Humphrey Bogart on TCM Wednesday, August 17, 2011

August 15, 2011 • 11:01 pm

Humphrey Bogart on TCM Wednesday, August 17, 2011

All Bogie, all day Wednesday, August 17, from 3am PST until after midnight. And as with the day of Jimmy Stewart on the weekend, the day features some of the best the actor did—including the two movies that made him a star, High Sierra, at 11:45am, and The Maltese Falcon, at 5pm. Here are the highlights:

8 am PST: To Have And Have Not (1944) – Lauren Bacall‘s film debut in a movie directed by Howard Hawks with a script by William Faulkner from a novel by Hemingway. “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together – and blow.” It doesn’t get much better than that. Or does it…

9:45 am: The Big Sleep (1946) – Bogie and Bacall again, directed by Howard Hawks, with Faulkner on script duty again (with Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett) working from the great hardboiled detective novel by Raymond Chandler, and a score by Max Steiner. By the end of it, apparently no one involved in the movie could figure out exactly what happened in the story, but it doesn’t matter a bit. The erotic energy of Bogie and Bacall’s exchanges has to be seen to be believed. “I like that. I’d like more.” It really doesn’t get much better than this.

11:45 am: High Sierra (1941) and 1:30 pm: They Drive by Night (1940) – both directed by Raoul Walsh, two of the many taut, tightly directed and gritty films Walsh did for Warner Brothers in the 1930s and 1940s, including the last film in the original gangster cycle, White Heat (1949), starring James Cagney.

5 pm: The Maltese Falcon (1941) – John Huston’s directorial debut and the first of six movies he would do with his friend, Humphrey Bogart. Considered by many the first real film noir. Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

Some of Bogie’s best films are missing—Casablanca (1942), obviously, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and The African Queen (1951)—but some of the minor films during the day are worth checking out, most particularly Bullets Or Ballots (1936), a fine little gangster pic starring Edward G. Robinson and Joan Blondell.

In AFI’s 100 Years celebration, Humphrey Bogart was named the top male screen legend in American film history. Any of these highlighted films will show you why.

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