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 Bogart's protagonist, with the camera seeing what his character sees. After his plastic surgery, the rest of the film is shot in the usual manner. Bogart is intent on finding the real murderer in a crime for which he was blamed and sentenced to prison. The couple next starred in the future classic, "Key Largo" (1948). Directed by John Huston, the film highlighted Edward G. Robinson as gangster "Johnny Rocco," a seething older synthesis of many of his vicious early bad guy roles. The characters are trapped during a spectacular hurricane in a hotel owned by Bacall's screen father-in-law, played