The Petrified Forest

Petrified Forest, The (1935), a play by Robert Sherwood. [ Broadhurst Theatre, 197 perf.] Alan Squire (Leslie Howard) is a world‐weary idealist whose wanderings have brought him to the Black Mesa Bar‐B‐Q in Arizona. This combination of gas station and lunchroom sits near the petrified forest that seems to represent an inevitable and much‐desired death to Squire. The owner's daughter, Gabby Maple (Peggy Conklin), is an attractive young girl who dreams of romance and of studying art in Paris. She reads some French poetry to Squire, who is intrigued and not a little smitten. But their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) and his gang, who have decided to use the lunchroom as a hideout. Seeing some hope for the future in Gabby and feeling his own wanderings have reached the end of the road, Squire signs over his life insurance policy to the girl and goads Mantee into killing him. Historian William Torbert Leonard has written, “The desperation of the depressed thirties is reflected in Sherwood's drama of [a] lost intellectual, Squire, and the death of his era.” Although Percy Hammond of the Herald Tribune called the work “a delightful improbability,” he concluded it was “made probable by Mr. Howard and his accomplices.” When he repeated his role in Hollywood, Bogart's career was launched and for many years he was typecast in gangster roles.