Given his pivotal role in cinema history as the very personification of Film Noir, Bogart's career as a leading actor was astonishingly brief. He first emerged as a significant Hollywood contender in 1941 with "High Sierra" and the "Maltese Falcon", went on to produce his iconic performance in "Casablanca" in 1943, won an Oscar for "The African Queen" in 1953 and completed "Beat the Devil" and "The Caine Mutiny" before ill-health forced his retirement in 1956. Yet, close to a dozen of his films are unchallenged landmarks in ...
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Given his pivotal role in cinema history as the very personification of Film Noir, Bogart's career as a leading actor was astonishingly brief. He first emerged as a significant Hollywood contender in 1941 with "High Sierra" and the "Maltese Falcon", went on to produce his iconic performance in "Casablanca" in 1943, won an Oscar for "The African Queen" in 1953 and completed "Beat the Devil" and "The Caine Mutiny" before ill-health forced his retirement in 1956. Yet, close to a dozen of his films are unchallenged landmarks in the history of American cinema. On-screen, playing private eyes like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, he was the quintessential tough guy; but off it he was courteous and a professional to his fingertips - dedicated to his art, never late on the set or unprepared with his lines. If his career was meteoric, his private life was the stuff of Hollywood legend. On first meeting Lauren Bacall he told her: 'I saw your test. We're going to have a lot of fun together.' And they proceeded to do just that, both on-screen and off. This new biography, written by two leading critics and movie historians, and illustrated with over 200 photographs in colour and black and white, some of them never previously published, is a worthy tribute to one of the cinema's enduring icons.
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