Changes: Fred C. Dobbs

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Fred C. Dobbs is a central protagonist, and one of the two main antagonists (along with Gold Hat) of the 1927 adventure novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and its 1948 film adaptation of the same name. He was a poor American who went to Mexico and find out about gold on the Sierra Madre Mountains which drove him to become paranoid, vicious, and murderous trying to protect his gold.

He was portrayed by Humphrey Bogart.

Biography

Dobbs is first seen looking at a lottery list and comparing the winning numbers drawn in the Mexican National Lottery. He tears his losing ticket to pieces and throws it away in anger and disgust. He turns and walks into the busy, filthy Mexican street and down under a marketplace's archway, where he asks an American for a handout. The man ignores Dobbs, turns away, moves on and tosses his half-smoked cigarette butt into the street. After pausing - when he stares at it and considers his pride, Dobbs loses the butt to a Mexican street urchin who beats him to it. The youngster, without any hesitation, picks it off the ground and struts away puffing smoke.

The disgruntled, hard-luck panhandler quickens his pace after another American, a man in a white suit. He asks the affluent gentleman if he could you stake a fellow American to a meal. To his surprise, Dobbs is handed a coin. He then spends the day collecting handouts from wealthy men who wear white suits. Dobbs is surprised and disappointed, to discover that he has been collecting the same man repeatedly. The man gets irritated and suggests he should ask someone else for a chance. The dejected panhandler apologizes, explaining that he is ashamed to be asking for pesos and cannot look his benefactors in the eye. He is given two more pesos coins so that he won't forget his promise to "never put the bite" on him again.

Outside a cantina, the bum panhandles from another mark - an entrepreneur with an oil-rigging outfit who instead offers him a construction job to rig a camp. Dobbs is enticed to accept work from Pat McCormick. As they walk to the ferry, they pass a store display with stiff male and female mannequins dressed in wedding attire - lifelessly advertising and selling love to the masses. At the landing, Dobbs one of the workers as the man with whom he had a conversation on the bench during the morning. In the darkness of night, the ferry whistle blows, the gate swings closed, and fifty men are ferried into the jungle.

They work long, back-breaking hours in the steam, smoke and hellish, tropical heat of the camp rigging and erecting an oil derrick. Their pay is withheld until the job is done, but they are promised a bonus if they finish within two weeks. When they step off the ferry in Tampico after the job is done, McCormick promises the two panhandlers that he must go to the office and pick up the payroll. He gives them ten pesos in advance and promises to meet them about an hour later at the cantina right off the Plaza.

Hours later, the two have been drinking in the cantina waiting for McCormick - and they're left high and dry. Another customer has experienced the contractor's reputation for absconding with funds and lets them know about McCormick's shady character - he fleeces foreigners and various Americans. Early on, they share tribulation together - having learned the lesson that when money is involved, no one can be trusted.

The younger American, who turns out to be named Bob Curtin, asks Dobbs how many centavos are left between them and wonders whether they can afford a bed in a cockroach-infested flophouse. Dobbs tells Curtin about some cheap sleeping quarters for the night. In Dormitorio "El Oso Negro," the two check in and move down the narrow aisle between rows of cots on which other disinherited Americans are sitting or lying.

They pass by and overhear a scruffy, experienced, eccentric, toothless old gold prospector named Howard who has gathered an enthralled audience while describing the adventurous hunt for gold.

Howard continues to regale the others (including Dobbs and Curtin now) with his lighthearted tales about the seductive, "devilish" lure of gold. The old prospector's stories of gold-mining fire their imaginations as he describes how greed usually takes its toll on treasure-seekers. Half-drunk, Dobbs decides to interrupt the conversation.

Howard looks at Dobbs and then continues with stories to the listeners. He recalls his past gold quests all over the world - as if though he hadn't been interrupted. He ends his tales of experience by describing how the noble, friendly, and solid intentions of gold-seekers vanished after gold was discovered.

After listening to Howard speak about the destabilizing effects of wealth, Curtin and Dobbs share their own reactions: Curtin wouldn't mind a little of that kind of trouble, and Dobbs wanted to go to sleep and dream about piles of gold gettin' bigger and bigger.

The next afternoon on the Plaza bench while they lounge about, Curtin and Dobbs contemplate Howard's warnings of what lusting for gold can do to a man's soul. Although Howard has wisely warned them that the desire for wealth is tremendously destructive, they haven't been persuaded by his prophetic remarks to stop dreaming about sudden wealth. They deny their own vulnerability when Dobbs asserts that gold isn't inherently evil (In his words "gold can be as much of a blessing as a curse"). He is assured that he will be the unique "right guy" - the one who won't be affected by gold's perennial curse.

Noticing a well-dressed McCormick strolling out of the Hotel Bristol across the street (accompanied on his arm by a Mexican chiquita, Senorita Lopez), the two rush toward him. Their former boss smoothly invites them to talk business and have a drink in a cantina. They enter the bar and are immediately offered an excuse for not being paid. He then offers them more contract work or partial payment (with the balance paid later).

Not wanting to be used again by getting all "liquored up," they demand all their money immediately. McCormick reaches for a whiskey bottle and strikes Curtin across the face with it. In a rough, dirty fist-fight, the two gang up and finally wear their opponent down, beating the man senseless in the brawl until he admits he was beaten. They extract and count out their swindled pay from their defeated enemy's bulging wallet, fling the remainder of the bills contemptuously at his bloodied body, and then tip the bartender "for the drinks and the use of the cantina."

At a water fountain, while the two victorious Americans bathe their wounds and rinse away blood after defeating their common enemy, Dobbs suggests that they quit hanging around Tampico waiting for a job. They'll only spend their money and end up being bums again. Prompted by Howard's stories of prospecting, Dobbs fervently proposes that they consider "gold-digging".

Their "money would last longer" in his words, while they lived more cheaply out in the open. With the right equipment - picks, spades, pans, and burros - and the experienced guidance of Howard who can speak Spanish (with the local Mexicans and Indians), they decide that prospecting may be rewarding without much effort. Howard is delighted to be given the opportunity to gamble on gold once more.

By pooling their limited resources - their $150 each with Howard's $200 of investment money, they have a total of $500 between them for their venture. Still short of funds, Howard doubts that it's enough to buy the tools and weapons and the essential provisions. Dobbs' feverish wish to hunt for gold is quickly deflated. Only a few feet away, the Mexican boy who sold him a lottery ticket days earlier recognizes his lucky customer and demands his ten percent share for having sold him the prize-winning ticket: 3-7-2-1. The ticket wins a 200 pesos prize and Dobbs is thrilled by his monetary gain.

Dobbs gives a percentage share of his winnings to the boy and then decides to add the rest of his winnings, all 200 pesos, to their stake so that their expedition can be properly financed. The prospector knowingly looks up at the two of them, realizing full well what gold can do to such demonstrations of brotherly feelings and vows of undying comradeship.

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-'''Fred C. Dobbs''' is a central protagonist in the 1927 adventure novel, ''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' and its 1948 film adaptation of the same name. He was a poor American who went to Mexico and find out about gold on the Sierra Madre Mountains which drove him to become paranoid, vicious, and murderous trying to protect his gold.
+'''Fred C. Dobbs''' is a central protagonist, and one of the two main antagonists (along with [[Gold Hat]]) of the 1927 adventure novel, ''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' and its 1948 film adaptation of the same name. He was a poor American who went to Mexico and find out about gold on the Sierra Madre Mountains which drove him to become paranoid, vicious, and murderous trying to protect his gold.
 He was portrayed by Humphrey Bogart.