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Humphrey Bogart ( December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an iconic American actor who retains legendary status decades after his death. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Bogart the Greatest Male Star of All Time.
Bogart typically played smart, playful, courageous, tough, occasionally reckless characters, living in a corrupt world, yet anchored by a hidden moral code. He was also able to play characters with flaws and weaknesses that led to their destruction. His most notable movies include Angels With Dirty Faces ( 1938), The Maltese Falcon ( 1941), CasablancaCasablanca is a 1942 movie set during World War II in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa. It focuses on Rick's conflict between, in the wo ( 1942See also 1941 in film 1942 1943 in film 1940s in film years in film film Events Carole Lombard is killed in a plane crash when returning from a War Bond tour. November 11 The Road to Morocco starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour, premieres.),
To Have and Have NotTo Have and Have Not is a 1937 novel by Ernest Hemingway about Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain who runs contraband and guns between Cuba and Florida. The 1944 film version, directed by Howard Hawks, moved the story's setting from Key West to Martiniq ( 1944See also 1943 in film 1944 1945 in film 1940s in film years in film film Events Top grossing films :North America # Going My Way starring Bing Crosby # Meet Me in St. Louis starring Judy Garland # Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo # Hollywood Canteen # A Guy Name), The Big Sleep ( 1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ( 1948), Key Largo ( 1948), In a Lonely Place ( 1950), The African Queen ( 1951) (for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role), and The Caine Mutiny ( 1954). In all, he appeared in 75 feature motion pictures.
Outside of America Bogart is seen as a cult figure. French actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo were deeply influenced by his work and image. In À bout de souffle (known in English as Breathless, perhaps the best-known work of French director Jean-Luc Godard, the protagonist Michel worships the persona of Humphrey Bogart and mimes some of Bogart’s best-known gestures in a way that is both absurd and touching. François Truffaut, another French director of the “ New Wave,” directed Shoot the Piano Player , another homage to Bogart.
India’s great national movie star Ashok Kumar listed Bogart as a major influence on his “natural” acting style. When Bogart reached Leopoldville to film the movie The African Queen, his plane was met by the U.S. consul and the Congolese press.
Bogart is no less an icon in the country of his birth. One of Woody Allen’s most popular comic movies, Play It Again, Sam, is about a young man in love with Bogart’s aura and intimidated by it. The title refers to a frequent misquote from Casablanca; Richard Blaine (Bogart’s character) actually says “Play it, Sam.” In 1997, the United States Postal Service featured Bogart in its “Legends of Hollywood” series. And Entertainment Weekly magazine has named Bogart the number one movie legend of all time.
Bogart’s exalted standing in the Hollywood pantheon would have astonished most of the agents, casting directors and studio bosses who knew him in the 1920s and 1930s as a good but hardly great Broadway stage actor and B-movie player in Hollywood.
