Bogie's Films of the 1950's

The tough guy entered movies in 1930.  He made over three dozen in that decade, some of them quality films, but he didn't really hit the big time until 1941 with the first film noir, The Maltese Falcon.  From then on he scored a lot of hits.  He made 15 films in the 50's, an impressive output since he died in early 1957.  There are three classics, several very good ones, a few that didn't quite go the distance and one that stands among the worst films ever made.


Chain Lightning (1950)
Warner Bros held up its release for a year which is telling.  He plays a WWII test pilot in love with Eleanor Parker.  The romance and the rest of the story on the ground was dull but the aerial scenes had some excitement.  Bogie at 50 years of age was a little long in the tooth for this role.



In a Lonely Place (1950)
He hit pay dirt with this one, one of his exquisite film noirs, but we just did a full posting on it.  If you missed it, click here. 



The Enforcer (1951)
He is a district attorney relentlessly pursuing a crime boss in a standard WB programmer that isn't all that bad.  It has a documentary-style to it and no love interest and the studio didn't put much time or energy into promoting it since it was his last movie under his WB contract. 



Sirocco (1951)
It had some merit (mainly Marta Toren) but this production from Bogie's own company, Santana, had him playing his comfortable cynical American involved in gunrunning in 1925 Syria.  He was capable of so much more and it was coming next.

The African Queen (1951)
So much has been written about the booze-swilling riverboat captain and the stuffy woman missionary who flee the Germans on a dilapidated boat during WWI.  It is a gem of a movie, enjoyable at every level and featuring two of the most genuinely watchable performances from Bogie and Kate Hepburn.  They seem an awful mismatch in acting styles but the characters made the actors come around and the two actors came to like and respect one another.

Bogie found it to be one of his least-pleasurable movie-making experiences of all-time.  So many of his films were made in the studio and around Los Angeles that location filming is not something he often faced. He hated Africa... the heat, humidity, bugs, danger, food, isolation, lack of facilities of all kinds.  

Charlie Alnutt is one of his best roles if not the best of his long and distinguished career, especially considering it got him his only Oscar.  While it was well-deserved, it's always been noted that his win meant Brando lost out for A Streetcar Named Desire, the only one of the main cast to not win.



Deadline U.S.A. (1953)
The first of back-to-back films Bogie would make for esteemed director Richard Brooks concerns a newspaper that is about to be sold and a bulldog of a reporter racing against time to finish an exposé on a gangster.  This is somewhat of a forgotten film in the Bogart canon and that's too bad.  It features an excellent supporting cast including Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter, Ed Begley, Paul Stewart, Warren Stevens and Martin Gabel.

An unusual screen partner in June Allyson

Battle Circus (1953)
Before principal photography commenced on this Korean War film
(actually filmed during the war), much was made over the fact that wholesome MGM star June Allyson would be Bogie's leading lady. They very much enjoyed working together but she certainly wasn't his type but I am probably in the minority in finding her to be a fine partner for him.  It was the only movie he ever made at MGM.

Allyson plays a rather naive nurse assigned to the MASH unit who falls for a hard-assed army surgeon on the battlefront.  Unfortunately, fans of war films probably found the film too sappy and fans of love stories could have done without the war scenes.  Overall, it's nothing to get excited over but I liked watching two such different types act together.  Nonetheless, his fans tended to stay away and so did hers.



Beat the Devil (1954)
Okay, here it is... THE worst film Bogart ever made and one of the worst films of all time.  And I say this knowing the talents involved... director John Huston, writer Truman Capote and Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lorre and Robert Morley.

The plot, such as it is, focuses on six freaks on their way to Africa to strike it rich but who are detained in Italy while their ship is readied.  They are a bunch of swindlers that we are to meet through a veneer of humor but it all comes out too cynical for my tastes.

The making of the film is a study of disorder. No one was ever given a completed script.  The story careens all over the bloody place.  There are few coherent moments.  Little makes sense.  There's no central point of focus but there are awkward transitions... all the result of a patchwork script.  

The filmmakers ran out of money and sat around and told jokes and played cards and drank.  And drank.  Bogie, Huston, Lorre and Capote were prodigious boozers and it surely hijacked their functionality.  Capote was called in for the umpteenth last-ditch effort but he rewrote dialogue that is wildly overdone with literary allusion and quotations.   This is a good place to say ghastly.

I read a review years ago which referred to the movie as the birthplace of camp.   Oh shut up...!!!  It's a runaway train and no one even tried to jump.  I can't believe I've just done five paragraphs on this dreck. 

The unhinged Captain Queeg

The Caine Mutiny (1954)
I'd say this is about a naval captain who's lost his marbles but that's not true... he rolls them around in his hand all the time, including above.  He goes off the deep end and his first officer is coerced into relieving him of his command and then faces a court martial.

It took a while to get the film off the ground because the U.S. Navy was having none of it because they felt they were portrayed in a unfavorable light.  Without their cooperation, there would be no use of their ships or equipment.  Finally they came around and a dynamic motion picture was filmed.

The cast, without exception, is dazzling, with top honors going to Bogart, as the broken captain, in another of his best performances.  Others, including Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Jose Ferrer and newcomer, Robert Francis, were all outstanding.  Other than Bogie, special mention must go to Ferrer as the defense attorney who gives a magnificent speech at the end of the film.  This is ensemble acting at its very best.



