Key Largo - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[oscar]

The cast includes three Academy Award winners (Humphrey Bogart, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor, who won for this role) and two other nominees (Lauren Bacall and Thomas Gomez). Of these actors, only Bacall had not earned an Oscar nomination prior to this film.

[chad]

This movie was based on Maxwell Anderson's popular Broadway play, which featured Paul Muni in the lead role as a fatalistic ex-member of the Loyalist Army who has returned from the Spanish Civil War. For the film version, the time period and the setting were changed. Director John Huston and screenwriter Richard Brooks rewrote the main character, Frank McCloud, making him a World War II veteran who had served in the Italian campaign. The two writers also emphasized the idealism of the early Franklin D. Roosevelt years and how some of its ideals began to erode as organized crime spread through urban areas.

[francisco]

In the film, James Temple describes the 1935 hurricane that devastated Matacumbe Key--one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history. Many of the victims of the storm were World War I veterans who were building the Florida Keys portion of U.S. Highway 1, also known as the Overseas Highway. A portion of this highway is seen in the film's opening shots. The storm also produced the lowest-ever recorded barometric pressure over land in the North American continent.

[christina]

In a classic case of a director being emotionally manipulative, John Huston did not inform Claire Trevor about when she was to perform her song solo until the very day it was shot. Trevor was not a trained singer, and she had not even rehearsed the song yet. She also felt very intimidated that she had to perform the song for the A-list actors seated directly in front of her. The result was a hesitant, nervous, uncomfortable rendition--exactly the feeling Huston was hoping to get.

[sandra]

Santana was the name of Humphrey Bogart's yacht, which he purchased from June Allyson and Dick Powell. Before that it had belonged to George Raft and Ray Milland. He loved the Santana so much he named his production company after it.