THE BIG SHOT

Warner. Bros-First National, 1942.  Directed by Lewis Seiler.  Camera:  Sid Hickox.  With Humphrey Bogart, Irene Manning, Richard Travis, Susan Peters, Stanley Ridges, Minor Watson, Chick Chandler, Joseph Downing, Howard da Silva, Murray Alper, Roland Drew, John Ridgely, Joseph King, John Hamilton, Virginia Brissac, William Edmunds, Virginia Sale, Ken Christy, Wallace Scott.

Duke Berne, former big shot but now a three-time loser, fears returning to crime because a fourth conviction will mean a life sentence.  Finally, haunted by his past and goaded by his cohorts, he joins in planning an armored car robbery.  He learns that the gang is backed by a crack criminal attorney, Martin Fleming, and finds that Fleming's wife is his former sweetheart, Lorna, who is still in love with him.

Lorna prevents Duke from joining in the holdup by keeping him in his room at gunpoint, but a flustered witness picks Duke out of a police mug-book, and he goes on trial.  When a gang member informs Fleming that Duke and Lorna were together, Fleming exposes George Anderson, Duke's alibi, and both Duke and George are sentenced to prison.

Duke stages a prison break, during which a guard is killed.  He meets Lorna, and they establish a brief idyll in a mountain hideout.  But when Duke hears that George has been sentenced to death for the guard's murder, he decides to give himself up and clear George.  As Duke and Lorna drive down the mountain road, the police arrive, tipped off by Fleming, and in the ensuing chase Lorna is killed.  Duke gets away, goes to Fleming's apartment and kills him, but is mortally wounded by the dying attorney.  With George and his girlfriend, Ruth Carter, at his hospital bedside, Duke dies.

Also see the American Film Institute's summary.

Bogey:  The Films of
Humphrey Bogart,
by Clifford McCarty
Bonanza Books, NY 1965

Poster artwork courtesy of Dieter