Originally Posted by
rasputin
You might not know that Leslie Howard played a huge part in Humphrey Bogart's career. Bogie had played the villain Duke Mantee, a desperate gangster on the run, in the Broadway play The Petrified Forest, which starred Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. Warner Bros. had the movie rights and they were casting the movie. They had Howard and Davis to reprise their roles, but wanted someone with more name recognition in the 3rd role. (This was, I think, 1936.) Leslie Howard told the Warner people that if they didn't keep Bogart in the role, he wouldn't play in the movie. Warner Bros. relented and Bogart had his big break. Up to then he was getting mostly small roles as one-dimensional hoods, but he started getting meatier roles and he showed that he could be something other than a gangster on screen. Along came High Sierra in 1940 (the last non-cameo appearance in which Bogart didn't have top billing, which went to Ida Lupino), and then a year later, George Raft didn't want to play the lead in a movie called The Maltese Falcon which was to be directed by a first-time director named John Huston, so Bogart got the role and the rest is history.
When Bogie married Lauren Bacall and they had children, they named the first one (a daughter) Leslie, for Leslie Howard. OK, now, don't look this up: what did they name their second child, and why?