Garfield confided to Robert Blake that not having been able to play Joe Bonaparte in Golden Boy on film was "one of the biggest heartbreaks of my career." "I'm not the kind of actor that becomes a star in Hollywood," Garfield confessed, "I would normally have been a character actor, but Mike Curtiz made me a star in Four Daughters." Strangely, Garfield had missed the possibility to play one mythical role, Stanley Kowalski, which skyrocketed Brando’s profile (Brando'd mutter, “They should have gotten John Garfield” during A Streetcar Named Desire's rehearsals).
Robert Nott concludes his riveting illustration of John Garfield's invaluable significance in film history: "He embodied a fatalistic sense of cool long before Mitchum, Dean or McQueen did. From always admiring Garfield as an actor, I came to admire him as a human being for his simplicity and honesty. He made the attempt. He both succeeded and failed. In the end, he probably felt like one of his screen characters, caught up in a noir scheme that he didn't understand and couldn't escape."
Maybe Garfield couldn't escape, but he never hid from himself, and he ran all the way looking for a dignified exit.
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