David Thomson's Bogart monograph (like his others on Bette Davis, Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman) is both miniature biography and filmography, and also goes far beyond to deal with the practice and meaning of stardom at the zenith of Hollywood, circa 1938 to 1946-and-a-half. Those years covered almost all Bogart's best work, from The Maltese Falcon, in which John Huston realised the timely novelty of the sarcastic-charming style of an actor who had previously waited in the Warner Bros gangster queue behind George Raft, to The Big Sleep, in which Howard Hawks (and Lauren Bacall) released Bogart's sexual and comic confidence. Oh, and in between he played this tuxedo'ed bar owner in Casablanca, an absurdist melodrama of romantic self-pity, and thereby defined America's idea of its role in the second world war. Now would Thomson please: a) extend his Biographical Dictionary entries for other significant players; and b) crack on and write a much-needed definitive History of Sex in the Movies?