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 among others. In "Black Legion" (1937), for a change, he played a good man caught up and destroyed by a racist organization, a movie Graham Greene described as "intelligent and exciting, if rather earnest". In 1938, Warner Bros. put Bogart in a "hillbilly musical" called "Swing Your Lady" as a wrestling promoter; he later apparently considered this his worst film performance. In 1939, Bogart played a mad scientist in "The Return of Doctor X", his only horror film. He cracked, "If it'd been Jack Warner's blood ... I wouldn't have minded so much. The trouble was they were drinking mine