The Rise and Fall of Humphrey Bogart

At age 37, Humphrey Bogart no longer looked like the blue blood pretty boy he had been in his early days on the stage. He also lacked any identifiable ethnicity, and this gave his casting as The Petrified Forest's gangster, a ripped from the headline spin. Warner Bros regularly cast Bogart as the stock heavy, to less than stellar results. Even in good movies, he wasn't always good. As World War II went on, this image of adult, unscentimental masculinity became highly desirable,. And Bogart became a new kind of American hero.