Key Largo (film)

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Key Largo

Directed by	John Huston
Produced by	Jerry Wald
Written by	Maxwell Anderson (play), Richard Brooks, John Huston
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Edward G. Robinson Lauren Bacall Lionel Barrymore Claire Trevor Marc Lawrence Chief Tahachee
Music by	Max Steiner
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	July 16, 1948 (NY City)
Running time	101 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Key Largo is a 1948 film starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Claire Trevor, and Lionel Barrymore. It was supposedly adapted from Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play, but in reality has very little to do with it, although Anderson's name still appears in the credits. The film was directed by John Huston.

Trevor won the 1949 Best Actress in a Supporting Role Academy award for her performance.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Frank McCloud (Bogart) visits a rundown Florida Keys hotel run by crippled James Temple (Barrymore) and his daughter-in-law Nora (Bacall), widow of Frank's friend from the war. The hotel has been taken over by Johnny Rocco (Robinson) and his gang. Frank is indifferent at first, but Rocco's treatment of his alcoholic mistress Gaye (Trevor) and his hand in the murder of two Indians convinces Frank that Rocco must be stopped. His chance comes when Rocco forces Frank to transport the gang by boat to Cuba.

[edit] Trivia

This was the fourth and final film pairing of married actors Bogart and Bacall.

Robinson had always had top billing over Bogart in their previous films together, and for this one, Robinson's name appears to the right of Bogart's, but placed a little higher on the posters and at the beginning of the film to indicate Robinson's near-equal status.

Ziggy, one of the gangsters, is played by Marc Lawrence, who made a career playing gangsters.

The movie is dramatically changed from the play, in which the gangsters are Mexican banditos, the war in question is the Spanish American war, and Frank is a disgraced deserter who dies at the end.

Exterior shots of the hurricane were actually taken from stock footage used in Night Unto Night, a Ronald Reagan melodrama made the same year by Warner Bros.

Much of the film was shot on location at the Caribbean Club on Key Largo, in southern Florida. The club had been developed and built in 1938 as the final project of American auto parts and real estate developer Carl Graham Fisher. [1]

At one point, McCloud describes having served in the World War II battle at San Pietro, Italy; director John Huston had been involved in that battle as the creator of the documentary film San Pietro (1945) while he was in the armed services' motion picture division.

Temple describes the 1935 hurricane that nearly destroyed part of the Florida Keys. This was one of worst hurricanes in U.S. history and many of the victims were workers who were building the Florida Keys portion of U.S. Route 1 across the keys. The highway is seen in the film's opening.

It's rumored that Claire Trevor's character is based on gangster Lucky Luciano's mistress Gay Orlova.

The boat which Bogart's character is supposed to use to transport the gangsters to Cuba is called the Santana, which is the name of Bogart's own boat.