It’s worth remembering, for instance, that Bogart, Huston and Mary Astor followed the triumph of The Maltese Falcon with the immediately forgettable Across the Pacific. Of course, even with that line-up of talent, things could have gone poorly. Robinson, with whom he worked in the Warner Brothers gangster cycle in the thirties John Huston, the writer/director most responsible for moving him out of the gangster roles in the early forties and Lauren Bacall, his soul mate onscreen and off, who had only recently become his wife. Key Largo is famous because it reteams Bogart with collaborators from different phases of his career: Edward G. There it joins films like The Enforcer and Dark Passage. Still, when you consider that his credits include Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, and In a Lonely Place, you realize that Bogart simply made so many masterpieces that even a film like Key Largo has to get bumped down to the second tier. Since I’ve seen it, oh, 20 times or so, it must be doing something right. I want to state this up front because I know that many people will disagree: Key Largo is not one of Humphrey Bogart’s best films.ĭon’t get me wrong, it’s really, really good. Today we’ll look at John Huston’s Key Largo. Last week we looked at Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage. Since the Arboretum has featured in so many films, you’ll probably want to visit any way, at 301 North Baldwin Avenue, Arcadia.In tribute to the late Lauren Bacall, we’re looking at the four classic films she made with husband and screen partner Humphrey Bogart between 19: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. It was a London-based production so it seems pretty unlikely. There are claims that scenes were filmed at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, and while it seems like every Hollywood film with a jungle scene used the Arboretum, as a filming location, I can’t find any evidence for The African Queen being filmed here. It’s at The African Queen, Key Largo, 99701 Overseas Highway, Key Largo, where it's been berthed since the early Eighties, though it does occasionally scuttle off to appear in parades around the US. It still exists and you can see it at Key Largo, first of the Florida Keys on Route 1 at Florida’s southern tip. The African Queen itself wasn’t really blown up at all. The ending, with the scuppered little steamer finally blowing the gunboat to smithereens, filmed back in Isleworth, London. If you plan to visit, it’s a good idea to check ahead on local conditions. You can stay at Paraa Safari Lodge, near the Falls. The reedy lake where a becalmed Hepburn and Bogart finally confront the Louisa is a small offshoot of Lake Albert at Murchison Falls, up the Nile among the crocs and the hippos, now Kabalego Falls, though Uganda’s park is still known as Murchison Falls National Park. The Queen going over the falls is a model made by monks from the local monastery at Ponthierville in Democratic Republic of the Congo (nuns made the tiny Bogart and Hepburn), filmed on the falls above the town, while the German fort at ‘Shona’ was filmed back at Worton Hall. The African Queen herself: Key Largo, Florida Morley’s funeral was filmed in Democratic Republic of the Congo itself (then simply the Congo), on a hillside about two and a half miles upriver from the village of Biondo, on the Ruiki – the river which stands in for the ‘Ulanga’ in the early scenes of the Queen chugging down to confront the Germans. The doomed church and the village of Kungdu were built on the shore of Lake Albert at Port Butiaba, Uganda, up near the border with Democratic Republic of the Congo. A none-too-convincing double stands in for Morley, who never left England – just look at the cross-cutting between Hepburn with Morley in London and Hepburn with the congregation in Africa. The interior of Robert Morley’s ‘First Methodist Church at Kungdu’ was built here, to match an exterior constructed in Africa. The site is now the Worton Hall Industrial Estate. For a film made in 1951, there’s a surprising amount of location filming in Africa – though this seems to have been an excuse for macho director John Huston to go hunting elephants (see Peter Viertel’s thinly-disguised book of the shoot, White Hunter, Black Heart, or Clint Eastwood’s film version).Īs WWI breaks out, Rose Sayer ( Katharine Hepburn) takes Charlie Allnut ( Humphrey Bogart) gunning for the beastly Hun, who’ve caused the death of her preacher-brother in, what was, German East Africa.Įven so, much of the African jungle was recreated at Worton Hall Studios, Worton Road in Isleworth, southwest London.
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