Humphrey Bogart is one of the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen, hard to believe that he just received one Oscar for his efforts.
In a career that spanned over thirty years he made a massive seventy five feature films moving from the heist movie genre to war and romance.
So FemaleFirst takes a look at the essential Bogart movies that you should have in your collection.
- High Sierra (1941)
After making an impact in The Petrified Forest in 1936 it was to be High Sierra five years later that was to be his big breakthrough.
Bogart plays a violent criminal just released from prison who knows he's got just one more job in him. An aging gang boss wants Bogart to lead a jewel heist at a resort.
When he sees the inexperienced men he'll be leading (and fends off the attentions of Lupino, the girlfriend of one of the thugs), Bogart suspects there will be trouble and there is when a cop is killed during the robbery.
A manhunt drives Bogart to the highest peak in the High Sierras where he awaits death at the hands of the police
Starring alongside Ida Lupino the film was an adaptation of the novel by W.R. Burnett
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
He followed this up with The Maltese Falcon and cemented himself as one of the great new leading men in Hollywood at the time.
Hard-drinking private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) sleuths the backyard of San Francisco in search of an elusive black bird statuette while evading the setups of three disparate miscreants: the duplicitous Brigid, the perfumed Mr. Cairo, and the scheming Fat Man.
The film was well received by the critics and went on to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. And today over sixty five years after it's release it is still widely considered one of the greatest movies of all time.
- Casablanca (1943)
But it's the role of Rick Blaine that Bogart still remains famous for in romance and war movie Casablanca.
World War II Morocco springs to life in Michael Curtiz's classic love story. Humphrey Bogart plays Richard "Rick" Blaine, a cynical but good-hearted American whose café is the gathering place for everyone from the French Police to the black market to the Nazis.
When his long-lost love, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), surfaces in Casablanca with her Resistance leader husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), Rick is pulled into both a love triangle and a web of political intrigue.
Casablanca proved to be Bogart's catapult to stardom as he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar as well as becoming the highest paid actor in the world.
The film has become one of the greatest movies of all time making Bogart a cinematic icon.
- To Have and Have Not (1944)
The film followed jaded American fisherman who helped the French Resistance smuggle on to the island of Martinique, which was under the Vichy regime.
When an American pickpocket, Marie ‘Slim’ Browning, arrives on the island a romance develops between the pair.
At jut nineteen years old To Have and Have Not made Lauren Bacall a star and this legendary partnership, which director Howard Hawks claims he was behind, began.
They went on to make three other movies with Bacall, who went on to become his wife, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage and Key Largo.
- The African Queen (1951)
Bogart finally won an Oscar in 1951 for his role as Charlie Allnut in The African Queen, a performance many consider his best.
The boozing, smoking, cussing captain of a tramp steamer, Charlie Allnut, saves prim and proper Rose Sayer after her brother is killed by German soldiers at the beginning of World War I in Africa.
Many quarrels later, the two set sail on the Ulonga-Bora in order to sabotage a German ship.
The film was also nominated for Best Actress for Katharine Hepburn, Best Director, for John Huston and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Other movies of note include Sabrina, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Petrified Forest and The Caine Mutiny.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Casablanca Humphrey Bogart