Humphrey Bogart was always seen as a bitter and cynical actor. It’s hard to believe that such a person could make it as a major superstar. Despite this, Bogart did make it. Tokyo Joe is set on the fragile post-war Japan featuring Bogart as a colonel from the Air Force returning to Tokyo right after World War II with the hopes of living the normal life he once had running a nightclub. Soon after, he finds out that his former lover, a Russian refugee, has survived the war and is now happily married. He then makes it his goal to win her back. Little did he know that in the process, he would get involved in a deceptive air freight scam that may jeopardize the stability of post-war Japan and the fate of a child he never knew he had. While the movie isn’t classic, Tokyo Joe offers an explosive characterization especially at the moments when Bogart’s eyes catches the camera lighting or when he twists his otherwise calm voice into a snarl. Adding a dark personality into his character makes his righteous acts very powerful.

–Bret Fetzer

The 1995 film We’re No Angels starring Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov gave audiences the renowned spectacle most movies portray: tough-guys going soft and gooey. However, unlike other movies regarded with the same style, We’re No Angels mixed it up a bit by setting the movie during the loved season of Christmas. The three aforementioned actors play three convicts who have escaped from a notorious French prison in a tropical backwater island called Devil’s Island. While waiting for a ship to leave the island the following day, they become involved in the financial woes of a shopkeeper (Leo G. Carroll) and his wife (Joan Bennett) and daughter. They soon found themselves going against a rich and nasty relative who is endangering the shopkeeper’s business (Basil Rathbone). Although faced with the threat of Black comedy, specifically in the form of Ray carrying a poisonous viper around in a demure bamboo case, the film ruled the day by broad cuteness. While Bogart’s performance was not on his list of essential performances, he does seem to be enjoying himself and the ever so mischievous Ustinov goes through his lines with ease like a cow chewing grass. Although Director Micheal Curtiz guided Bogart in Casablanca, perhaps was not the ideal choice for this type of winsome comedy as the movie had a pokey pacing. The stage origins of the scenarios are very predictable. However, this version of the film is absolutely better than the 1989 remake starring Robert De Niro and Sean Penn which is deemed to be too loose and labored.

–Robert Horton

Humphrey Bogart played the role of Harry Dawes, a ruined film director, in the movie The Barefoot Contessa as one of his final films before passing away in 1957. The movie is about Bogart’s character trying to climb up the ladder of success with the help of a very talented Spanish dancer (Ava Gardner) named Maria Vargas. Harry’s unfaltering character and his desire to let Maria keep her independence develop an undying friendship between the two. They endured the tempestuous Hollywood seas, made stormy by Maria’s spirit and the avariciousness of the film industry, together. However, Maria’s biggest break from Hollywood led her to a devastating road by luring her into the arms of a dark, mysterious, and secretive young man. Director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz has always shown impatience with Hollywood evident in his movies as that of the memorable All about Eve. However, in The Barefoot Contessa, the decline of Maria’s character was carefully planned unlike most films with similar plots which portray this decline as a response to fame. The hallmark of the movie is still Bogart in his role of the most sympathetic character in the film as a platonic friend to his female costar, which is a highly uncommon role to play. However, this made the film worth watching while Gardner’s eyes searching for her fairy-tale ending.

Directed by Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet, Raintree County) in 1954, The Caine Mutiny is a movie set during World War II in a navy ship undergoing mutiny. The movie was based one of Herman Wouk’s novels. Humphrey Bogart stars as the heartbreaking captain Queeg that is ousted from authority by a couple of officers under his command played by Robert Francis and Van Johnson during a destructive storm. He then becomes an essential witness during court martial geared on disclosing information regarding the invisible injuries of war. With the movies scenes guided carefully by Edward Dmytryk, the all-male cast’s character performances soon became one of the most excellent in the 1950s cinema. Although it is much better to see the whole story in context, it is worth mentioning that the courtroom scenes from the movie alone became the basis for a television film in 1998, and a stage play. –Tom Keogh

The humorous, clever, and well-plotted movie Beat the Devil is a spoof about classic capers renowned at the time. Authored by the famous Truman Capote, the film is about four lawbreakers travelling to East Africa disguised as vacuum cleaner sellers when in fact, their true objective on having the trip is to be rich by smuggling Uranium from the country.

The African Queen is a simple lovable film directed by John Huston. Huston is known to have made more powerful films than this one but none so appreciated and loved on a universal scale. Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn play the roles of an improbable pair amidst German East Africa in this film adaptation of C.S. Forester’s novel set during World War I.  Bogart (who would win the Oscar® for best actor thereafter) is the drunken skipper unreliably chugging on the backwaters of the “Dark Continent.” After the death of her bachelor brother played by Robert Morley, Hepburn plays a squeamish Methodist missionary who is determined to use the “Queen” to attack a full-sized German gunboat making patrol watches over the lake to get back at Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops; the same troops that burned her village to the ground.  John Huston is a director quite on terms with absurdity and this is one such inane proposition.

