The man who defined the trench-coat tough guy began life as a curly-haired child model for baby food ads, born on Christmas Day 1899 into New York's upper class. Warner Bros. publicity even pushed a fake January birthday because a Christmas birth seemed too nice for a screen villain. This episode looks past the fedora and cigarette smoke to find the human being underneath: a kid from a cold, transactional household who rebelled against everything his parents planned.

The conversation follows his expulsion from Phillips Academy, Navy service in World War I and the mundane truth behind his scarred lip, years of chess hustling and playing wealthy juveniles on Broadway, and the telegram from Leslie Howard that won him The Petrified Forest. It covers the B-movie grind in which he was shot, electrocuted, hanged or jailed in film after film, the m ...