Research in progress: Nov 8, 2024
Commitment in Hollywood Cinema: Humphrey Bogart
Bogart complete filmography at the end of the article
Part III of a Series of Articles
As a genre, the Hollywood war film provides a strategic site for analyzing the myth of commitment, because its narratives deal explicitly with all kinds of political issues. At the same time, conclusions drawn from examining war movies may be applicable to other genres.
A consideration of on-screen heroism must include the war films made by John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Humphrey Bogart, the most durable stars in American film history. It is no accident that the aforementioned actors became popular movie stars as a result of playing war heroes, or in movies made during WWII.
Asked to choose the most memorable war film of each star, it would probably be Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) for John Wayne, Casablanca (1943) for Humphrey Bogart, and Sergeant York (1941) for Gary Cooper.
At the center of each of those films is the basic dilemma between individualism and commitment, or self-interest versus collective interests. Moreover, the three stars embodied a different mode of commitment, which was consistently reflected and reaffirmed in many of their other films.
Bogart: From Personal Cynicism to Political Involvement
Humphrey Bogart had appeared in many war films, perhaps because he, like Wayne, was too old to be drafted into the war effort (he was born in 1899).
Most of his war films were produced by his studio, Warner Brothers, between 1942 and 1945, fulfilling a major function for establishing his screen image. Like Wayne, Bogart was at the height of his popularity with such films as Casablanca and To Have and Have Not. In a typical Bogart film, his character wears civilian clothes, usually a trench coat, and he is placed in a foreign country.
At times, he Bogart’s hero is the only, or one of a few, Americans on the scene. The titles of his films reveal more specifically their locales: Across the Pacific, Action in the North Atlantic, Sahara, Casablanca, Passage to Marseilles. The characteristic Bogart war film is not a combat film, fighting on the front, but an international espionage thriller or melodrama.
Casablanca
The kind of hero Bogart portrays in these films differs radically from that of Wayne’s. He usually starts as the cynical, sophisticated, and uninvolved man who is gradually (and against his best instincts) reluctantly drawn into the conflict. Though his transformation may be slow and gradual, ultimately, at the end of the tale he is fully committed to the ideological cause.
At the start of Casablanca, Bogart’s Rick Blain, the former soldier turned cafe owner, declares, “I stick my neck out for nobody,” and “I’m the only cause I’m interested in.” By the end, however, he gives up the woman he passionately loves (Ingrid Bergman), to help her husband, an anti-Fascist leader, escape to freedom. Bogart’s cynicism derives from disillusionment with the world’s apathy to the Civil War in Spain and to Ethiopia; he smuggled arms to Ethiopia and fought with the Loyalists in Spain.
Key Largo
In Key Largo, directed by John Huston, Bogart plays another disillusioned war veteran, a disenchanted idealist tired of wars and killings. At the start, he refuses to kill Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) because, “One Rocco more or less isn’t worth dying for.” He tells a young war widow (Lauren Bacall): “Me die to rid the world of Johnny Rocco No thanks.” Nonetheless, when Rocco murders the deputy sheriff and two Indians are wrongly accused and killed, he cannot compromise anymore. He gets a gun from Rocco’s alcoholic moll, and devises a plot to kill Rocco on his boat, endangering his own life.
Bogart’s unkempt, slipshod, gin-soaked riverboat captain, in The African Queen (1951), is talked into an act of heroism (blowing up a German battleship in World War One) by a missionary spinster (Katharine Hepburn), who, in the process, also softens his exterior toughness.
A romantic affair is essential to the Bogart character and central to his commitment. Bogart’s involvement with Mary Astor (Across the Pacific), Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca), Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not), and Katharine Hepburn (The African Queen) defines his heroism as much as the political issues themselves. If the women and romantic interest would be removed from Wayne’s films they would still be coherent and undamaged, because neither is important, which is not the case with Bogart’s films.
Moreover, in the Bogart films, as the late scholar Robert Sklar has pointed out, the war represents less of a trap than a solution to private entanglements, a means to transmute one’s personal entrapment into sacrifice for a higher cause.
Bogart’s heroes, unlike Wayne’s, are men who find in their commitment to collective goals the answer to their personal problems and inner dilemmas.
Humphrey Bogart Feature Films, 1930-1956
Title Year Role, Studio
1930: 2
A Devil with Women, Tom Standish, Fox Film
Up the River, Steve Jordan, Fox Film
1931: 4
Bad Sister, Valentine Corliss, Universal Pics, dist by Warner
A Holy Terror, Steve Nash, Fox Film
Body and Soul, Jim Watson, Fox Film
Women of All Nations, Stone; Fox Film, UCLA Film & Television Archive
1932: 3
Big City Blues, Shep Adkins Warner Bros.
Three on a Match, Harve Warner Bros.
