In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Humphrey Bogart played Fred C. Dobbs, a down-on-his-luck American in Mexico who joins two other prospectors, played by Tim Holt and Walter Huston, in search of gold in the Sierra Madre mountains. Directed by John Huston, the film follows Dobbs as greed and paranoia take hold, until he loses both the gold and his life.
Bogart gave Dobbs a raw, unglamorous performance, very different from his romantic heroes. Walter Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and John Huston won for Best Director and Best Screenplay.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre remains a signature Bogart role because Dobbs showed how far Bogart would go to play a flawed man, and because the film’s warning about gold and greed still resonates.