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 and I was making this stinking movie." During this time his wife Mary had a stage hit in "A Touch of Brimstone" (1935), and refused to give up her Broadway career to go to Hollywood. After the play closed she relented, but insisted on continuing her career and the couple divorced in 1937. On August 21, 1938, Bogart entered into a turbulent third marriage, with actress Mayo Methot, a lively, friendly woman when sober, but paranoid and physical when drunk. She became convinced Bogart was cheating on her (which he eventually would, with Lauren Bacall, when filming "To Have and