Love Affair, Jim Leonard Columbia Pictures
1933: No films released
1934: 1
Midnight, Gar Boni aka Call It Murder, Universal Pictures
1935: No
1936: 5
The Petrified Forest, Duke Mantee, Warner
Bullets or Ballots, Nick “Bugs” Fenner, Warner
Two Against the World, Sherry Scott, aka One Fatal Hour, Warner
China Clipper, Hap Stuart, First National Pictures
Isle of Fury, Valentine “Val” Stevens, Warner
1937: 7
Black Legion, Frank Taylor, Warner Bros.
The Great O’Malley 1937 John Phillips, Warner
Marked Woman, District Attorney David Graham, Warner
San Quentin, Joe “Red” Kennedy, Warner
Kid Galahad, Turkey Morgan, Warner Bros.
Dead End, Hugh “Baby Face” Martin, Samuel Goldwyn Prods
Stand-In, Doug Quintain, Walter Wanger Productions
1938: 6
Swing Your Lady, Ed Hatch, Warner
Crime School, Deputy Commissioner Mark Braden, Warner
Men Are Such Fools 1938 Harry Galleon, Warner
Racket Busters 1938 Pete “Czar” Martin, Warner
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, “Rocks” Valentine, Warner
Angels with Dirty Faces 1938 James Frazier, Warner
1939: 7
King of the Underworld, Joe Gurney, Warner
The Oklahoma Kid, Whip McCord, Warner
You Can’t Get Away with Murder, Frank Wilson, Warner
Dark Victory, Michael O’Leary, Warner
The Roaring Twenties 1939 George Hally, Warner
The Return of Doctor X, Dr. Maurice Xavier, aka Marshall Quesne, Warner
Invisible Stripes, Chuck Martin, Warner
1940: 4
They Drive by Night 1940 Paul Fabrini, Warner
Virginia City, John Murrell, Warner
It All Came True, Grasselli, aka Chips Maguire, Warner
Brother Orchid, Jack Buck, Warner
1941: 3
High Sierra 1941 Roy Earle, Warner
The Wagons Roll at Night 1941 Nick Coster, Warner
The Maltese Falcon 1941 Sam Spade, Warner (debut of actr Sydney Greenstreet)
1942: 4
All Through the Night Alfred ‘Gloves’ Donahue, Warner
The Big Shot, Joseph “Duke” Berne, Warner
Across the Pacific 1942 Rick Leland, Warner
Casablanca, Rick Blaine, Nominated for Best Actor Oscar, Warner
1943: 3
Action in the North Atlantic 1943 Lt. Joe Rossi, Warner
Sahara, Sgt. Joe Gunn, Columbia Pictures
Thank Your Lucky Stars, Himself, Warner
1944: 2
Passage to Marseille 1944 Jean Matrac, Warner
To Have and Have Not, Harry “Steve” Morgan, Bacall’s debut film, Warner
1945: 1
Conflict, Richard Mason, Warner Bros.
1946: 1
The Big Sleep 1946 Philip Marlowe, Warner, preserved at the UCLA Film & Television Archive
1947: 3
Dead Reckoning, Capt. Warren “Rip” Murdock, Columbia
The Two Mrs. Carrolls, Geoffrey Carroll, Warner
Dark Passage, Vincent Parry, Warner
1948: 3
Always Together, Himself, Warner
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Fred C. Dobbs, Warner
Key Largo 1948 Frank McCloud, Warner
1949: 3
Knock on Any Door 1949 Andrew Morton Santana Productions (Bogart’s company founded in 1948); preserved at UCLA Film & Television Archive
Tokyo Joe, Joseph “Joe” Barrett, Santana Productions
Chain Lightning, Lt. Col. Matthew “Matt” Brennan, Warner
1950: 1
In a Lonely Place, Dixon Steele, Santana Productions; National Film Registry in 2007
1951: 3
The Enforcer, Dist. Atty. Martin Ferguson, United States Pictures, Preserved at the UCLA Film & Television Archive
Sirocco, Harry Smith, Santana Productions
The African Queen, Charlie Allnut, Won the Best Actor Oscar,
United Artists
1952: 1
Deadline – U.S.A. Ed Hutcheso,. Fox Film
1953: 2
Battle Circus, Maj. Jed Webbe, MGM
Beat the Devil, Billy Dannreuther, Romulus Films, Santana Pictures Corporation
1954: 3
The Caine Mutiny, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Francis Queeg, Nominated for Best Actor Oscar, Columbia
Sabrin, Linus Larrabee, Paramount Pictures
The Barefoot Contessa, Harry Dawes Figaro, UA
1955: 3
We’re No Angels, Joseph , Paramount Pictures
The Left Hand of God, James “Jim” Carmody, Fox Film
The Desperate Hours. Glenn Griffin, Paramount Pictures
1956: 1
The Harder They Fall, Eddie Willis
Notes
Essay originally written in 2000.
Filmography, updated 2022.
