The Petrified Forest
The Petrified Forest poster
Directed by	Archie Mayo
Produced by	Hal B. Wallis (executive producer uncredited)
Written by	Robert E. Sherwood (play) Charles Kenyon Delmer Daves
Starring	Leslie Howard Bette Davis Humphrey Bogart Genevieve Tobin Dick Foran
Cinematography	Sol Polito
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	February 6, 1936 (U.S. release)
Running time	83 min
Language	English

The Petrified Forest is a 1936 American film. A predecessor to film noir, it is adapted from Robert E. Sherwood's 1935 play of the same name.^[1] The screenplay is by Delmer Daves and Charles Kenyon; it stars Leslie Howard as Alan Squier, Bette Davis as Gabrielle "Gabby" Maple, and Humphrey Bogart in his career breakthrough role as Duke Mantee. The Petrified Forest was performed on live television in 1955 with Bogart, Henry Fonda, and Lauren Bacall, and CBS's radio Lux Radio Theater also featured it in 1937 (Herbert Marshall, Margaret Sullivan, Donald Meek)^[2] and 1945 (Ronald Coleman, Susan Hayward, Lawrence Tierney).^[3][4]

[edit] Plot

Title from the film's trailer

This 1930s drama is set in the Petrified Forest area in northern Arizona. Hitchhiker Alan Squier, who sees himself as a failed writer, wanders into a roadside diner. The diner is run by Jason Maple (Porter Hall), his daughter Gabrielle (Gabby), and her grandfather (Charley Grapewin), "an old man who was missed by Billy the Kid."

Gabby's mother was a French war bride who fell in love with Gabby's father when he was a young, handsome, uniformed American serviceman. They married and moved to the remote Petrified Forest. Gabby's mother found her husband a "dull defeated man" and moved back to France when Gabby was a young child. She now sends Gabby poetry. Gabby dreams about visiting Bourges to study art. Gabby shows Alan her paintings and reads him a favorite Villon poem. Alan finds Gabby's eagerness and optimism touching and refreshing.

Duke Mantee, "world famous killer" and his gang appear, and hold everyone hostage. When Gabby is out of the room, Alan signs over an insurance policy on his life to Gabby. He asks Duke to shoot him. "It couldn't make any difference to you, Duke. After all, if they catch you, they can hang you only once..." And to another character, he explains: "Living, I'm worth nothing to her. Dead — I can buy her the tallest cathedrals, and golden vineyards, and dancing in the streets."

[edit] Cast

• Leslie Howard ... Alan Squier
• Bette Davis ... Gabrielle Maple
• Humphrey Bogart ... Duke Mantee
• Genevieve Tobin ... Mrs. Chisholm
• Dick Foran ... Boze Hertzlinger
• Joe Sawyer ... Jackie (billed as Joseph Sawyer)
• Porter Hall ... Jason Maple
• Charley Grapewin ... Gramp Maple
• Paul Harvey ... Mr. Chisholm
• Eddie Acuff ... Lineman
• Adrian Morris ... Ruby
• Nina Campana ... Paula
• Slim Thompson ... Slim
• John Alexander ... Joseph

While Bogart was successful in the Broadway role of Mantee, he was not originally cast in the film version. Warner Brothers planned to use Edward G. Robinson, who was under contract to Warners. Legend has it that Leslie Howard lobbied Jack Warner to hire Bogart after the struggling actor called him from New York to remind him that he'd said that he wouldn't appear in a movie version without Bogart as Mantee. According to Robert Sklar, studio politics and Robinson's reluctance to take another gangster role resulted in Bogart being cast (Sklar, 1992, pp. 60–62). The film made Bogart a Hollywood star. Bogart remained grateful to Howard throughout his life — and named his daughter after him.

A dozen years afterward, Robinson played a remarkably similar role in Key Largo (1948) — a noted gangster momentarily holding a disparate group of people in a Floridian hotel hostage, and the hero of the movie was played by Bogart. Bogart also played a strikingly similar part himself even later in The Desperate Hours (1955), in which his gangster holds a suburban family hostage; at the time, Bogart referred to this character as "Duke Mantee grown up." In the same year, he portrayed Mantee again on television (see below).

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] 1940 radio version

The Petrified Forest was adapted as a radio play on the January 7, 1940 broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater, starring Joan Bennett, Tyrone Power and Humphrey Bogart.

[edit] 1955 live televised version

Bacall, Bogart and Fonda in the 1955 live televised version

The Petrified Forest was remade in 1955 on live television as an installment of Producer's Showcase, a weekly dramatic anthology, featuring a now top-billed Bogart as Mantee, Henry Fonda in Leslie Howard's role, and Bogart's wife Lauren Bacall playing Bette Davis' part. Jack Klugman, Richard Jaeckel, and Jack Warden had supporting roles. Unlike many live television dramas of the 1950s, this one still exists and remains archived for viewing at The Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles.

The cast list was as follows:

Humphrey Bogart ... Duke Mantee
Henry Fonda ... Alan Squier
Lauren Bacall ... Gaby
Dick Elliott ... Commander
Richard Gaines ... Mr. Chisholm
Paul Hartman ... Jason Maple
Richard Jaeckel ... Ruby
Jack Klugman ... Jackie
Steven Ritch ... Lineman (billed as Steve Ritch)
Natalie Schafer ... Mrs. Chisholm
Joseph Sweeney ... Gramps
Jack Warden ... Boze

[edit] Background

• The movie set includes saguaro cacti, which do not grow in the Petrified Forest Desert.
• The interplay between Leslie Howard and Bette Davis is parodied in the 1937 Merrie Melodies cartoon She Was an Acrobat's Daughter.
• The hitchhiking scene with Leslie Howard was parodied by comedian Chris Elliott in The Traveling Poet, a short film produced by Brad Hall for television's Late Night with David Letterman.
• Bogart's portrayal of Mantee mimicked the notorious and recently deceased bank robber John Dillinger, whom Bogart resembled.
• The novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates opens with an amateur-theater production of The Petrified Forest set in spring 1955, the same year as the live TV performance (which is not mentioned in the novel).

[edit] References

• Sklar, Robert (1992). City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04795-2. 

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Petrified Forest (film)

• The Petrified Forest at the Internet Movie Database
• The Petrified Forest at Allmovie
• The Petrified Forest at the TCM Movie Database
• The Petrified Forest at Rotten Tomatoes