In the early 1950s, when I was in high school in New Rochelle, N.Y., I saw Humphrey Bogart’s film, Deadline-USA, about an intrepid newspaper editor, whose paper, The Day,” was being sold by the children of the late founder. This comes at a time, when the paper is closing in on a major crook in the town. In the end, the paper succeeds in printing evidence of his crimes.

The film has the feel of a newspaper office at that time. Everyone used a typewriter, everyone communicated by phone, and of course, the newspaper had large printing presses which rolled the papers off to be later put on delivery trucks.

Somehow that film, which is not one of Bogart’s best known, had a major influence on me. I already was covering New Rochelle High School sports for the local paper, the New Rochelle Standard-Star, and it further cemented my strong desire to make newspapering my career. And, in fact, my first job after college in 1960 was with The Washington Evening Star, which felt a lot like “The Day.”

Later, when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, 1953-1957, Bogart died of lung cancer in early 1957, and the Brattle Theatre, a local Cambridge landmark, showed a number of classic Bogart films, including Casablanca, which became the name of the bar on the ground floor of the theatre. I have always been a great admirer of Bogart’s films and many of his roles. I, of course, loved his roles as the private detective Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” and in such films as “Key Largo” and “The Big Sleep.”

Just the other day, I watched “Deadline-USA” on DVD and it filled me with great nostalgia.