Humphrey Bogart Warner Bros. wanted to cast the then much better known Edward G. Robinson for the film adaptation; however Leslie Howard, who played the protagonist in both the play and the film, insisted on Bogart being given the part. His breakthrough came in 1941 when his performances in "High Sierra" and "The Maltese Falcon" made him a star. His first true romantic lead role came in 1942's "Casablanca", breaking his typecasting as a gangster. He and Lauren Bacall starred together in "To Have and Have Not" (1944). After they married, she also played his love interest in "The Big Sleep" (1946),
Humphrey Bogart weekends a year on the water, with a particular fondness for sailing around Catalina Island. He once said, "An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to be." He also joined the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve offering the use of his own yacht, Santana, for Coast Guard use. It was rumored Bogart attempted to enlist but was turned down because of his age. The suspenseful "Dark Passage" (1947) was Bogart and Bacall's next pairing. Its first third is shot subjectively, that is from the point-of-view of