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 portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", Bogart played a paranoid, self-pitying character whose small-mindedness eventually destroyed him. Three months before the film's release, Bogart appeared as Queeg on the cover of "TIME" magazine, while on Broadway Henry Fonda was starring in the stage version (in a different role), both of which generated strong publicity for the film. In "Sabrina", Billy Wilder wished to cast Cary Grant as the older male lead. However, he chose Bogart to play the elder, conservative brother who competes with his younger playboy sibling (William Holden) for the affection of