Starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall
Well, I got a pretty good one to start things off. Was afraid the computer (hereafter known as Ziggy Jr.) would end up picking something obscure like Armageddon for my inaugural foray with this blog. Key Largo stars my favorite actor working with his favorite leading lady in one of their better films together. My order of preference for the Bogart-Bacall collaborations: The Big Sleep, Key Largo, To Have and Have Not, Dark Passage. All but the latter are indisputable classic Hollywood entertainments.
Key Largo is basically a reworking of The Petrified Forest (1936), which contained Bogart’s breakthrough performance in the role of villain Duke Mantee. Warner Bros.' original choice for that role had been Edward G. Robinson, who was already an established screen star thanks to his turn as Rico in 1931’s Little Caesar and subsequent gangster pictures. Robinson’s performance as Johnny Rocco in Key Largo gives us a good idea what he would have been like as Mantee. Bogart, as protagonist Frank McCloud, has a grittier edge than Forest’s hero, the proper gentleman actor Leslie Howard. In both films, the heroes and villains are confined together during a storm and drama ensues. It’s one of the great formulas that still works.
I don’t believe in giving star ratings nor letter or numerical grades. So I’m not going to do that. My opinion of Key Largo is: very good movie, with entertaining story and performances that hold up well. My one gripe is that Bacall is underutilized.
Randoms
-- Johnny Rocco is one of those gangsters who likes making tough speeches while someone nervously shaves him with a straight razor. Possibly inspired a similar scene with Robert de Niro’s Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987).
-- Bacall is pretty fearless for a hostage. Would you spit on the leader of a bunch of hoods holding guns? Luckily she had Bogart there to talk him down with one of his patented dizzyingly fast speeches. If that hadn’t worked, I’m sure Bogart still had the magical shoulder-chop KO in his bag of tricks.
-- Rocco’s gang has guys named Ziggy, Curly, and Toots. What are the odds of assembling a group of mooks with names like that?
-- “What’s worse, Curly? A dumbbell or a wiseguy?” Curly answers "wiseguy". Maybe in his line of work he’s right. Me, I can’t abide stupidity. I’d have told him to shoot the dumbbell.
-- “One Rocco more or less isn’t worth dying for.” Would that line be convincing with any actor other than Bogart delivering it?
-- Inclement weather = natural drama. Screenwriters take note.
-- Rocco makes his poor alcoholic floozy sing for a snootful, then refuses to give her a drink because “you were rotten”. What an asshole.
-- One minor drawback to this particular Bogart-Bacall film is their lack of flirtatious scenes together. Their chemistry is better displayed in The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not.
-- This was the last of the five films featuring Bogart and Robinson together. In all the previous films, Robinson was the star and Bogart a supporting player. In Key Largo, both actors get top-billing. Robinson kind of steals the show though.
-- Key Largo was the second film starring Bogart and directed by John Huston released in 1948. The other was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, containing what is possibly Bogart’s best performance.
-- So you ditched a dead body outside and a lawman stumbles over it. What to do? Blame it on the Indians! Now that’s thinking like a white man.
-- Bogart is pretty restrained right up until he kills everybody.
Interesting Facts
-- John Huston was not the original director attached to the project. Key Largo was intended to be a technicolor musical and would have been the debut feature for a very young Stanley Kubrick. Hostilities broke out between Kubrick and Bogart, who harbored a deep jealousy of the acclaim James Cagney had received for Yankee Doodle Dandy. Bogart insisted on doing his own singing and choreographing all his big dance numbers with Bacall and Robinson. This set the production back several weeks before Kubrick was sacked. Some of his original footage was discovered perfectly preserved in a crypt in Switzerland shortly after Kubrick’s death in 1999. The material remains unavailable to the general public but by all reports is really, truly awful.
-- The fact that Bacall makes less impact in Key Largo than in her other screen adventures with Bogart may have to do with her replacing Betty White at the last minute. White apparently screen-tested very well, but refused to sign a contract stating that she would not be allowed to film her scenes nude.
-- Edward G. Robinson, on the other hand, had enough clout to add a nudity clause into his own contract, as evidenced by his bathtub introduction scene. It was common practice for the bigger stars of the time to demand these vanity nude scenes the first time their characters appeared in a movie. Unfortunately all home video versions have been based on the cropped and censored prints from the late 50s to early 60s, and most of these nude introductions are forever lost to us.
