Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 41

Bogart, Bacall, and Howard Hawks

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Conflict, a bizarre hybrid of female gothic and investigative detective thrillers (where

Sydney Greenstreet switches roles with Bogart, piecing together the murder case).
Conflict was a non-war-related mystery-thriller story, originally The T entacle,

written by emigre Robert Siodmak (in an effort to negotiate a Warners directing
job with producer Henry Blanke in the early 1940s) and Alfred Neumann. It was
sold to Warner Bros, in August 1942, shot shortly after Casablanca, then held and
stockpiled by the studio until it was premiered for ‘-100 rain-soaked and mudspattered G.I.’s” of the 137th Infantry Regiment in a ‘‘cold bam some 1,500 yards
away from the front lines” in France on November 3, 1944 prior to its June 1945
release."* (It was also one of the first red meatfilm s n oir shown later that November
1944 night in Paris.) It is significant that Conflict was withheld from release while
Bogart’s wartime hero persona was developed in Sahara and P assage to M arseille
during the war (as ‘"un-American” gangsters were censored and narratively
reformulated), and Warners let Columbia take the risk of putting Bogie in its war
film, then capitalized on his Sahara success in P assage to M arseille. Bogart’s
masculine image changed as his star power increased. The conflicted male in
C asablanca and Conflict became an increasingly patriotic wartime hero in Bogart’s
next films Sahara and P assage to M arseille.
When Warner Bros, finally released Conflict on June 20, 1945 The Los
Angeles Evening-H erald Express exclaimed: “There is no scarcity of red meat in
Conflict. This muscular meller packed with gusto and Movieville’s dramatic Vitamin
A-1” featured Bogart as a wife murderer.^ (The irony with the star’s real-life
estranged and soon-to-be former wife, Mayo, is noteworthy here.) The film’s clinical
realism is emphasized in a June 27, 1945 Los Angeles Examiner a rticle noting
“psychiatry in its relation to crime is vividly described” in Conflict which “points
out that certain mental fixations can become obsessions and in some cases lead to
violent crime.”^ Moreover, a June 10, 1945 Saint P aul P ioneer Press piece called
Bogart “menace man de lux who returns to his evil ways again and murders his
wife,” but nonetheless noted that the masculine star “tops all rivals in his home
studio as the ‘pin up’ favorite of service women, including WAGS, WAVES, SPARS
and Lady Marines.”^
Yet, a major problem in Conflict and M arseille was an ongoing concern
for Warners and Bogart: Finding a sufficiently strong female star to cast opposite
Bogart in his rising career with increasingly romantic roles. Warners had to borrow
Ingrid Bergman from independent producer David O. Selznick for Casablanca,
and Saharan's successful heroine at Columbia was a tank! Absent Warners borrowing
Bergman from Selznick, Bogart had better chemistry opposite the tank than his
Conflict or M arseille co-stars. (January 1943 Production Code Administration
[PCA] files for Sahara even noted censoring “keep your pants on,” referring to
Lulubelle the tank: “She’s just like a woman— she won’t say yes the first time.”*)