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 (1945). Though he submitted to Jack Warner on it, he successfully turned down "God is My Co-Pilot" (1945). Riding high in 1947 with a new contract which provided limited script refusal and the right to form his own production company, Bogart reunited with John Huston for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", a stark tale of greed played out by three gold prospectors in Mexico. Without either a love interest or happy ending it was deemed a risky project. Bogart later said of co-star (and John Huston's father) Walter Huston, "He's probably the only performer in Hollywood to whom I'd