Humphrey Bogart in a cast list at the trailer's end. Robinson's role is evocative of Duke Mantee in "The Petrified Forest" (1936), a Bogart leading man breakthrough the studio had originally earmarked for Robinson. The enormous success of "Casablanca" redefined Bogart's career. For the first time, Bogart could be cast successfully as both a tough, strong man and vulnerable love interest. Despite his elevated standing, he did not yet have a contractual right of script refusal. When he got weak scripts he simply dug in his heels and locked horns again with the front office, as he did on the film "Conflict"
Humphrey Bogart considered among his best performances, and many Bogart biographers and actress/writer Louise Brooks feel the role is the closest to the real Bogart of any he played. She wrote that the film "gave him a role that he could play with complexity, because the film character's pride in his art, his selfishness, drunkenness, lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence were shared by the real Bogart". The character even mimics some of Bogart's personal habits, including twice ordering Bogart's favorite meal of ham and eggs. Something of a parody of "The Maltese Falcon", "Beat the Devil" was their