My Romance with Movies: Visiting Film Noir: Key Largo

1948 Film Noir

From Warner Bros

Directed by John Huston

Starring

Humphrey Bogart

Edward G. Robinson

Lauren Bacall

Lionel Barrymore

Claire Trevor

Thomas Gomez

Harry Lewis

William Haade

Dan Seymour

Monte Blue

John Rodney

Warner Bros and director John Huston gave the public one of the more crowd-pleasing film noirs. There are others I enjoyed more but I cannot deny that a noir based on a famous Broadway play with a star-studded cast, including one of Hollywood's most popular couples certainly did the trick.

Huston also co-wrote the screenplay, turning over a great deal of the writing to Richard Brooks who would in a short time begin an exciting directing career of his own. Huston not only had Brooks over to his home for booze and munchies while they hammered out some ideas but Huston did something very unusual... he had Brooks on the set every day. Writers are almost never invited to film sets.

The pair of them stripped Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play (starring Paul Muni) to the bone. They kept the basic narrative set-up, a few characters and the title. The play concerned itself with Mexican bandidos and the lead role was a deserter from the Spanish-American war who dies at the end. The two writers agreed no one wanted that war to be involved and they didn't want their hero to die.

Though Brooks particularly kept writing new pages and dialogue practically right up to the wrap party, the time period was changed to post-WWII and featured subtexts involving heroism, cowardice, idealism, disillusionment, corruption and gangsterism.

Bogart arrives at the rundown Largo Hotel during its seasonal closing. He is surprised to find several shady-looking and rather disagreeable

people hanging out around the area of the hotel's bar. He asks where the proprietor, Mr. Temple, is and is told he's out on the dock.

Bogart finds Temple (Barrymore) in his wheelchair on the dock and the man's daughter-in-law Nora (Bacall) working on something nearby. They are surprised by his visit but utterly delighted because he was in the same army unit as Bacall's husband and Barrymore's son, George, and was with him when George was killed.

Bogart was only planning on staying for an hour or so but the Temples talk him into staying so they may hear more about George. It seems apparent, too, that Bacall is a bit smitten.

Neither she nor her father-in-law are pleased with their half dozen guests. They said they wanted to rent the hotel for a week so that they could go fishing. Barrymore is reluctant, especially with it being offseason, but he needed the money. Bogart is suspicious because everyone seems to have a thug mentality. But he has not seen two of them. The one who seems to be in charge (Gomez) is on an upper floor with the only woman guest (Trevor) and all hear her scream. By the time Bogart rushes to the upper floor, he sees Gomez slap Trevor and then push her into a closet and lock the door.

Robinson (c), Gomez (r) and the boys

Twenty-six minutes into the story we meet Robinson. He is soaking in the bath, cigar clenched in teeth and with a fan whirring close by... anything to help with the stifling summer heat of the keys. (Huston liked to say he looked like a crustacean with its shell off.) We soon learn he is the head honcho. Within no time he is bossing everyone around, telling them what they can and cannot do. He comes on to Bacall who spits in his face and he slaps her. Bogart attempts to come to her defense but is wisely stopped.

Robinson is a bullying psychopath with a hair-trigger and no regard for human life. Bogart recognizes him as Johnny Rocco who was deported to Cuba some years earlier (and has obviously sneaked back into the states). Bogart tells the Temples who he is and tempers continue to flare. Rocco and his gang have been holding a local cop who was nosing around and when the cop grabs a gun Rocco plugs him multiple times.

Costarring for the 4th time... all noirs

They learn a hurricane is fast approaching. The hotel is prepared although it has no basement or shelter. With all assembled in the bar area, Trevor, a lush and a former singer and former girlfriend of Robinson's, asks for a drink and then begs when she is denied. Robinson tells her she will have to sing for a drink. She asks for the drink first to steady her nerves and he says no. Painfully she sings an old blues song out of key and when she's through, she asks for her drink. Again Robinson says no.

Bogart, who basically keeps himself in check, walks to the bar and pours her a drink. Robinson responds to Bogart by slapping him three times across the face. You may have caught on that there's a lot of slapping in this one.

It is revealed that Rocco has returned to the States to secure a large amount of counterfeit money and it is delivered to him by Miami thugs just as the hurricane is ending. It is then the gang decides to leave for Cuba. The yacht they arrived on has been lost in the hurricane. They decide to take the Temples' old boat and grandly announce that Bogart will be taken along to captain it. He resists but there is no point. The Temples are worried.

As Trevor readies to leave with them, Robinson snarls that she won't be coming along. As he hurls a few insults, she runs to him, throws her arms around him and begs him to take her. When he pushes her off, she lands by Bogart and hands him the pistol she's just taken off Robinson.

About halfway to Cuba, Bogart starts killing all those on board with Robinson left to try every wormy thing he knows to coax Bogart out into the open and death. But the crafty Bogart doesn't buy it and he ends up killing Robinson as well. Bogart radios to the Temples about what has happened, that he is alright and returning to them.

