 Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 - January 14, 1957) was an American
actor of legendary fame who retained his legacy after death. In 1999, the
American Film Institute named Bogart the Greatest Male Star of All Time. Playing
primarily smart, playful and reckless characters anchored by an inner moral code
while surrounded by a corrupt world, Bogart's most notable films include Angels
with Dirty Faces (1938), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), To Have
and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
(1948), Key Largo (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), The African Queen (1951)
(for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role), The Caine
Mutiny (1954), and We're No Angels (1955). In all, he appeared in 75 feature
motion pictures.
Though he started his career as a good but hardly great Broadway stage player
and B-movie actor during the 1920s and 1930s, Bogart's later accomplishments
have given him iconic status around the world. French actors such as Jean-Paul
Belmondo were deeply influenced by his work and image, while India’s great
national movie star Ashok Kumar listed Bogart as a major influence on his
natural acting style. In the United States, Bogart is remembered in one of Woody
Allen’s most popular comic movies, Play It Again, Sam, which relates the story
of a young man obsessed by Humphrey Bogart's persona. In 1997, the United States
Postal Service featured Bogart in its Legends of Hollywood series, and
Entertainment Weekly magazine has named Bogart the number one movie legend of
all time.
Birth and Early Life
He was born Humphrey DeForest Bogart in New York City, the oldest child of
Belmont DeForest Bogart and Maud Humphrey; he had English, Dutch and some
Spanish ancestry. His father was a Republican and a Presbyterian, while his
mother was a Tory and an Episcopalian; Bogart was raised in his mother's
Episcopal church. He is one of the descendents of King Edward III of England.
Bogart's birthday has been a subject of controversy. It was long believed that
his birthday on Christmas Day, 1899, was a Warner Bros fiction created to
romanticize his background, and that he was really born on January 23, 1899, a
date that appears in many references. However, this story is now considered
baseless: although no birth certificate has ever been found, his birth notice
did appear in a Boston newspaper in early January 1900, which supports the
December 1899 date.
In addition, the 1900 census for the household of Belmont Bogart lists his son
Humphrey as having a birth date in December of 1899. His last wife, actress
Lauren Bacall, always maintained that December 25 was his true birth date.
Childhood
Bogart's father, Belmont, was a successful surgeon. His mother, Maud Humphrey,
was a very successful commercial illustrator. Indeed, she used a drawing of baby
Humphrey in a well-known ad campaign for Mellins Baby Food. In her prime, she
made over $50,000 a year as an illustrator, then a vast sum. The Bogarts lived
in a fashionable Upper West Side apartment, and had a cottage in upstate New
York.
From his father, Bogart inherited a tendency for needling people, a fondness for
fishing and a life-long love of sailing. Humphrey was the oldest child of three.
When Bogart fell in love with Lauren Bacall and she introduced him to her large
family, he said: Christ, you've got more goddamn relatives than I've ever seen.
As a boy, Bogart was teased for his curls, his tidiness, the cute pictures his
mother had him pose for, the Little Lord Fauntleroy clothes she dressed him
in—and the name Humphrey. He was also teased for his lisp; caused by an accident
in which a splinter became embedded in his lower lip. Bogart later told David
Niven: Goddamn doctor, instead of stitching it up, he screwed it up.
School
The Bogarts sent their son to the Trinity School in New York and then to the
prestigious preparatory school Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts. They
hoped he would go on to Yale, but in 1918, Bogart was expelled from Phillips
Academy. The details of his expulsion are disputed.
One story says that he was expelled for throwing the headmaster into Rabbit
Pond, a man-made lake located behind the Andover Inn, while others say it was
for smoking and drinking. His study habits were erratic and his grades were low,
and he may have hastened his departure with some intemperate comments to the
staff. He had a lifelong dislike of authority figures.
Early Career in The Theatre
Bogart took odd jobs, joined the Naval Reserve, and eventually drifted into
acting. While in the Navy, he was injured which resulted in his trademark snarl
and unique speaking voice. He liked the late hours that actors kept, and enjoyed
the attention that an actor got on stage. Most of all, he enjoyed the challenge
of putting on a difficult scene, making the audience believe it. He dug deeply
into the characters he portrayed, and found them a welcome escape from his own
self.
