Tungee, Bogie and The Maltese Falcon

This Week
The Petrified Forest
Tungee's Gold
Writers Notebook: Obituary

Bogart, Broadway to Hollywood
During the 1920's Humphrey Bogart was a Broadway and radio actor. Toward the end of that decade he looked at his position and decided that perhaps Hollywood might be a better place to search for work. He made the move and
with a little luck along with a good Broadway resume he managed to get a small player contract with Fox. His debut film was in a short called Broadway Like That costarring Ruth Etting and Joan Blondell. Then over the next several years Bogart did more than a dozen films and with some good people. One was Up the River for John Ford, Women of all Nations for Raoul Walsh, and he did Big City Blues and Three on a Match for Mervyn LeRoy.
Humphrey Bogart was doing very well in Hollywood, but for some reason he got the urge to go back to New York and give Broadway another try.
His timing was perfect and during the late fall of 1934 he got a call to audition for a Robert Sherwood Play, The Petrified Forest.
Bogart arrived at the theater and was given the same sides all the gangster types were getting. He studied the lines and eventually he was called to go onstage and stand next to the work light. He listened for his cue and got into the scene. He hadn't said more than three or four lines when Leslie Howard – sitting in the third row of the theater nudged the writer and producer. 'That's our Duke Mantee.'
The reading was stopped and the powers at be huddled and questioned, 'Does he have the experience for this demanding role?'
Howard said, 'He's right. I have a good sense about him and I'll coach him.'
Humphrey Bogart was hired.
Robert Sherwood's play,The Petrified Forest, rehearsed and then played two weeks in Boston before opening in New York at the Broadhurst theater on January 7, 1935 with Leslie Howard, Humphrey Bogart and Peggy Conklin in leading roles.
The play was given an enthusiastic review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times saying it was a peach of a play and he gave high marks to Bogart for his portrayal of Duke Mantee.
Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the play and signed Leslie Howard to do the lead and optioned Humphrey Bogart to play his role of Duke Mantee.
However, when Bogart arrived in Hollywood he learned that Edward G. Robinson had been assigned to play his role. Bogart would be paid, but he wanted to play the part. During the run of the play he had become a good friend of Leslie Howard and Leslie had said that if he was asked to star in the film he would insist that Bogart play Duke Mantee. Bogie believed Howard to be a man of his word and sent him a telegram explaining the situation.
The following day Jack Warner got a telegram from Leslie Howard informing him that if he was to play the led in The Petrified Forest Humphrey Bogart would play Duke Mantee. Otherwise the deal was off.
Jack Warner didn't like Leslie Howard's discontent but he wanted to use the star and just to show them who was still boss he insisted on Bogart undergoing more than a dozen screen tests before signing him for the picture and giving him a contract.
Then as they say in Hollywood, the rest is history.

Following The Petrified Forest Bogart made 29 gangster films one after another for Warner Brothers. They turned out about one a week and their lineup of star players was James Cagney, Paul Muni, John Garfield, George Raft and Edward G. Robinson – Bogart got the leftovers.
He grumbled to management about his never ending one dimensional roles as well as his measly $650.00 weekly player contract and got nowhere.
Humphrey Bogart wasn't without support though – The Petrified Forest gave him a great start with the press and before long, even with lousy gangster roles, his screen personality began to take over and the public adored him.
Toward the end of that long stock gangster run Bogart finally caught a break. Two films turned down by George Raft were eventually assigned to him. High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The High Sierra film could have been nothing more than a typical pot boiler, but for some reason the audience connected and empathized with Bogart's characterization of Roy Earle, a psychopathic naïve killer.
During a trip to New York to publicize High Sierra Bogart was mobbed by his fans and actually had to move out of the Algonquin Hotel to a theater dressing room to avoid the melee.
Warner Brothers finally had to admit that they had another star on their hands.
The Maltese Falcon, which George Raft had turned down because of the new and untested director, John Houston, put the exclamation point to Humphrey Bogart's star status.
Dashiell Hammett established a whole new genre of detective stories. Sam Spade, the cool private detective, Bogart down played and used the subtleties of satirical humor with great effect. Hammett having been a detective himself wrote the story with convincing realism and the director along with an excellent cast of Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr and even the small part actors captured that sense on film.
The tight screenplay, direction and the characters he had to play off of Humphrey Bogart had finally found that three dimensional character he'd been looking for.
(To be Continued)
Tungee's Gold: The Legend of Ebo Landing
Tungee’s Gold, The Legend of Ebo Landing is an exciting story with a twist for an ending. As I read it I began to wonder if the story was true so I “Googled” the words “legend of Ebo landing” and several sites came up, including Glynn County, Georgia where Ebo Landing is located. The thought that the story may have really happened makes it all that much more compelling.
Tom Barnes does a great job of using description to set up his storylines. His smooth conversations lend to a more believable text. Just as his first book, Doc Holliday’s Road To Tombstone was a novel based on real facts, Tungee’s Gold is a historically accurate novel.
Barnes’ stories are timeless but teach us about certain periods in history. I really enjoyed this book. It gives you the other side of slavery. The dialog with the slave king gives the reader an understanding of what it was like to be one of the African slaves being brought to America on a slave boat.
I highly recommend the book.
Sally Tippett Rains, Author of The Making Of A Masterpiece, Margaret Mitchell and Gone With The Wind (www.GWTWbook.com)
Writers Notebook:
Most weeks this section is devoted to famous writers tips on writing, an occasional review or a marketing tip.
For this post I'm going to talk about research, research having to do with the Humphrey Bogart story and where it led me. The Petrified Forest play was a key part of my story and while I knew some of it I was missing a few pieces. I had to look up the dates, the theater and the cast. Well, I put most of it together. The exception was a leading lady. I Googled and searched using all kinds of word combinations and inquiries with no luck. I figured that someone of stature must have played the Gabby, Betty Davis, role – but who?
I was getting blurry eyed when I finally spotted an actress obituary and in the text of that blurb I saw a title The Petrified Forest. I clicked and opened it, and this is what I found.
Peggy Conklin, a stage actress who found early success in ''The Petrified Forest'' in 1936 and followed it with a wide variety of dramatic and comic roles on Broadway, died last Tuesday at her home in Naples, Fla. She was 96.
Ms. Conklin had leading or featured roles from the 1930's through the 1950's. She made a brief detour to Hollywood in 1934, making five films in a few years, then returning to New York.
She was Gabby Maple, the filling-station waitress, in Robert Sherwood's ''Petrified Forest.'' The drama featured Humphrey Bogart as the desperate killer Duke Mantee, a role that would help make him a star. Ms. Conklin also appeared with Helen Hayes in ''The Wisteria Tree,'' Joshua Logan's 1950 adaptation of Chekhov's ''Cherry Orchard.'' She was Janice Rule's anxious mother in William Inge's ''Picnic'' (1953), which also starred Ralph Meeker, Eileen Heckart, Kim Stanley and Paul Newman.
In 1941 she originated a role on Broadway that was to remain popular for decades on radio and television: Pam North, the amiably ditzy wife of Jerry North in Owen Davis's 1941 adaptation of Richard Lockridge's detective story ''Mr. and Mrs. North.'' Playing opposite Albert Hackett, the urbane New York couple stumble into a murder mystery: a corpse in their closet.
''Peggy Conklin's charm keeps Mrs. North's informality from being the annoyance it probably is,'' the theater critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times.
The irony doesn't stop: Two posts back I wrote that The Lux Radio Theater opened in Hollywood with 'The Thin Man' the movie version of 'Mr. and Mrs. North.'


Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels Tungee's Gold, The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
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