Anyone coming to visit Key Largo these days will no doubt be struck by the sense of timelessness here. There are places that seem to be right out of films, or the best memories of places never visited before. The picturesque scenery is enough to make the eyes delight and the mind immediately soften and relax. This is a place where people go to rejuvenate the body and the mind. Because of this, Key Largo hotels are rather famous for their remarkable ability to offer the right amount of hospitality at just the right time.
That the place has a kind of mythic quality is something that everyone notices. Even the locals never get over it, and it seems like a kind of paradise on earth, with some pretty furious storms. It’s very difficult to spend any amount of time here before you’re thrust into a daydream where you start to feel like you’re in a colorized version of the film that takes the name of the place, and of course, we all think about Bogey and Bacall. It’s perhaps a bit of a cliche to say they don’t make actors like that any more, but it’s also true that being here helps you think it’s all possible again.
That film marks a definite golden age in Hollywood cinema, and something that will have to be reckoned with in the popular imaginary for many more generations to come. These things sometimes happen by happy luck, and sometimes they’re well deserved. In this case, it was more hard work than luck that was involved. The film was based on a play by Pennsylvania playwright Maxwell Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize winner. When they made the film, it was during the infamous blacklist, and both Bogey and Bacall were staunch supporters of the first amendment. Perhaps they weren’t as staunch about the rights of the writer, because Anderson’s ending was changed, and an ending to a Hemingway script for a different film altogether, was used. Still, immortality it immortality.