Bogart began his acting career on the Brooklyn stage in 1921, playing a Japanese
butler. He never took acting lessons, and had no formal training. An early
reviewer wrote of Bogart's work: To be as kind as possible, we will only say
that this actor was inadequate. Bogart loathed the trivial parts he had to play
early in his career, calling them White Pants Willie roles.
Bogart appeared in 21 Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935. He played
juveniles or romantic second-leads in drawing room comedies. He is said to have
been the first actor to say: Tennis, anyone? on stage.
Early in his career, Bogart met his first wife, Helen Menken. They married in
1926, divorced in 1927, and remained friends. In 1928, he married his second
wife, Mary Philips. Philips, like Menken, had a fiery temper, and once bit the
finger of a policeman who tried to arrest her for drunkenness.
Spencer Tracy was a serious Broadway actor whom Bogart liked and admired, and
they became good friends. It was Spencer Tracy, in 1930, who first called him
Bogie.
The Petrified Forest
In 1934, Bogart starred in the play Invitation to a Murder. The producer Arthur
Hopkins saw the play and sent for Bogart when he chose to produce Robert E.
Sherwood's new play, The Petrified Forest. Bogart arrived in Hopkins' office
while Sherwood was there; Hopkins told him: I've got a good role for you. A
gangster role. Robert Sherwood was sure Hopkins was wrong; Bogart should play
the football player. Bogart said later: They argued back and forth, and I
thought Sherwood was right. I couldn't picture myself playing a gangster. So
what happened? I made a hit as the gangster.
The Petrified Forest had 197 performances in New York; Bogart played escaped
killer Duke Mantee. Leslie Howard, who played the lead, knew how crucial Bogart
was to the success of the play. He and Bogart became friends, and he promised to
help Bogart reprise his role if Hollywood made the play into a film.
Bogart was proud of his success as an actor, but the fact that it came from
playing a gangster weighed on him. He once said: I can't get in a mild
discussion without turning it into an argument. There must be something in my
tone of voice, or this arrogant face - something that antagonizes everybody.
Nobody likes me on sight. I suppose that's why I'm cast as the heavy.
Warner Bros bought the screen rights to The Petrified Forest, signed up Leslie
Howard, then tested several Hollywood veterans for the Duke Mantee role, and
chose Edward G Robinson. Bogart cabled news of this to Howard, who was in
Scotland. Leslie Howard insisted that Bogart play Duke Mantee. When Warner Bros
saw that Howard would not budge, they gave in. Bogart never forgot this, and
named his only daughter Leslie Howard Bogart.
Early Film Career
Robert E Sherwood remained a close friend of Bogart's. It is possible that
neither knew they were cousins, both being descendents of Thomas Dudley. In
1936, the film version of The Petrified Forest came out. Bogart got excellent
reviews. Still, he was now stuck in a series of crime dramas for Warner Bros and
cast as a heavy. All told, in his career as a tough guy, Bogart went to the
electric chair 12 times, and got over 800 years of hard labor. Jack Warner saw
nothing wrong with that; as long as the movies made money, and the actors got
paid, he saw no reason for anyone to complain.
Mary Philips refused to give up her Broadway career to come to Hollywood with
Bogart, and soon they were divorced.
On August 21, 1938, Bogart made a disastrous third marriage, which only
heightened his frustration. His third wife was Mayo Methot, a lively, friendly
woman when sober, but a paranoid drunk. She was convinced that her husband was
cheating on her. The more she and Bogart drifted apart, the more she drank, got
furious and threw things at him: plants, crockery, anything close at hand.
Bogart sometimes returned fire, and the press dubbed them the Battling Bogarts.
The Bogart-Methot marriage was the sequel to the Civil War, said their friend
Julius Epstein. Another wag observed that there was madness in his Methot.
During his marriage to Mayo Methot, Bogart bought a sailboat, which he called
Sluggy after his hot-tempered wife.
In 1938, Warner Bros put him in a hillbilly musical called Swing Your Lady as a
wrestling promoter;he later apparently considered this his worst film
performance. In 1939, Bogart played a mad scientist in The Return of Doctor X.
He cracked: If it'd been Jack Warner's blood... I wouldn't have minded so much.
