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 to harass and threaten local Mormon settlers and even threatened to give Far West—county seat of Caldwell County, and the main Mormon settlement in Missouri—"thunder and lightning" if the Mormons did not leave the area forthwith. However, Mormon assertions that Bogart plundered Mormon farms and houses have not been substantiated by contemporary witnesses, according to Stephen LeSueur, a modern historian of this conflict. Nevertheless, lurid reports of alleged depredations by Bogart, who was already known for his vehemently anti-Mormon stance, were readily believed by Mormon leaders and historians. On the afternoon of 24 October 1838, some of Bogart's men, operating