Bogart kept at it. In 1935, he co-starred with Leslie Howard in a Broadway production called The Petrified Forest. When Warner Bros. bought the film rights, they wanted to keep Howard but recast Bogart’s role, but Howard said the two were a package deal. The film, released in 1936, was a hit, and Bogart began landing movie roles. He played gangsters and other mediocre parts until 1941, when he played a gangster in High Sierra, written by John Huston. Huston, impressed with Bogart’s abilities, cast the actor as detective Sam Spade in the noir classic The Maltese Falcon (1941), the first of many hard-boiled roles Bogart would play.

Bogart’s most famous features followed: Casablanca in 1943, The Big Sleep in1946, and Key Largo in 1948. Bogart had been married three times when he starred in To Have and Have Not with 21-year-old actress Lauren Bacall. The two fell in love and married. In 1947, he formed his own company, which produced hits like Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The African Queen (1951), and Sabrina (1954). Bogart died of cancer in 1957, but college students in the 1960s rediscovered his films and launched the “Bogey” cult that still continues today.

(With thanks to History.com)