It was not until Huston got to the Congo when he realized that The African Queen was turning into a good funny film. This is all thanks to the comic sense that grew out of the daily performances of the odd pairing of Kate and Bogie.  As stated by him, “One brought out a vein of humor in the other.” While only having a small boat available to him, Huston still managed to come up with countless ways for his leading characters to be on different visual planes even as the setting and raw emotional urgency complot to bring them together. This is also the first John Huston feature film shot in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes).  However, neither of them could find a solution against the fact that the film has inadequate screen-processing technology for Hepburn and Bogart’s scenes on the rapids. This is just about the only failure in their goal of giving one enchanting fairy tale for adults. The script is written by James Agee, Huston himself, and Peter Viertel who was uncredited in the movie but was called in to write additional material while the crew was in Africa. Viertel would later fictionalize the experience into a roman a clef entitled White Hunter, Black Heart.

–Richard T. Jameson

The Enforcer features the iconic actor Humphrey Bogart as a district attorney who has dedicated all his work to prosecute a mob boss. All Humphrey Bogart fans and crime completists alike were drawn to the film. The film was based on actual court cases and portrayed the plot by flashback as Bogart’s character thinks back on his case against the fell con artist Everett Sloane, who has murdered anyone who was brave enough to testify against him.  Director Bretaigne Windust masterfully directed the movie with help from Raoul Walsh (who was uncredited but shot most of the film’s crucial suspenseful events including the conclusion). The films unusual structure, combined with Bogart’s terrific performance on the movie and a marvelous supporting cast including Zero Mostel contributed largely to the film’s standard law versus mob script. The film also had the opening narration voiced-over by Estes Kefauver, the chairman of a Senate investigation on organized crime during the time of the movie’s release.

. –Paul Gaita

Focusing more on the destructive effect of a murder investigation on a fragile romance instead of the mysterious murder itself at the center of the plot, this atypical 1950 film noir showcases one of Humphrey Bogart’s best performances. With the script written by Andrew Solt and Bogart already an experience noir icon, Bogart’s characterization led to a more contradictory role of a villain, parallel to his most recognized triumphs during his entire career.

The eccentric director Nicholas Ray admitted that In a Lonely Place represented both an opportunity to cast a jaundiced eye on the film industry itself and a challenge for him to approach crime dramas in a different way, changing it to delve in a more mature domain. The film stars a Hollywood screenwriter that possesses a violent temper and indignant wit named Dixon Steele. Tasked with making a movie adaptation of a bestseller, Dixon meets with an eager girl who’s read the book, hoping to gather the book’s highlights precedent to writing the script. However, when she was murdered, Dixon found himself as the prime suspect which leaves him with a tightening knot of suspicion.

The only witness Dixon has is his beautiful neighbor Laurel played by Gloria Grahame. The two fall in love despite being in the middle of a dire situation. Invigorated with the peace he has found in the new relationship, the hard-boiled writer focused on his script with renewed discipline. However, as the police pressure continued with time, his strong inclination for violence lashed out against everyone, even Laurel herself, who is starting to get confused and is haunted by suspicion and fear that she might be endangered, and her lover is a murderer.

Bogart was successful in portraying Steele’s vulnerability and weariness. He managed to make both his romantic desire and abrupt, murderous craze equally convincing. As a whole, In a Lonely Place has been elevated both by Bogart’s performance and Grahames’s sympathetic work into an “existential love story” rather than a crime drama.

William Wyler’s intense nail-biting thriller The Desperate Hours shows Humphrey Bogart at his wicked best. Adapted from a factual Broadway play and novel written by John Hayes, this pointed to a slight departure for Wyler, whose celebrated versatility is on ready display. In the film, Bogart leads a terrified trio of convicts who have escaped and tries to take control of a residential family. The domestic threat escalates as the capable patriarch Frederic March wait for a chance to act while the authorities (led by Arthur Kennedy) prepare for an ambush. A similar plot with that of the poorly made 1954 movie Suddenly. The home featured in the movie can be recognized by viewers from TV’s Leave it to Beaver while providing Wyler an enclosed chamber for explosive advances and drawbacks as well. Although Bogey was not always good at portraying callous, prickly menace, The Desperate Hours is still a viable precursor to many similarly themed films like Panic Room while its 1990 remake was very poorly made.

–Jeff Shannon

In Key Largo, Humphrey Bogart stars as a war veteran who individually tries to save a group of people in a hotel. The hotel, located in the Florida Keys, is held hostage by a crook (Edward G. Robinson) while a storm was brewing. Lauren Bacall plays the role of one of the hostages. Directed by John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), the film is an intelligent thriller a little similar to To Have and Have not by Howard Hawk and intriguingly, both films feature Bacall and Bogart as well. Key Largo’s moody disposition captured a specific despair cancelled out by the link between two people unified by a common goal. Robinson’s alcoholic girlfriend (Claire Trevor) won an Academy award for her role.

–Tom Keogh