Humphrey Bogart stage name, but Bogart declined it. The film version of "The Petrified Forest" was released in 1936, and Bogart's performance was called "brilliant", "compelling", and "superb". The film was highly successful, earning $500,000 at the box office, and making Bogart a star. He never forgot Howard's favor, and in 1952 named his only daughter "Leslie Howard Bogart" after Howard, who had died in World War II when a civilian plane he was flying in was shot down under mysterious circumstances. Robert E. Sherwood remained a close friend of Bogart's. Despite his success in "The Petrified Forest," an "A movie", Bogart
Humphrey Bogart among others. In "Black Legion" (1937), for a change, he played a good man caught up and destroyed by a racist organization, a movie Graham Greene described as "intelligent and exciting, if rather earnest". In 1938, Warner Bros. put Bogart in a "hillbilly musical" called "Swing Your Lady" as a wrestling promoter; he later apparently considered this his worst film performance. In 1939, Bogart played a mad scientist in "The Return of Doctor X", his only horror film. He cracked, "If it'd been Jack Warner's blood ... I wouldn't have minded so much. The trouble was they were drinking mine