The Petrified Forest

This article is about the film. For the National Park in Arizona where the film is set, see Petrified Forest National Park.

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, starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart. A precursor of film noir, it was adapted from Robert E. Sherwood's 1936 stage play of the same name. The screenplay was written by Delmer Daves and Charles Kenyon, and adaptations were later performed on radio and television as well.

Plot

Title from the film's trailer

Alan Squier (Howard), once a British intellectual and writer, now a penniless alcoholic drifter, wanders into a roadside diner in the Petrified Forest area in northern Arizona. The diner is run by Jason Maple (Porter Hall), his daughter Gabrielle (Davis), and her grandfather (Charley Grapewin), "an old man who was missed by Billy the Kid."

Alan recounts his European adventures and Gabrielle is instantly smitten with him. Gabrielle's mother, a French war bride who fell in love with Jason when he was a young, handsome American serviceman, left her "dull defeated man" and moved back to France when Gabrielle was a baby. She now sends poetry to Gabrielle, who dreams of moving to Bourges to become an artist.

She shows Alan her paintings - the first time she has shown them to anyone - and reads him a favorite Villon poem. Boze Hertzlinger (Dick Foran), Gabrielle's blue-collar boyfriend, grows jealous of Alan, who assures him that he intends to leave forthwith. Alan mooches a ride from wealthy tourists Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm (Paul Harvey and Genevieve Tobin), but before they can depart, Duke Mantee (Bogart), a famous gangster fleeing a massive police pursuit, invades the diner with his gang and takes the entire group hostage.

Everyone is of course terrified, except Alan, who has little to live for. Indifferent to the danger, he engages Duke in lively conversation and toasts him as "the last great apostle of rugged individualism." As the police converge on the restaurant, Duke prepares to flee, announcing that he will bring Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm with him as human shields. Alan has an inspiration: With Gabrielle in another room, he produces a life insurance policy he is carrying with him, and amends it, making Gabrielle the beneficiary. Then he asks Duke to kill him, so that Gabrielle can use the insurance money to make her dream of studying art in France a reality. "It couldn't make any difference to you, Duke. After all, if they catch you, they can hang you only once...Living, I'm worth nothing to her; dead, I can buy her the tallest cathedrals, and golden vineyards, and dancing in the streets."

The police close in; Duke obliges Alan by shooting him. "So long, pal," growls Duke, "I'll be seein' ya soon." He exits, only to be gunned down himself by the waiting posse. Alan dies in Gabrielle's arms, secure in the knowledge that she, alone among the film's principals, will escape her dead-end existence to pursue her dreams.

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

History

The 1936 Broadway production of The Petrified Forest had starred Howard, who was an established star, and Bogart, a newcomer in his first major role. Sherwood based the Duke Mantee character on John Dillinger, the notorious criminal who in 1933 was named the FBI's first "Public Enemy #1" by J. Edgar Hoover, and in 1934 was ambushed and gunned down in spectacular fashion by FBI agents. Bogart, who won the stage role in part because of his physical resemblance to Dillinger, studied film footage of the gangster and mimicked some of his mannerisms in his portrayal.

For the film, Warner Brothers intended to cast the more bankable Edward G. Robinson as Duke; but Howard informed the studio that he would not appear in the movie version without Bogart as his co-star. (Robinson objected as well; after playing a series of gangsters in such films as Little Caesar and Bullets or Ballots, he reportedly feared being typecast.) The film made Bogart a star, and he remained grateful to Howard throughout his life. In 1952 Bogart and Lauren Bacall named their daughter Leslie Howard Bogart in honor of Howard, who had been killed in a plane crash under controversial circumstances during World War II.

In 1948 Robinson portrayed a character very similar to Duke—a famous gangster holding a disparate group of people hostage in a Florida hotel—in Key Largo. That film's hero was played by Bogart. In his penultimate film, The Desperate Hours (1955), Bogart played another gangster holding a suburban family hostage. He described that character as "Duke Mantee grown up."

Radio and television adaptations

The Petrified Forest was performed on CBS's Lux Radio Theater in 1937, with Herbert Marshall, Margaret Sullavan, and Donald Meek in the principal roles; and again on the same program in 1945, with Ronald Coleman, Susan Hayward, and Lawrence Tierney. Another radio adaptation starring Joan Bennett, Tyrone Power, and Bogart, aired on The Screen Guild Theater on January 7, 1940.

Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Henry Fonda in the 1955 live televised version

In 1955, a live television version was performed as an installment of Producer's Showcase, a weekly dramatic anthology, featuring Bogart (now top-billed) as Mantee, Henry Fonda as Alan, and Bogart's wife Lauren Bacall as Gabrielle. Jack Klugman, Richard Jaeckel, and Jack Warden played supporting roles. In the late 1990s, Bacall donated the only known kinescope of the 1955 performance to The Museum Of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media), where it remains archived for viewing in New York City and Los Angeles.

Legacy

• After the film's release, Friz Freleng made the short-length Merrie Melodies cartoon parody, She Was an Acrobat's Daughter (1937) that portrays a cinema audience watching The Petrified Florist, starring Bette Savis and Lester Coward.
• 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.
• The novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates opens with a 1955 amateur-theater production of The Petrified Forest, which is the same year as the live TV performance.
• The Warner Brothers sound stage on which the movie was filmed is currently the home of Conan O'Brien's TBS television program.

See also

Heat Lightning, (1934) earlier play-based film with a similar plot

External links

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