Alec Baldwin also loves old movies. And he writes about them in Nevertheless with the reverence that we all felt growing up, watching them on TV with our parents, then later discovering our independence while grabbing a friend and running to a revival at the Thalia, Regency, or Metro cinemas.
Or the 8th Street Playhouse. Etched in my teenage mind is the image of looking over at my friend Andrea, as she wore her 3D glasses while munching popcorn and watching the glorious Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder.
Which is why something primal happens in summer, when the Film Forum posts their Bogart Festival. Everything stops and suddenly I’m shoving daily life aside to board the Two train and head to the Village. Different train, same destination; I’ve been doing this my whole life. And the return of the ritual…the anticipation of the darkened theatre as I salt my bag of popcorn…”I cannot tell you how happy I am to be back,” I told my ticket taker.
The Petrified Forest is one of my all-time favorites. Perhaps it is the play that started it all. It is a classic character study, what we once called an “actor’s film,” because of its focus on storytelling and dramatis personae. You take several individuals, you put them in a desert road house, and develop their relationships to each other. Then you add a hostage scenario and more characters, and the relationships multiply and exponentially become more complex.
Watching the brilliant Leslie Howard and Bette Davis – a scene study dream. It reminded me of all the great plays I read in college and losing myself in the examination of character motivation, costume, and detail.
An added bonus: who knew that Bogart named his second child after Leslie Howard, who campaigned for him to play the role on film, after they played the parts together on Broadway? Warner Brothers wanted Edward G. Robinson. Howard telegrammed Jack. L Warner: “Insist Bogart play Mantee; no Bogart, no deal.”
And a star was born.