Humphrey Bogart of the play, "a peach ... a roaring Western melodrama ... Humphrey Bogart does the best work of his career as an actor." Bogart said that the play "marked my deliverance from the ranks of the sleek, sybaritic, stiff-shirted, swallow-tailed 'smoothies' to which I seemed condemned to life." This, however, did not yet mean felt secure. Warner Bros. bought the screen rights to "The Petrified Forest". The play seemed perfect for the studio, which was famous for its socially realistic, urban, low-budget action pictures, especially for a public entranced by real-life criminals like John Dillinger (whom Bogart resembled) and Dutch
Samuel Bogart the deaths of three Mormons (including Apostle Patten) and seven wounded, to one dead and six wounded for Bogart's company. The Mormons rescued their hostages and drove Bogart from the field; however, when exaggerated accounts of the battle reached Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs (a notorious anti-Mormon), the governor responded by issuing his infamous "Extermination Order," which directed that the Mormons be "exterminated, or driven from the state"; the State Guard was directed to carry out this order. Following the Crooked River battle, Bogart (who had survived unscathed) took part in the Missouri militia siege of Far West, which resulted in