Key Largo's Bogart Connections

75 days to the Keys.

If you're a fan of Humphrey Bogart movies, especially Key Largo and The African Queen, there are two places in Key Largo that may be of interest to you.  At MM 104.1 on the Bay side is the Caribbean Club.  The club was built in the late 30's to early 40's.  In the mid-40's, John Huston wrote the screenplay for the movie Key Largo based on a Broadway play.  Apparently for inspiration, he rented the Caribbean Club in Key Largo to write the screenplay, then promptly returned to California to build sets based on the Caribbean Club.  Despite it's claim to be the "Birthplace of the movie Key Largo", the club was little more than Huston's inspiration and there is no reason to believe any of the film was shot there, or anywhere else in the Keys, for that matter.

At the time, the island that Key Largo occupies was called "Key Largo", but there were various communities on the island that went by different names.  The main part of Key Largo went by "Rock Harbor" at the time, with separate communities and mailing addresses for Newport, Ocean Reef Club, and several other communities.  After the movie's release in 1948, the name "Key Largo" had enormous name recognition and the folks (especially business owners) in Rock Harbor wanted to capitalize on the name recognition and this ultimately culminated in the renaming of the post office to "Key Largo" and the unification of all the communities north of Tavernier under the "Key Largo" moniker.

Another, more unlikely, Bogart connection is to be found 4 miles down the road at the Holiday Inn Key Largo (MM 99.8, Oceanside).  Pull into the parking lot at the hotel, and head to the water at the far north of the parking lot and there, sitting under a canopy, is the original African Queen steamboat from the 1951 movie of the same name.

The boat is over 100 years old and has been through many owners in many places all over the world, but for the last 30 years it's been docked here at the Holiday Inn (after its next-most-recent home in an Ocala horse pasture).  Regular cruises were offered on it up until it broke down in 2001 and gradually started falling into disrepair.  Rumor has it that as of April 2012, it's been fully restored cosmetically AND mechanically, and is once again seaworthy and offering daily cruises in the canals around Key Largo.