Well, I got a pretty good one to start things off. Was afraid the computer (hereafter known as Ziggy Jr.) would end up picking something obscure like Armageddon for my inaugural foray with this blog. Key Largo stars my favorite actor working with his favorite leading lady in one of their better films together. My order of preference for the Bogart-Bacall collaborations: The Big Sleep, Key Largo, To Have and Have Not, Dark Passage. All but the latter are indisputable classic Hollywood entertainments.
Key Largo is basically a reworking of The Petrified Forest (1936), which contained Bogart’s breakthrough performance in the role of villain Duke Mantee. Warner Bros.' original choice for that role had been Edward G. Robinson, who was already an established screen star thanks to his turn as Rico in 1931’s Little Caesar and subsequent gangster pictures. Robinson’s performance as Johnny Rocco in Key Largo gives us a good idea what he would have been like as Mantee. Bogart, as protagonist Frank McCloud, has a grittier edge than Forest’s hero, the proper gentleman actor Leslie Howard. In both films, the heroes and villains are confined together during a storm and drama ensues. It’s one of the great formulas that still works.
I don’t believe in giving star ratings nor letter or numerical grades. So I’m not going to do that. My opinion of Key Largo is: very good movie, with entertaining story and performances that hold up well. My one gripe is that Bacall is underutilized.
Randoms
-- Johnny Rocco is one of those gangsters who likes making tough speeches while someone nervously shaves him with a straight razor. Possibly inspired a similar scene with Robert de Niro’s Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987).
-- Bacall is pretty fearless for a hostage. Would you spit on the leader of a bunch of hoods holding guns? Luckily she had Bogart there to talk him down with one of his patented dizzyingly fast speeches. If that hadn’t worked, I’m sure Bogart still had the magical shoulder-chop KO in his bag of tricks.
-- Rocco’s gang has guys named Ziggy, Curly, and Toots. What are the odds of assembling a group of mooks with names like that?
-- “What’s worse, Curly? A dumbbell or a wiseguy?” Curly answers "wiseguy". Maybe in his line of work he’s right. Me, I can’t abide stupidity. I’d have told him to shoot the dumbbell.
-- “One Rocco more or less isn’t worth dying for.” Would that line be convincing with any actor other than Bogart delivering it?
-- Inclement weather = natural drama. Screenwriters take note.
-- Rocco makes his poor alcoholic floozy sing for a snootful, then refuses to give her a drink because “you were rotten”. What an asshole.
-- One minor drawback to this particular Bogart-Bacall film is their lack of flirtatious scenes together. Their chemistry is better displayed in The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not.
-- This was the last of the five films featuring Bogart and Robinson together. In all the previous films, Robinson was the star and Bogart a supporting player. In Key Largo, both actors get top-billing. Robinson kind of steals the show though.
-- Key Largo was the second film starring Bogart and directed by John Huston released in 1948. The other was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, containing what is possibly Bogart’s best performance.
-- So you ditched a dead body outside and a lawman stumbles over it. What to do? Blame it on the Indians! Now that’s thinking like a white man.
-- Bogart is pretty restrained right up until he kills everybody.
Interesting Facts
-- John Huston was not the original director attached to the project. Key Largo was intended to be a technicolor musical and would have been the debut feature for a very young Stanley Kubrick. Hostilities broke out between Kubrick and Bogart, who harbored a deep jealousy of the acclaim James Cagney had received for Yankee Doodle Dandy. Bogart insisted on doing his own singing and choreographing all his big dance numbers with Bacall and Robinson. This set the production back several weeks before Kubrick was sacked. Some of his original footage was discovered perfectly preserved in a crypt in Switzerland shortly after Kubrick’s death in 1999. The material remains unavailable to the general public but by all reports is really, truly awful.
-- The fact that Bacall makes less impact in Key Largo than in her other screen adventures with Bogart may have to do with her replacing Betty White at the last minute. White apparently screen-tested very well, but refused to sign a contract stating that she would not be allowed to film her scenes nude.
-- Edward G. Robinson, on the other hand, had enough clout to add a nudity clause into his own contract, as evidenced by his bathtub introduction scene. It was common practice for the bigger stars of the time to demand these vanity nude scenes the first time their characters appeared in a movie. Unfortunately all home video versions have been based on the cropped and censored prints from the late 50s to early 60s, and most of these nude introductions are forever lost to us.