The trouble was they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie.
The studio system, then in its heyday, largely restricted actors to one studio,
and Warner Bros had no interest in making Bogart a star. Shooting on a new movie
might begin days or only hours after shooting on the last movie was complete.
Any actor who refused a role could be suspended without pay. Bogart didn't like
the roles chosen for him, but he worked steadily: between 1936 and 1940, Bogart
averaged a new movie every two months. He thought that Warner Bros were cheap in
their wardrobe department, and often wore his own suits in his movies. In High
Sierra, Bogart used his own mutt to play his character's dog Pard.
The leading men ahead of Bogart at Warner Bros included not just such classic
stars as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, but also actors far less
well-known today, such as Victor McLaglen, George Raft and Paul Muni. Most of
the better movie scripts the studio bought went to these men, and Bogart had to
take what was left. He made films like Racket Busters, San Quentin, and You
Can't Get Away With Murder. The only substantial leading role he ever got during
this period was in Samuel Goldwyn's Dead End (1937), but he played a variety of
interesting supporting roles in films featuring the bigger stars, such as Angels
with Dirty Faces (1938) (another picture in which he got shot by James Cagney).
Bogart was gunned down on film repeatedly, by Cagney and Edward G. Robinson,
among others; he rarely saw his own films and didn't attend the premieres.
Bogart had been raised to believe that acting was something beneath a gentleman.
Acting in movies was even worse than on the stage, and playing depraved gunmen
in B pictures for Warner Bros was not something to be mentioned in polite
company.
In California, in the 1930s, Bogart bought a 55-foot sailing yacht from Dick
Powell. The sea was his sanctuary. He was a serious sailor, respected by other
sailors who had seen too many Hollywood actors and their boats. About 30
weekends a year, he went out on his boat. He once said: An actor needs something
to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what
he is currently pretending to be.
He had a lifelong disgust for the pretentious, fake or phony. Sensitive yet
caustic, and disgusted by the inferior movies he was churning out, Bogart
cultivated the persona of a soured idealist, a man exiled from better things in
New York, living by his wits, drinking too much, cursed to live out his life
among second-rate people and projects.
When he thought an actor, director or a movie studio had done something shoddy,
he spoke up about it, and was willing to be quoted. The Hollywood press,
unaccustomed to candor, was delighted. Bogart once said: All over Hollywood,
they are continually advising me 'Oh, you mustn't say that. That will get you in
a lot of trouble' when I remark that some picture or writer or director or
producer is no good. I don't get it. If he isn't any good, why can't you say so?
If more people would mention it, pretty soon it might start having some effect.
Rise to Stardom
High Sierra
High Sierra, a 1941 movie directed by Raoul Walsh, was written by Bogart's
friend and drinking partner, John Huston. The film was a step forward for
Bogart. He still played the villain, Mad Dog Roy Earle, and he still died at the
end, but at least he got to kiss Ida Lupino and play a character with some
depth. In a climactic scene, Bogart's character slid 90 feet down a mountainside
to his just reward. His stunt double, Buster Wiles, bounced a few times going
down the mountain and wanted another take to do better. Forget it, said Raoul
Walsh, It's good enough for the 25-cent customers.
Bogart and Huston enjoyed each other's company, and drew on each other's gifts.
Bogart had always been self-conscious about his height (5'8"); Huston was 6'2"
(and his rail-thin build made him appear to be even taller). Bogart had never
been close to his father, while Huston was very close to his, actor Walter
Huston.
Bogart admired and somewhat envied Huston for his skill as a writer. Though a
poor student, Bogart was a lifelong reader. He could quote Plato, Pope, Ralph
Waldo Emerson and over a thousand lines of Shakespeare. He admired writers, and
some of his best friends were screenwriters, including Louis Bromfield,
Nathaniel Benchley and Nunnally Johnson. Through Thomas Dudley, Bogart was
related to playwrights Tennessee Williams and Robert E. Sherwood, as well as
George Washington.
John Huston reported being easily bored, and admired Bogart not just for his
acting talent but for his intense concentration.
Later Career
Between 1943 and 1951 Bogart starred in many other films including The Treasure
of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Key Largo (1948).
