially as a 19th century gangster against good-guy Cagney in the title role of the Westerner The Oklahoma Kid.

Really? How are they different? Keep in mind I've read none of the source material, so maybe it's less obvious to me.

__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201

The story that Lelie Howard insisted on Bogart is true, but Bogart lobbied for the role through Howard. Howard told Bogart if he did the movie he would make sure he got the role and when when it looked like it wasn't going to happen, reminded Howard what he told him. Howard kept his word.

Henry Fonda, the most understated and low-key of actors, also came to Hollywood via a Broadway hit he was in, The Farmer Takes a Wife. To see Fonda in a movie you would think there is no way his voice could project on a large New York stage, but many years later he went back to Broadway and originated the role of Mister Roberts, which he again played in the movie. Mister Roberts was also the film that led to his break with John Ford, the original director, who left after clashing with Fonda.

Sam Spade is an opportunist operating on the fringes of the law who may very well have let the bad guys get away with it if the Falcon turned out to be genuine and he received his cut. Phillip Marlowe as defined by Raymond Chandler was a modern day equivalent of a chivalrous knight, trying to do the right thing in a deeply flawed sinful world.

If Bogart owed his career to anyone, it was to Leslie Howard for refusing to recreate his Broadway role in the movie version of The Petrified Forest unless the studio also hired Bogart to reprise his Broadway role of Duke Mantee in the same film. The studio didn't want Bogart and didn't want to pay to bring him to Hollywood, but Howard said, "No Bogart, no film." Bogart had bombed in his earlier attempt to break into Hollywood. It was this second chance that got him regular--albeit typecast--work in the movies.

By the way, High Sierra provides the best opportunity to compare Bogart head to head with a couple of other actors in remakes of that film, including Jack Palance is another gangster remake and Joel McCrae in a Western remake called Colorado Territory, both playing the Bogart role of Roy Earl.

Rufnek, but Bogart wouldn't have been cast in Casablanca if he didn't get Raft's leftovers. Casablanca made him a superstar. Petrified Forest got him back into Hollywood and mostly second leads until Raft's stupidity brought him up to the next level.

My dad was brought up during the war, during those years pre-tv when going to the pictures was the entertainment of the masses. He was a film addict. In those days there were loads of cinemas and the films would change every few days not every week. He loved all the old actors like George Raft, Edward G Robinson, Jimmy Cagney and hundreds of others, but his special favourite was Humphrey Bogart.
When we were kids and all used to sit down on a Sunday afternoon to watch whatever film was on the tv, our dad would always do his trick of naming all the actors in the film, even the guys standing in the background. He was a fount of knowledge and did a mean impression of Bogey. That's my intro to Bogart and the beginning of my film education

Could be a "chicken or the egg" debate. He wouldn't have been around to get cast for Casablanca if not brought out to Hollywood for The Petrified Forest. Casablanca may look like a "superstar-maker" now, but it only got named Casablanca because US troops had just invaded North Africa in the early days of WWII, putting the Casablanca dateline on the front pages of newspapers across the US. Otherwise, it might have been released under its working title, "Everyone Comes (or goes) to Rick's." I'm not sure Raft was really the leading contender for the role, since several actors were mentioned for it, including Ronnie Reagan. I don't think Bogart would have gotten it if not for the earlier success of The Maltese Falcon that proved he was leading man material. Seems to me Falcon was a bigger boost to his career than Casablanca at that time, if only because Bogart had more to do in Falcon with a much better script and a better director (Huston, even though it was the first film Huston directed). Even so, that was the second remake of The Maltese Falcon, although by far the best.

There was nothing magical about Casablanca at the time it was filmed--in fact the "start of a beautiful friendship" ending with Bogart and Claude Rains was filmed and added after the picture had been officially finished. Basically it was just a low-budget (the LA airport stood in for the Casablanca airport in the opening scene, while the scene of Bogart's and Ingrid's parting was played out in front a smaller-than-life-size image of the plane with midgets wearing air crew uniforms) B-grade movie that happened to strike boxoffice gold.

Neither Raft or Ronald Reagan were considered for Casablanca. The studio publicity department put Reagan's name out for Casablanca, as they often did to promote contract players. Raft wanted Casablanca, but Hal Wallis in his memo to Jack Warner makes clear Casablanca was being written for Bogart. Raft was in Hal Wallis' doghouse by then. I like The Maltese Falcon. too, but it was the phenomenal popularity of Casablanca that put Bogart up to the next level. While a lot of people, including Bogart and Bergman, thought they were making a routine picture, Hall Wallis definitely did not. He made a deal to personally produce movies for Warner Brothers and he chose Casablanca to launch it. He always resented the fact that when it won Best Picture, Jack Warner went up to accept the award when it was Wallis' baby all the way and was a major factor that led to Wallis leaving Warner Brothers.

It was not a B movie by any stretch of the imagination. Studio movies then seldom went on location and the fact it was studio bound has nothing to do with it's status. You want to see a Warner Brothers B movie? They're crappy looking with either stars to be or never were and run a little under or over a hour. Some studios made some pretty good B's, not Warner Brothers.

And Michael Curtiz was the studio's top director and had been since the mid 1930s. The studio had a caste system. Ross Lederman directed WB B's, not Curtiz. And Brian Foy was the producer of their B unit and his name went on the pictures.

I don't mean to sound like I'm arguing with you over every point, but you're missing a major point about Spade that Hammett makes plain in his book and that Bogart also tells the treacherous female in the film: He says in essence that it helps to let the opposition--the crooks--think he's not completely honest so that they drop their guard and allow him to get closer to them. But Hammett and Spade also make the point that for a detective to go after a crook is as natural, as much of his being, as for a cat to chase down a rat. In both cases, they're running down a natural enemy, doing it because that's their nature to do it. He says as much again when he tells the woman she's "going over" for murdering his partner. Says maybe she'll get off doing 20-25 years and if so he'll wait for her. But if they hang her, he'll have some bad nights but he'll get over it. He says if he doesn't have her pay for killing his partner, that makes it hard not only on him but on all detectives going after crooks and killers. And he won't play the sap for her because she was counting on him doing just that.

Yeah, Spade and Marlowe are different--Spade may not be chivalrous; he runs around with his partner's wife. But he hates crooks. All the time he pretended to play along with Gutman and the others, he was building a case against them--turned over to the cops the money that Gutman thought was to bribe him, the falcon, the woman, told the cops where to find the other three and warned them about Cook being armed, etc. He has the case all laid out because he never intended to do anything but bring in the whole gang.

That's not true. The dialogue is ambiguous. He specifically says to Bridget a lot of money might have changed the equation. He definitely does the right thing because the Falcon being phony made that decision easy, but Spade in explaining himself implies real money might, not for sure, had him go the other way as he considers all the options.

You're starting to sound a little heated there, Will. Nothing to get upset about. All I'm going by are things I read and interviews I've seen, including filmed comments by the playwrite that Casablanca was not thought to be anything special at the time it was being made. Certainly not a large budget or any other indication that it would be the studio's best try at winning an Oscar, if as you say Curtiz never worked on Bs. I'm sure you've got primary sources supporting your perspective, too.

Anyway, I was just offering what I'd heard for whatever it's worth. I don't have any money riding on it, so it makes no difference to me if they spent a billion bucks to make it their biggest investment of the year or cranked it out for $1.98.

Now that's uncalled for.

For some reason I want to see The Treasure of the Sierra Madre again.

The fact that it's bloody good seems the most plausible explanation.