Sabrina (1954)
Bogart was a last-minute replacement for Cary Grant in the role of a filthy rich man who falls in love with the family chauffeur's daughter, played by Audrey Hepburn. His brother William Holden is also in love with her.  Grant not only would have been so much better but Bogart was never more wrong for a role and he looked uncomfortable as well... hardly a man in love.

Hepburn, however, saves the day and made the movie the success it was.  The fact, however, that she chooses Bogie over Holden at the end asked a lot for audiences to take in.  Holden and Hepburn fell in love in real life but Bogart didn't like either one of his costars and they didn't like him.  He and Holden were longtime enemies stemming from an earlier movie they made together.  And Bogie didn't think Hepburn could act and was annoyed that she demanded so many retakes.  Now you know.

The Sabrina stars don't look so comfortable

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
It's a good movie, it's a not-so-good movie... for sure it is the doom and gloom movie, reeking of sadness, saturated as it is in nearly every frame.  It's a showbiz story and its inhabitants are here for the picking... the writer, director, PR man, the man with the cash... and the actress.  She's the title star.  It's really all about her.

Ava Gardner plays Maria Vargas, a Spanish flamenco dancer who is snatched off the dance floor and turned into a movie star because the money man thinks she has the face that can break many a heart... on screen and as it turns out, off.  She becomes a big movie star but it doesn't do the trick for her.  Desperate for love, she marries the wrong man.

Maria's funeral opens the film which is narrated by Bogie's writer character.  It sets the tone.  I liked the sadness... it worked for me.  Gardner was so right for this part... a woman from humble beginnings who grows into a breathtaking screen goddess.  However, I never believed her as Maria... not the goddess part anyway and I've never understood why.  I remember a party I once attended where this was a topic of conversation.

I found it to be well-directed and written by Hollywood heavyweight, Joe Mankiewicz.  It may have suffered from Bogie not being the main character and from him having no romance with Gardner.  It was his fourth film in 1954 and he was feeling and looking a bit tired.



We're No Angels (1955)
I've always had a high regard for this film because it is one of Bogie's rare... very rare... comedy performances.  It is great fun seeing him laugh and cut up.  While everyone in the film shines, it wouldn't have worked out if the other two angels... Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray... hadn't matched Bogie all the way.  Ustinov is especially funny and Ray had such a hunkness in those days and I  loved his froggy voice.

The plot concerns three escapees from Devil's Island who hide out in a family's home in a little French coastal town.  They first meet the couple and their young adult daughter at the rundown store they manage for a mean proprietor.  The trio plans to rob the family of clothes and other necessities.  Instead they all form a friendship when the men move in and help the family with its various woes while awaiting the next phase of their escape.

I admired the witty and yet incisive dialogue, some clever plot twists and sublime acting from the entire cast including Joan Bennett, always fussy Leo G. Carroll and Basil Rathbone.   It is helmed by Bogie's Casablanca director, Michael Curtiz.

Aldo Ray, Bogart and Peter Ustinov are no angels

The Left Hand of God (1955)
Life in war-torn China in the late 1940's has been done better in other films but what this one had that the others didn't is Humphrey Bogart and Gene Tierney.  He plays a priest who arrives at a mission and is tough enough to ward off enemies as China lapses into civil war.  He takes an uncommon interest in a nurse (Tierney) which leads us to question his devotion to his calling but a secret at the finale tells all we need to know.

Tierney had a mental breakdown shortly after making it and was institutionalized.  She had great difficulty in remembering her lines but Bogart was most helpful to her as were cast members Agnes Moorehead, Lee J. Cobb and E. G. Marshall. 




The Desperate Hours (1955)
Here's another one about three prison escapees entering a family's home.  But let it be said that's as far as any comparison goes.  The chief difference is this one has no comedy.  This is all drama.  Indeed.

Bogie, Dewey Martin and Robert Middleton make up a ruthless trio that breaks into a random home and terrorizes the family for several days.  Staunch Fredric March, maternal Martha Scott, comely Mary Murphy and feisty little sassy boy, Richard Eyer, play the frightened family.  Along the way, of course, the family is constantly devising plans to escape.  Eventually cops stake out a neighboring home and the film builds to an exciting conclusion.

It is expertly directed by famed William Wyler.  Both this film and We're No Angels were based on plays and both films were later remade (a testament to the worthy material).



The Harder They Fall (1956)
Here's a harsh look at the underbelly of  boxing world.  Bogie plays a down-on-his-luck sportswriter who is hired by a shady fight promoter to publicize his latest fighter.  I wasn't thrilled when I first saw it, which I was dragged to, because I didn't (and don't) like most boxing movies.  Maybe I should give it another shot since, by most accounts, it contains another bang-up Bogie performance.

And how interesting that it does.  He was starting to show signs of the cancer that would end his life in January, 1957.  Another issue for him was his dislike of costar Rod Steiger.  Their problems stemmed from their very different acting styles.  Steiger came from The Actor's Studio to which Bogie said this scratch-your-ass and mumble school of acting just doesn't please me.


Humphrey Bogart was certainly a legend in his lifetime but there is no question that a few years after his death that legendary status hit the stratosphere.



Next posting:
MGM's Go-to Boy Singer