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Humphrey Bogart: Roles
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In 1941, Bogart's luck suddenly changed for the better. He was given the lead in Walsh's High Sierra in place of George Raft (who had turned the part down). Although Ida Lupino had top billing and gave one of her finest performance, it was Bogart, in the role of Roy Earle an ageing and dillusioned gangster, who was the discovery of the film. For the first time he revealed a human dimension and depth which went beyond the requirements of the plot. Caught between loyalty to his old boss (who engineers his escape from prison for one last job) and the desire to start afresh with the young woman (Joan Leslie) whom he naively believes is in love with him, Roy is neither a hero nor a villain. He has a history, a past which weighs heavily on his present existence and offers him freedom only at the price of his own death.
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Bogart was never interested in dramatics when he was growing up. However, one of his parents' neighbors was a producer for the theater and offered Bogart a job in his office. Eventually, Humphrey became a stage manager (the person who assists the director and runs the stage for a play or musical) and then began acting himself. Acting did not always come easy for him. Although he did get roles, at one time he became so nervous that he ran offstage in the middle of a performance.
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After several others passed on the role, Bogart got his first romantic lead: playing Rick Blaine, the nightclub owner in Casablanca (1942). This remains, almost 60 years later, a fresh, riveting performance. Bogart brought a natural intensity and humor to the role. He had learned how to convey pain in his eyes, and how to show emotion with subtle shadings of his voice.
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In The Barefoot Contessa (1953) Bogart gave depth to his role as a shattered, alcoholic film director. In Beat the Devil (1954), he portrayed a disreputable adventurer. TheCaine Mutiny (1954) provided Bogart with one of his finest roles, as the unstable Captain Queeg. In his last film, the sharp-edged boxing drama The Harder They Fall (1956), Bogart gave a strong performance as an investigator of sports corruption. A year later, on January 14, 1957, after a long struggle with throat cancer, he died in Hollywood.
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With Deadline USA (1952), a vibrant plea for freedom of the press, Bogart , with the director Richard Brooks, returned to the democratic inspiration of Key Largo and Knock on any Door. The following year, Brooks cast him in Battle Circus as a sceptical and gruff military doctor, overfond of women and alcohol. In The Caine Mutiny (1954), an ambitious Stanley Kramer production directed by Edward Dmytryk, Bogart took on the part of Captain Queeg, a neuurotic, dictatorial officer forcibly removed from command by his subordinates. The film was an ambiguous reflection on power and responsibility in which the actor created an unusual character role.
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Bogart, the son of a distinguished surgeon, actually studied medicine himself for a time before enlisting in the Navy during World War 1. Caught in a blast aboard ship, he sustained facial wounds that scarred and partially paralyzed his upper lip, accounting for one of his distinctive screen trademarks. A talented (and, according to silent-screen star Louise Brooks, sensitive) stage actor during the 1920s, Bogart made his screen debut in a 1930 short subject,Broadway's Like That and alternated stints in theater and film for the next few years. His career ratcheted upward when he played vicious killer Duke Mantee in "The Petrified Forest" on Broadway; costar Leslie Howard insisted he recreate the role in the 1936 film adaptation, which won him a Warners contract.
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