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Fred C. Dobbs is a central protagonist and one of the two main antagonists (along with Gold Hat) 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.
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 him 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.
The trio goes into the third-class compartment of a rattling train (crowded with Indians and Mestizos) headed from Tampico for Durango, toward the remote Sierra Madre Mountains in search of gold. Holding a map on his knees, Howard discusses with Curtin (while Dobbs dozes) how they must stay off the beaten track.
All of a sudden, the train's brakes are applied and it jolts to a halt as bullets fly through the windows of the coach. Mexican bandits attack the train from a hillside and from horseback. Howard shouts in Mexican toward the passengers to get of the floor everybody and lie down quickly.) The three reach in their luggage for their weapons and fire through the windows at the bandits, killing or wounding some of them (joined by Mexican troops ready for the ambush).
The train picks up speed again as the last of the remaining bandits, their disreputable leader - one who wears a gold-colored sombrero and flashes a gold tooth - gallops alongside the train and trades fire with Dobbs. Dobbs brags about his ability to shoot three of the bandits, but regrets missing the leader.
After the bandits are driven away, a conductor non-chalantly announces that not too many passengers were killed in the ambush in the dangerous, foreign territory. Howard has picked up his map from the floor and continues as if nothing had happened.
Later, outside a general store in the small village of Durango, where the pack burros and supplies are selected, purchased, and accounted for by Howard (with an experienced eye and knowledge of the native customs and language), the storekeeper tells them about where they are traveling - translated by Howard.
They saddle their burros and soon are climbing into the mountains of the Sierra Madre. After a few days, both Dobbs and Curtin are in tow - sweaty, exhausted, and staggering to keep up with the fast, jaunty pace set by the hardy Howard. Dobbs wants Howard to slow down his blistering trail up the steep mountainside, dropping to the ground with Curtin for a much-needed water break. With less excitement than earlier expressed, Dobbs begins to show the first signs of bitterness. He bickers, complaining about the older man, and Curtin has second thoughts about prospecting.
Dobbs notices at a gold-streaked rock on the ground and feverishly notices yellow glittering specks, thinking it's gold. He and Curtin euphorically splash water around, talking about striking it rich in the "Mother Lode," and calling Howard back to examine their find of veins in the rocks. Howard deflates the greenhorns' expectations by identifying the worthless rock. With a jaundiced look, he warns them to be more careful about wasting water: "Next time you fellas strike it rich, holler for me, will ya, before you start splashing water around. Water's precious. Sometimes it can be more precious than gold." He winks knowledgeably at them and proceeds on.
Later on, they are traveling across flatter country, with hills dotted by cactus. Indifferent to the prospectors' journey, nature buffets them with a fierce, howling windstorm. And then they are soon cutting through thick jungle underbrush, cutting the growth in the valley with machetes. Howard predicts that they are close to their goal. Then dripping rains fall on them, as Howard tirelessly pushes them on. That night around a small campfire cooking beans on a skillet, Dobbs and Curtin are too tired to eat and lie sound asleep next to the fire, while Howard dines (and extols the great food) and then serenades them with his harmonica.
The next day in the middle of the Mexican wilderness, Dobbs is thoroughly beat, fatigued, and pessimistic. He admits failure and wants to turn around.
Howard suddenly starts to yell at his companions, disparaging their pessimism and ignorance. The old man's outburst is such that Dobbs and Curtin suspect he has gone mad. Listening to him, they begin to grasp what he is saying: the keen-eyed miner recognizes that the terrain is laden with placer gold.
There's a further ascent that they must make. Howard turns and points toward a towering mountain peak behind them - or to the heavens, fates and beyond. The soundtrack accentuates his words. By a stream, Dobbs and Curtin look in amazement at the grit in Howard's pan, noticing that the gold doesn't look very different from sand and it didn't glitter, Howard emphasizes that gold is arbitrarily valued.
The amount that they can expect to mine each week is dependent upon how hard they work. Howard proposes pitching their camp a mile or two away down the mountainside, just in case somebody happens by. Filing a claim would also not be profitable. Soon an emissary from a big mining company would turn up with a paper in his hand claiming rights to the mine. Then, he grins at his companions.
After a few weeks, they have built a long, wooden sluiceway to sift the dirt taken from the mine. Dobbs looks back at his former innocence.
They test their water sluice, opening the gate and letting water run down to wash the sand and separate it from the gold. Their gold-find brings temporary and tentative unity among the group as they work side-by-side to mine the valuable gold dust.
One fateful night at their camp a scale where the proceeds of the day's work are weighed is shown. Howard estimates that the gold dust they have collected is valued close to five thousand dollars worth. Dobbs is impatient to begin dividing the gold.
Curtin doesn't agree with splitting the loot so soon since they were all going back together when the time came. Dobbs argues for dividing it up as we go along, and making sure everyone was responsible for their own goods. Thinking himself the "most trustworthy of the three," Howard thinks he could have guarded all their portions.
Howard believes his age and slowness would keep him trustworthy and prevent him from running away with the loot. Instead of pooling their treasures together, they decide to evenly cut up the proceeds three ways every night - that would relieve Howard of the distasteful responsibility of watching all the earnings. Each man will have to hide his share of the treasure from the other two.
Dobbs as a look of sinister greed, guarded anxiety and imagined mistrust in his glowing eyes, as the old man weighs the gold dust and divides the delicate grains of sand on the scale into tiny bags. Dobbs begins to feel suspicious and fearful of his two partners.