# Key Largo (film)

Key Largo is a 1948 film noir about a veteran soldier who visits the family of an army buddy killed in the war, only to find that their Key West hotel has been taken over by a bunch of exiled gangsters who are orchestrating their own comeback.
    Directed by John Huston. Written by Maxwell Anderson, Richard Brooks and John Huston.

## Frank McCloud

* You don't like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop, shoot it.
* When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.
* One Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for!

## Johnny Rocco

* After living in the USA for more than thirty-five years they called me an undesirable alien. Me. Johnny Rocco. Like I was a dirty Red or something!
* You'd give your left arm to nail me wouldn't you? I could see the headlines now, 'Local Deputy Captures Johnny Rocco'. Your picture'd be in all the papers. You might even get to tell on the newsreels how you pulled if off, yeah. Listen hick, I was too much for any big city police force to handle. It took the United States Government to pin a rap on me. And they won't make it stick. You hick! I'll be back pulling strings to get guys elected mayor and governor before you ever get a 10-buck raise. Yeah, how many of those guys in office owe everything to me. I made them. Yeah, I made 'em, just like a-like a tailor makes a suit of clothes. I take a nobody, see? Teach him what to say. Get his name in the papers and pay for his campaign expenses. Dish out a lotta groceries and coal. Get my boys to bring the voters out. And then count the votes over and over again till they added up right and he was elected. Yeah- then what happens? Did he remember when the going got tough, when the heat was on? No, he didn't wanna. All he wanted was to save his own dirty neck. . . . Yeah, `Public Enemy,' he calls me. Me, who gave him his `Public' all wrapped up with a fancy bow on it.
* Nothing to stop me from wiping you all out!
* [to Frank] If you want to find out how good you are at taking it, we'll accommodate you. But let me warn you. Toots is a little rusty. Might slip. And that'd be tooo baaad.

## James Temple

* [to Johnny Rocco] You’re right, you shouldn’t have been deported, you should have been exterminated.
* [praying] Make a big wave. Send it down on us. Destroy us all if need be, but punish HIM.

## Nora Temple

* Charlie! Charlie Winook and his family, Crawfish Island. Charlie's a prince of the Seminole Nation. His ancestors go back to the gods. He sells sea shells by the sea shore.

## Other

* Edward "Toots" Bass: I say smack her and let it go at that.
* Richard "Curly" Hoff: She is a lush, the lady...after she bends the elbow a few times, she begins to see things—rats, roaches, bats, you know...a sock in the kisser is the only thing that will bring her out of it.

## Dialogue

    James Temple: Are you thieves or what? You want money, is this a robbery?
    Toots: Yeah, Pop, we're gonna steal all your towels.
    Ralph Feeney: Hey Curly, what all happens in a hurricane?
    Richard "Curly" Hoff: The wind blows so hard the ocean gets up on its hind legs and walks right across the land.
    Toots: And singin' this song: Rain rain, go away, little Ralphie wants to play.
    Deputy Sawyer: Down in the lobby, I ran up against these two. [indicates Toots and Curly] Well, they didn't look right to me, so I asked them a few questions. By the way they answered me, I knew there was something fishy. So I put in a call to Ben Wade, but before I could get through, the lights went out on me. I woke up in there. Rocco was standing over me. I recognized him right away from the pictures. I made a break for the door, and the lights went out again.
    Toots: I'm the electrician.
    Johnny Rocco: Thousands of guys have got guns. There's only one Johnny Rocco.
    James Temple: How do you account for it?
    Frank McCloud: He knows what he wants. Don't you, Rocco?
    Johnny Rocco: Sure.
    James Temple: What's that?
    Frank McCloud: Tell him, Rocco.
    Johnny Rocco: Well, I want uh ...
    Frank McCloud: He wants more, don't you, Rocco?
    Johnny Rocco: Yeah. That's it. More. That's right! I want more!
    James Temple: Will you ever get enough?
    Frank McCloud: Will you, Rocco?
    Johnny Rocco: Well, I never have. No, I guess I won't. You, do you know what you want?
    Frank McCloud: Yes, I had hopes once, but I gave them up.
    Johnny Rocco: Hopes for what?
    Frank McCloud: A world in which there's no place for Johnny Rocco.
    Gaye Dawn: [finishes her song and goes over to the bar] Give me that drink now, Johnny.
    Johnny Rocco: No.
    Gaye Dawn: Johnny!
    Johnny Rocco: [louder] No.
    Gaye Dawn: But you promised!
    Johnny Rocco: So what?
    Gaye Dawn: You said that...
    Johnny Rocco: But you were rotten.

## Quotes about Key Largo

* Hold your course, you're headed straight for Key Largo, Kay Largo...
** Original release trailer (1948)
* Key Largo, a lonely island off the coast of Florida, sultry, heat-ridden, cloaked in the strange menace of the sea. But stranger still is the destiny that brings these people to this remote outpost, to be held at bay with a price on their lives, by a man with a price on his head.
** Original release trailer (1948)

## Cast

* Humphrey Bogart — Frank McCloud
* Edward G. Robinson — Johnny Rocco
* Lauren Bacall — Nora Temple
* Harry Lewis — Edward "Toots" Bass
* Thomas Gomez — Richard "Curly" Hoff
* Lionel Barrymore — James Temple
* William Haade — Ralph Feeney
* Claire Trevor — Gaye Dawn

## External links

* Key Largo quotes at the Internet Movie Database