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Petrified Forest, The
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.
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Cite this article
Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Petrified Forest, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Petrified Forest, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-PetrifiedForestThe.html Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Petrified Forest, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-PetrifiedForestThe.html |
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Petrified Forest, The
Petrified Forest, The, play by Robert Sherwood, produced in 1934 and published in 1935. Set in the Black Mesa Bar‐B‐Q, a gasoline station and lunch room in the Arizona desert, it melodramatically brings together representatives of a decadent civilization, in which Nature is “taking the world away from the intellectuals and giving it back to the apes.”
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Cite this article
James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Petrified Forest, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Petrified Forest, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-PetrifiedForestThe.html James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Petrified Forest, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-PetrifiedForestThe.html |
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