Don't Expect A Happy Ending

The Petrified Forest (1936), which will be shown this Friday on TCM, was a product of Warner Bros. Warner's was frequently on the cutting edge of what movie audiences wanted to see. They produced the first talkies, the first horror films in color, and Warners was the studio to later become known for film noir, a movement in film that reflected society's angst and conflicts and is shot in low light and shadows, with pessimistic stories about shady characters and not so happy endings.

The Petrified Forest is considered by movie historians to be a precursor to film noir. The film itself is named after an area in the Arizona desert known for its fossilized trees, conjuring up a picture of the death and
decay of civilization. And the family that owns and runs the Black Mesa Filling Station and Bar-B-Que are named Maple, just another tree like those ossified out there in the relentlessly blowing sand. The main characters are a disillusioned intellectual who no longer seems to care about living and sees himself as just another "dead stump in the desert," a bitter and sociopathic gangster whose fate is written on his haunted face, and a waitress who is the only person who seems to actual be alive in that dirty and bleak place where all of them are confined together while the filth of the desert continually blows about outside the diner's windows.

The movie was released in 1936, the year FDR was re-elected but the same year King Edward VIII abdicated the throne. Gangsters like John Dillinger had made big names for themselves and were fresh on the minds of post-prohibition era audiences. The economy was recovering from the Great Depression but even though the Great War was supposed to have ended all wars, war was looming in the near future.

Robert E. Sherwood's play, which the movie script sticks to almost exactly, had been a big hit on Broadway in 1935 and Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart were reprising their roles. But, even though audiences had embraced the play and knew the ending, the Warners and director Hal B. Wallis still thought the ending too morose for general post-Depression audiences and an alternate ending was ordered. Several endings were scripted by Howard and Bogart who both knew that no ending would work other than the one Robert Sherwood wrote. So, in Howard's irreverent fashion, he came up with several ridiculous endings one of which had Howard and Bette Davis living in Paris, she happily painting pictures while he happily worked for Paramount Pictures. Even Howard's daughter, Leslie Ruth, wrote an ending. Howard insisted on knowing the times and theaters where the alternate-ending version would be screened so he could judge audience reactions for himself. But it was clear after those screenings that the original ending received the highest reviews and that is the movie you will see this Friday.

[Leslie Howard and Bette Davis on the set during filming
of an alternate ending to The Petrified Forest, 1936]

Subscribe to Leslie Howard by Email