High Sierra
All team (13)
Short description
High Sierra follows Roy Earle, a veteran criminal released from prison through the influence of his old boss, Big Mac. Earle intends to leave his life of crime behind, but he is persuaded to take on one more job: leading the robbery of a luxury resort hotel near Los Angeles. He meets his young, inexperienced accomplices at a remote mountain cabin, where he also finds Marie, the girlfriend of the volatile Babe. Earle initially wants her sent away, but she remains and proves useful to the plan. On his way west he befriends a poor farming family and falls for their daughter, Velma, and these ties complicate his commitment to the caper. Tension within the group grows, and the robbery eventually goes wrong, forcing Earle to flee into the Sierra Nevada mountains, where the police pursue him.
Raoul Walsh directed the film, the sixth of the twenty-three features listed for him in chronological order, between They Died with Their Boots On and Manpower. John Huston and W.R. Burnett wrote the screenplay. Humphrey Bogart plays Earle, with Ida Lupino as Marie, Alan Curtis as Babe, Arthur Kennedy as Red, Joan Leslie as Velma, and Henry Travers as Pa among the twenty-two credited cast members. Warner Bros. Pictures produced it.
Released in January 1941, the film runs 100 minutes and blends action, crime, drama and thriller elements. It holds a 7.5 rating on IMDb from around 21,000 votes and a 7.1 on TMDB from 367 votes, while its critics' rating stands at 7.7 from 26 reviews, indicating that critics have rated it somewhat more favorably than audiences have.
What's left behind the scenes
- When Ida Lupino couldn't manage to burst into tears in the final scene, her co-star Humphrey Bogart intimidated her, and the actress finally succeeded. Lupino never forgave him for this and categorically refused to star in Anatole Litvak's film noir ' The Foghorn' (1941) upon learning she would have to act with Bogart again. In the end, the role intended for Bogart was given to John Garfield.
- Censors rejected John Huston's original screenplay, making over 40 comments. Jack L. Warner ignored a significant portion of these notes, as he wanted to preserve the atmosphere of the script. However, he had no choice regarding the film's finale. No matter how sympathetic or likable the criminals seemed to the audience, they had to pay for their transgressions either with death or life imprisonment.
- The role played by Humphrey Bogart was originally intended for Paul Muni. Muni did not like the first version of the screenplay written by John Huston, so producer Hal B. Wallis brought in W.R. Burnett, the author of the original literary source, to revise the script. The revised screenplay was shown to Muni, but he didn't like it either. Bogart sent Wallis a telegram confirming his desire to act in Walsh's film (something he had first mentioned a few months prior). The next candidate for the role was George Raft. At that time, Raft was trying to move away from the gangster roles he was constantly offered. Bogart, aware of this, casually mentioned to Raft during a meeting that he was going to be offered yet another gangster role, one who gets shot at the end of the movie. Upon hearing this, Raft went to Wallis and flatly refused to star in 'High Sierra.' As a result, the role went to Bogart.
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