The African Queen
In 1951, Bogart starred in the movie The African Queen, with Katharine Hepburn,
again directed by his friend John Huston. It was a difficult shoot, on location
in Africa and just about everyone in the cast came down with dysentery except
Bogart and John Huston. Bogart explained: I built a solid wall of scotch between
me and the bugs. If a mosquito bit me, he'd fall over dead drunk.
Final Roles
He dropped his asking price to get the role of Captain Queeg in Edward Dmytryk's
The Caine Mutiny, then griped with some of his old bitterness about it. (This
never happens to Cooper or Grant or Gable, but always to me. Why does it happen
to me?)
Bogart gave a bravura performance as Captain Queeg, in many ways an extension of
the character he had played in The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Big Sleep
- the wary loner who trusts no one - but with none of the warmth or humor that
made those characters so appealing. Like his portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs in The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bogart played - but did not overplay - a paranoid,
self-pitying character whose small-mindedness eventually destroyed him.
Sabrina (dir. Billy Wilder) and The Barefoot Contessa (dir. Joseph Mankiewicz)
in 1954 gave him two of his subtlest roles.
In 1955, he made three films: We're No Angels (dir. Michael Curtiz), The Left
Hand of God (dir. Edward Dmytryk) and The Desperate Hours (dir. William Wyler).
Mark Robson's The Harder They Fall was his last film.
Death
By the late 1950s, Bogart's health was failing. Once, after signing a long-term
deal with Warner Bros, Bogart predicted with glee that his teeth and hair would
fall out before the contract ended. That sent a fuming Jack Warner to his
lawyers.
Bogart contracted cancer of the esophagus. He almost never spoke of it and
refused to see a doctor until January of 1956, and by then removal of his
esophagus, two lymph nodes and a rib was too little, too late.
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy came to see him. Bogart was too weak to walk
up and down stairs. He tried to joke about it: Put me in the dumbwaiter and I'll
ride down to the first floor in style.
Hepburn has described the last time she and Spencer Tracy saw Bogart: Spence
patted him on the shoulder and said, Goodnight, Bogie. Bogie turned his eyes to
Spence very quietly and with a sweet smile covered Spence's hand with his own
and said, Goodbye, Spence. Spence's heart stood still. He understood.
Bogart had just turned 57 and weighed only 80 pounds (36 kg) when he died on
January 14, 1957 after falling into a coma. He died in Hollywood. His funeral
was held at All Saints Episcopal Church with musical selections played from
Bogart's favorite composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and Claude Debussy. Bacall
had asked Spencer Tracy to give the eulogy but Tracy was too upset. John Huston
gave the eulogy instead, and reminded the gathered mourners that while Bogart's
life had ended far too soon, it had been a rich one. Huston said: He is quite
irreplaceable. There will never be another like him.
Huston also noted of Bogart:
Himself, he never took too seriously - his work most seriously. He regarded
the somewhat gaudy figure of Bogart, the star, with an amused cynicism; Bogart,
the actor, he held in deep respect...In each of the fountains at Versailles
there is a pike which keeps all the carp active; otherwise they would grow
overfat and die. Bogie took rare delight in performing a similar duty in the
fountains of Hollywood. Yet his victims seldom bore him any malice, and when
they did, not for long. His shafts were fashioned only to stick into the outer
layer of complacency, and not to penetrate through to the regions of the spirit
where real injuries are done.
Katharine Hepburn said:
He was one of the biggest guys I ever met. He walked straight down the center
of the road. No maybes. Yes or no. He liked to drink. He drank. He liked to sail
a boat. He sailed a boat. He was an actor. He was happy and proud to be an
actor. He'd say to me, 'Are you comfortable? Everything okay?' He was looking
out for me.
His cremated remains are interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery,
Glendale, California. Buried with him is a small gold whistle, which he had
given to his future wife, Lauren Bacall, before they married. In reference to
their first movie together, it was inscribed: If you want anything, just
whistle.
Humphrey Bogart's hand and foot prints are immortalized in the forecourt of
Grauman's Chinese Theater and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at
6322 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.
After his death, the Bogie Cult formed at the Brattle Theatre which contributed
to his spike in popularity in the late 50's and 60's.
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