Lionel Barrymore

Bogart and Bacall (and Barrymore) play the straight roles. Some will interpret that as the least interesting ones. One of the undisputed kings of film noir, Bogart plays one of his most familiar roles... the disillusioned, cynical loner who reluctantly steps out of his comfort zone to handle a matter at hand. Here he largely keeps silent, not for his own protection, but to protect the Temples. When he ventures away from that silence it is to show his contempt for Rocco by mocking and manipulating him. While a less-than-showy role, fear not. This is Bogart and he always delivers the magic.

Not so Bacall. This was only her fifth film and at that point, despite costarring with Bogart in four of those five, she was still fairly uncomfortable on the big screen and it clearly shows. A guess is that the heavyweight cast intimidated her. I thought her four films with Bogart were wonderful but she didn't really come into her own as an actress until she stopped working with him. A case could certainly be made that she never really took off as an actress until she wound up on Broadway.

Her work here doesn't hold a candle to what she did in To Have and Have Not or The Big Sleep. She didn't seem to have the ability to do much of anything except smoulder. While she apparently worked without makeup, her face looked cold and expressionless. When she responds to a slight from Robinson by pounding on his chest, she performed it like a high school girl in her first acting assignment. In her first autobiography, Bacall said making this film was one of her happiest experiences.

Johnny Rocco was Robinson's last gangster role in an A picture and he didn't want to do it. Huston wanted Charles Boyer for the role but studio head Jack Warner ruled that out. Robinson had been around WB for years and Warner respected him and wanted him to have a good role in an A film. Rocco was patterned after gangsters Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.

Of the five films that Robinson and Bogart made together, this is the only one in which Bogart was billed over Robinson. Back in the day Bogart was starting out playing thugs and would, of course, go on to play a leading man, even a romantic one. In those early days Robinson was a huge star playing gangsters and he went on to play character roles. Both were certainly aware of the reversal of fortunes and Bogart was very kind to Robinson. Bogart insisted Robinson be treated as a major star on this film and Bogart wouldn't come onto the set until Robinson was ready. I thought Robinson was a wonderful addition to Key Largo.

Trevor's broken-down alcoholic was named Gaye Dawn and was inspired by Luciano's one-time galpal, Gay Orlova. The actress had been one of the premier film noir bad girls but her leading lady days were nearly behind her. It's been said she won her supporting Oscar for this film because of the song she sang. It was a riveting scene that is sometimes painful to watch.

Oscar-winning Claire Trevor

Trevor knew she had to sing the song at one point but she had no idea when. One day with the entire company present, her director told her she would sing. Right now. The nervousness, if not terror, the actress felt at that idea is exactly what Huston wanted to capture. She was not only not a trained singer but she had yet to even rehearse doing it. The song, Moanin' Low, is about a woman and the boyfriend who was mean to her. Perfect.

MGM loaned Barrymore to WB. He usually played grouchy characters but not this time. That's not to say he wasn't angry in a couple of scenes. For 10 years he was confined to a wheelchair because of a hip injury and severe arthritis. All his roles were written to accommodate his disability and here it works especially well, making him seem more helpless in the company of thugs who have taken over his business and home. A memorable scene comes when he gets up to take a swing at Lewis and sprawls across the floor.

I have always immensely enjoyed Gomez. He was reliable as a man of mystery and usually on the side of evil. Here, as the second in command, he feels free to stretch his wings when Robinson is otherwise engaged.

John Huston and the Bogarts

Here is another film that seemed like old home week for much of the cast. This was the final of four films to costar Bogart and Bacall. This was the sixth of eight films the actor and director made together. Their best collaboration and Bogie's best work, The African Queen, was coming up next. Trevor was also featured in one of those earlier Robinson-Bogart movies and she also worked with Bogie in a third film and the same with Robinson. As a director, Brooks would work with Bogart twice.

Huston knew his way around a film noir and I consider him one of Hollywood's best and most accomplished directors. Despite the big names he worked with, I expect he was the star of all his films. He and his glittering cast serve up a sustained menace from start to finish. Not without his flaws, one of them was his standard boredom with a film before it was finished. He may have liked his long association with Bogart because the actor would not let him get by with his unprofessional impatience.

Film noirs are well-known and highly-regarded for their sumptuous and atmospheric cinematography and Karl Freund received many kudos for his work here. It was complemented by the legendary Max Steiner's scrupulous musical score.

Jack Warner, always looking at that financial bottom line, refused Huston's request to film on location, although the opening bus scene is filmed there. Several WB soundstages became Key Largo. For the hurricane sequences the studio used the footage used for the Ronald Reagan-Viveca Lindfors-starrer Night Unto Night, filming at the same time.

Every year the city of Key Largo shows a Bogart retrospective.

In 1981 interest in the film was revived when Bertie Higgins put out a popular song of the same name. We remember it was Bogie and Bacall... he was her hero and she was his leading lady. They had it all.

Here's a trailer: