In 1981, singer-songwriter Bertie Higgins released a romantic song steeped in old Hollywood nostalgia, complete with references to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
“Key Largo” would become the biggest hit of Higgins’ career, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spending 17 weeks in the Top 40. It did even better on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, where it spent two weeks at No. 1.
Decades later, “Key Largo” is remembered as one of the biggest one-hit wonders of its era. VH1 ranked it No. 75 on its list of the 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the ’80s, while author Brent Mann also placed it at No. 75 in his book “99 Red Balloons and 100 Other All-Time Great One-Hit Wonders.”
But the song’s origins go back more than three decades before its release, to one of Bogart and Bacall’s most famous movies
Released in 1948, Key Largo starred Bogart, Bacall and Edward G. Robinson in a crime drama directed by John Huston. The movie was the fourth and final film Bogart and Bacall made together, following To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep and Dark Passage.
Nearly 80 years later, Key Largo still has an impressive 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Higgins was particularly taken with the real-life romance between Bogart and Bacall.
In Wayne Jancik’s “Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders,” Higgins recalled that he and his then-girlfriend Beverly Seaberg regularly watched old movies together.
“We used to watch old movies on the weekends,” Higgins said, adding that he considered the Bogart-Bacall romance “a phenomenal one.”
When Higgins and Seaberg temporarily split, Jancik wrote, Higgins was hurt. He drew inspiration from Key Largo and wrote the song as a plea for her to return.
It worked. According to Higgins, “And she did.”
The song turns Higgins’ own romantic memories into a cinematic fantasy, imagining the couple as Bogart and Bacall starring in their own late-night movie.
Mann writes in “99 Red Balloons and 100 Other All-Time Great One-Hit Wonders” that “Key Largo” tells the couple’s romantic history against the backdrop of the 1948 film. He also points out that Higgins slipped in another famous Bogart reference, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” even though that line comes from Casablanca, which paired Bogart with Ingrid Bergman rather than Bacall.
“Key Largo” was released in September 1981 and became a major hit the following year. It also reached No. 1 on Canada’s Adult Contemporary chart and No. 2 in Australia.
Higgins never returned to the U.S. Top 40, making “Key Largo” his defining hit.
More than four decades later, its combination of lost love, Hollywood nostalgia and Bogart and Bacall still gives listeners a ticket back to that “late, late show.”
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