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
Humphrey Bogart may have received his trademark scar and developed his characteristic lisp during his naval stint, though there are several conflicting stories. By one tale, his lip was cut by shrapnel when his ship, the , was shelled (The ship was never shelled), and it is believed Bogart did not make it to sea until after the Armistice had been signed. Another version, which Bogart's longtime friend, author Nathaniel Benchley, believed, is that Bogart was injured while taking a prisoner to Portsmouth Naval Prison in Kittery, Maine. While changing trains in Boston, the handcuffed prisoner allegedly asked Bogart for a cigarette,