Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor as the treacherous female foil. Bogart's sharp timing and facial expressions were praised by the cast and director as vital to the quick action and rapid-fire dialogue. The film was a huge hit in theaters and a major triumph for Huston. Bogart was unusually happy with it, remarking, "it is practically a masterpiece. I don't have many things I'm proud of ... but that's one". Bogart gained his first real romantic lead in 1942's "Casablanca", playing Rick Blaine, a hard-pressed expatriate nightclub owner hiding from a shady past while negotiating a fine line among Nazis, the French
Humphrey Bogart screwed it up." Niven claims the stories that Bogart got the scar during wartime were made up by the studios to inject glamour. His post-service physical makes no mention of the lip scar, even though it mentions many smaller scars. When actress Louise Brooks met Bogart in 1924, he had some scar tissue on his upper lip, which Brooks said that Bogart may have had partially repaired before entering films in 1930. She also said his "lip wound gave him no speech impediment, either before or after it was mended." Bogart returned home to find his father suffering from poor