High Sierra ***** (1941, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Joan Leslie, Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Henry Hull, Henry Travers, Jerome Cowan, Barton MacLane) – Classic Movie Review 1,348

Raoul Walsh’s 1941 thriller film High Sierra is a terrific action/ adventure film noir featuring Humphrey Bogart in yet another one of his iconic roles as notorious career criminal Roy ‘Mad Dog’ Earle. It made him a star.

Director Raoul Walsh’s 1941 thriller film High Sierra is a terrific action/ adventure film noir featuring Humphrey Bogart in yet another one of his iconic roles as notorious career criminal thief Roy ‘Mad Dog’ Earle. After being released from prison, the hard-bitten gangster is hired by his old boss to help a group of inexperienced criminals plan and carry out a jewel heist robbery in a California resort town in the Sierra Nevada,

When the robbery goes wrong and a man is shot and killed, ‘Mad Dog’ is forced to go on the run and hides out on a high Sierra Nevada mountain range with Marie Garson (outstandingly played by a butch, sexy Ida Lupino), a young former taxi dancer. The cops are after him and a tense siege ensues.

But ‘Mad Dog’ makes a stab at redemption by finally rejecting his life of crime and providing the loot to improve the life of handicapped young woman Velma (Joan Leslie).  

High tension and high anxiety are guaranteed throughout this stupendous vintage crime movie. All its elements come together perfectly, but it especially gains a huge lift with Bogart’s blistering delivery of his dialogue, the strong support of the Warner Bros character actor team, and the tremendous sense of impending doom and foreboding conjured up by the vintage man’s man action director Walsh.

It helps that there is extensive location shooting, especially in the final scenes. Key shots were filmed on location in the Sierra Nevada, including Big Bear Lake and Lake Arrowhead in California. Location shooting took place at Whitney Portal, half way up Mount Whitney.

John Huston works with W R Burnett to adapt the latter’s 1940 novel. The influential and prolific Burnett contributed continuity and dialogue to the 1932 Scarface, the screenplay for This Gun for Hire (1942) and for The Great Escape (1963).

It is a very significant film in Bogart’s career as his breakthrough to stardom, as well as in his friend Huston’s career, allowing him the transition from screenwriter to director in The Maltese Falcon (1941), starring Bogart.

George Raft was intended to play Roy Earle, but it was another gangster part and he did not want his character to die at the end of the film. Apparently Bogart wanted to play Earle and talked Raft out of accepting it.

Ida Lupino had become a star in They Drive By Night, and producer Mark Hellinger got executive producer Hal Wallis to bill Lupino above Bogart, though in later releases Bogart got top billing.

Bogart’s character has to slide 90 feet down a mountainside, and, doing so, his stunt double Buster Wiles bounced a few times going down the mountain and wanted another take to do better. Raoul Walsh told him: ‘Forget it. It’s good enough for the 25-cent customers.’

Special effects are by Byron Haskin and H F Koenekamp.

It was remade by Raoul Walsh in 1949 as the Joel McCrea Western, Colorado Territory, and again in 1955 as I Died a Thousand Times with Jack Palance.

Also in the cast are Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Henry Hull, Henry Travers, Jerome Cowan, Barton MacLane, Cornel Wilde, Elizabeth Risdon, Minna Gombell, Paul Harvey, Donald MacBride, John Eldredge, Isabel Jewell, Willie Best, Arthur Aylesworth, Robert Strange, Wade Botelier, Sam Hayes, Erville Alderson, Spencer Charters, Eddy Chandler, Louis Jean Heydt, William Hopper, Robert Emmett Keane, Maris Wrixon, Ralph Sanford, Frank Moran, Lee Phelps, Frank Cordell, George Meeker, Eddie Acuff and Harry Hayden.

High Sierra is directed by Raoul Walsh, runs 100 minutes, is written by John Huston and W R Burnett, based on the novel by W R Burnett, is made and released by Warner Bros, is shot in black and white by Tony Gaudio, is produced by Hal B Wallis (executive producer) and Mark Hellinger (producer), is scored by Adolph Deutsch and Leo F Forbstein, and is designed by Ted Smith.

It opened in Los Angeles on 23 January 1941.

It cost $491,000 and earned $1,489,000.

Joan Leslie made her film debut in Camille (1936) only 12, as Marie Jeanette. She performed under her real name of Joan Brodel, until adopting ‘Joan Leslie’ for High Sierra. Her film career was over at the age of 31, leaving the profession to bring up her twin daughters. She resumed acting after her daughters grew up, mostly in TV, working up to the 1991 TV movie Fire in the Dark.

Joan Leslie died on October 12 2015, aged 90. Among her best-known movies are Sergeant York (1941), High Sierra, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), This Is the Army (1943) and The Sky’s the Limit (1943).

The cast are Ida Lupino as Marie Garson, Humphrey Bogart as Roy ‘Mad Dog’ Earle/ Roy Collins, Alan Curtis as Babe Kozak, Arthur Kennedy as Red Hattery, Joan Leslie as Velma, Henry Hull as Doc Banton, Henry Travers as Pa Goodhue, Jerome Cowan as Healy, Minna Gombell as Mrs. Baughman, Barton MacLane as Jake Kranmer, Donald MacBride as Big Mac, Willie Best as Algernon, Zero as Pard, Elisabeth Risdon as Ma Goodhue, Cornel Wilde as Louis Mendoza, Paul Harvey as Mr. Baughman, Isabel Jewell as Blonde, Spencer Charters as Ed, George Meeker as Pfiffer, Robert Strange as Art, John Eldredge as Lon Preiser, Sam Hayes as Announcer, Eddie Acuff as Bus Driver, Willie Best, Arthur Aylesworth, Wade Botelier, Sam Hayes, Erville Alderson, Eddy Chandler, Louis Jean Heydt, William Hopper, Robert Emmett Keane, Maris Wrixon, Ralph Sanford, Frank Moran, Lee Phelps, Frank Cordell, George Meeker, Eddie Acuff and Harry Hayden.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,348

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/