Key Largo (1948)

Key Largo movie storyline. An intelligent, exciting, theatrical, but moody, downbeat crime drama/thriller (and melodramatic film noir) about a bullying, fugitive gangster Johnny Rocco (Robinson), who is on-the-run with fellow mobsters and his alcoholic lush moll and ex-nightclub singer, Gaye Dawn (Trevor).

In a Florida Keys hotel in the off-season during a violent, tropical hurricane, the snarling Rocco waits for counterfeit money, prepares to flee to Cuba, and holds the various residents hostage: Frank McCloud (Bogart), a disillusioned, returning war-scarred veteran who is visiting the newly-widowed Nora Temple (Bacall) and her wheelchair-bound father-in-law and hotel manager James Temple (Barrymore) – the father of his friend that died under his WWII command in Italy. Adapted from Maxwell Anderson’s stage play by director Huston and Richard Brooks, the plot resembles Bogart’s earlier film The Petrified Forest (1936).

Bogart and Bacall would never star together again on the big screen, after having previously worked together in the classic films To Have and Have Not (1942) (which Key Largo resembled in its dark tone), The Big Sleep (1946), Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946), and Dark Passage (1947). Huston also directed Bogart in, among other films, The Maltese Falcon (1942), The African Queen (1951) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Directed by: John Huston
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor, Thomas Gomez, Harry Lewis, John Rodney, Monte Blue, Dan Seymour, William Haade, Beulah Archuletta
Screenplay by: Richard Brooks, John Huston
Cinematography by: Karl Freund
Film Editing by: Rudi Fehr
Set Decoration by: Fred M. MacLean
Art Direction by: Leo K. Kuter
Makeup Department: Perc Westmore, Betty Delmont, Frank McCoy
Music by: Max Steiner
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: July 16, 1948