Posted on 09/19/2017 8:50:51 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Last weekend Hurricane Irma clobbered Florida, and we offered by way of aural consolation a special edition of our Song of the Week dedicated to "Songs in the Keys of Florida". It included this 1980s hit by Bertie Higgins:
We had it all
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our own Late Late Show
Sailing away to Key Largo...
Which made me think maybe it's time for Key Largo as our Saturday-night movie date. And then I thought some more and decided that the Bogie/Bacall film I really liked from that neck of the woods, or seas, was set in another patch of Irma-devastated real estate. So we're going to do what Howard Hawks did when he bought the rights to Ernest Hemingway's original novel of To Have and Have Not: Hawks relocated the story from Key West to Martinique, and likewise we're swapping Key Largo for Martinique, where we have at least a couple of readers, whom I hope are holding up okay. And, if you're one of our Keys readers, well, Humphrey Bogart's fishing boat in this film retaines its Florida origins: the Queen Conch, registered in Key West.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Not to mention Hoagie (Cricket) at his best!
I always thought that El Dorado and Rio Bravo were essentially the same movie with just different supporting casts for John Wayne.
Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Rio Lobo are all the same movie plot. Rio Lobo almost was different but Hawks went back to the old script.
Wayne was a bit too old to be a romantic lead by the time of El Dorado, so they wrote out the female lead and tried to make the supporting character played by James Caan be the romantic guy. That's part of why El Dorado was (for me, anyway) one trip to the well too many for Hawks.
Getting back to the original post, I have never been a big fan of Key Largo. It's certainly a great movie, and the cast is great in it, but I just find it too nasty to re-watch. I find Eddie G's character to be too sadistic. Sadism is something I just cannot find entertaining. I don't mind bad guys, but I just cannot watch sadism.
That's interesting because in Rio Bravo I thought the screen chemistry between Wayne and Angie Dickinson was a strong point of the movie.
My family watched Key Largo together when the hurricane hit same the other weekend.
Very good movie, with a fine cast. All the F-boms in the world on the screen don’t seem half as nasty as Edward G. Robinson whispering to Lauren Becall when she’s held hostage. You don’t need explicit visuals and verbiage to truly get the point across with the right director, script and cast. The guy with a boat trying to keep out of trouble is done over and over again. My kids particularly liked when it was Cary Grant’s turn (Late in his career) in Father Goose.
Yeah, but the way Rocko gets his....
It was. that's why El Dorado is not as interesting a movie IMO. Wayne was a tad too old for Dickinson in Rio Bravo, but the romance worked IMO. There is a woman in El Dorado who is supposed to be the Wayne character's girlfriend, but she is not central to the plot at all the way Dickinson was in Rio Bravo. Romance was essentially left out of Wayne's films after 1965.
Wuz yu ever bit by a dead bee?
My wife and I regularly watch Bogart and Bacall!!!
“Key Largo” is a great picture w/ EG Robinson & Bogey and a hurricane in the Keys.
Have you ever been stung by a dead bee?
You know how to whistle, don’t you?
You beat me to it. I stumbled onto Bold Venture via my Amazon Echo (Alexa).
The writing and performances are superb. Getting sexual tension and jokes across in a family friendly show requires great finesse...and they do it in spades. (yeah....sort of a pun)
Also, the shows were recorded on LPs and mailed to the subscribing radio stations, so the fidelity is far beyond what you normally get with "oldies" radio shows.
Great fun!
(and being radio, it tickles me how in just about every episode, Slate (Bogey) or Sailor (Bacall) must say something like "So that's why you're holding a gun on me"....it being radio and all)
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