So, I DVR'd this old movie when TCM showed it a few weeks ago and got around to watching it earlier in the week. Based on a stage play by Robert Sherwood, the movie is the story of a John Dillinger-type gangster who descends upon a combination gas station / lunch counter in the Middle of Nowhere Arizona desert and holds the denizens of this establishment hostage as he attempts to lam in to the Mexican border.
It's no great shakes but I wanted to see this now 82 year old film it because it is often sited as the movie that was the breakout role for Humphrey Bogart. He was 37 at the time and up until then was pretty much a bit player in a long string of B-movie gangster flicks that Warner Bros. was always cranking out back then. He played the role of killer Duke Mantee in the stage play, that also starred Leslie Howard on Broadway. When Warners decided to turn it into a movie, they had signed Howard to recreate his starring role and have Edward G. Robinson play the role of Mantee, but Howard insisted that they cast Bogart, or he wouldn't do the movie himself.
So, Bogie played Mantee with all the menace the role demanded, and went on to become a big star, or so the legend says. You will note in the poster for the film above, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis received billing above the title, and Bogie was only the third billed actor below the title, yet today, "The Petrified Forest" is considered a classic "Bogart movie".
The revelation to me in the movie, though, was Bette Davis. We all know and concede that Bette Davis was one of the great actresses of Hollywood history, but she has never been considered a great beauty as so many of her contemporaries were, but in this one I was struck by just how pretty, if not beautiful, the 28 year old Bette Davis was.
Like I said, it's no great shakes, The Grandstander gives it Two Stars at best, but it's worth seeing once just to catch two of Hollywood's all-time greats, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, early on in their careers.
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