A Canadian Tribute To Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart
was born on Christmas Day, 1899... There are other rumors flying around, but you can view his marriage licence to Lauren Bacall, which of course should have his real birth date at, "All Things Bogart"... You will find a link to this site at the bottom of this page...
His father "Belmont DeForest
Bogart" was a successful doctor and his mother "Maud Humphrey
Bogart" a busy freelance magazine illustrator... He grew up in
comfortable surroundings and not running the streets of New York
as many may be led to believe... Dr. Bogart hoped his son would
follow in his footsteps and receive a good education, but such was
not to be... The young Bogart just could not buckle down in school and was
constantly fooling around or pulling pranks which kept him in trouble with school authorities...
After being booted out of school in 1918, he entered the armed forces just as World War 1 was ending... One of the rumors floating around being that this is where he received the wound to his lip, from a wood splinter that caused his unique sort of lisp, another is that his father gave him a fat lip... Whatever the truth is, it matters very little now how it happened, what matters is that it looms very large in the Bogart legend... Most accounts agree that he saw no combat during his stint in the Navy... Returning home in 1919, he bounced from job to job until he started working for his next door neighbor "William A. Brady" who was a theatrical stage producer... Starting out as a stage hand and property man, then manager and finally working his way up to actor... He had some success in the twenties and is rumored to have appeared in several silent films, one of which is said to still survive...
"Helen Menken" was a successful stage actress, more importantly she was a close friend of Broadway Critic "Alexander Woolcott", so after his friends convinced him that it would be a good carreer move, he married her in 1926... As we all know, a marriage of this type could never last, so after 18 months of arguing, and a couple of black eyes on Helen's part, the marriage folded in 1927...
In April of 1928, within months of his first divorce, he married "Mary Phillips", also a stage actress... He had known her since 1923 and had appeared on stage with her. Although this time he married for love, it was still, at times, a stormy marriage but lasted until 1938... Even after the divorce the two remained good friends.
He was lured to Hollywood in 1930 and shot a few films that were not very successful so he returned to New York... However, in 1934 Bogart and "Leslie Howard" were in a stage play called "The Petrified Forest" which was a smash hit...
Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the play and asked Leslie Howard to play the lead but with "Edward G. Robinson" as the villain... Howard had promised Bogart that he wouldn't be in the film unless his friend was included in the cast... Warner Brothers relented and Bogart was signed to play a very villianous "Duke Mantee"... The film was released in 1936 and, as they say, the rest is history... Bogart would later reprise the same role on the television show "Producers Showcase" in the 1954-55 season with "Henry Fonda" and his wife "Lauren Bacall"... This would be the only time that bogie would appear in a dramatic T.V. production...
By 1937 Bogie's marriage
to Mary Phillips was falling apart and they divorced... He had
met a film actress on the set of "Marked Woman" by the name of
"Mayo Methot"... Mayo was a boozer and a scrapper who wouldn't
back down from any man or woman and is said to have had a pretty
good knockout punch, but unfortunately, she also had a mean
jealous streak in her which caused major problems for them...
Bogart married her in 1938 and this marriage went on to live in
infamy... They were well known in Hollywood as "The Battling
Bogarts" due to the trail of wrecked hotel rooms and barrooms
they left behind them... It didn't take much to get them
fighting, some of their friends would bait them to get them going, and when they did it was usually a good one with
fistfights and flying objects... Bogie
even named his boat "Sluggy" after his wifes nickname...
Soon the
Bogart's were being barred from some of their favorite Hollywood
haunts... Although Bogart was always a drinking man, his time
with Mayo was an alcoholic nightmare as she was constantly
checking in and out of sanitoriums for "The Cure"...
Bogie wound up spending most of his later days with her in a drunken haze, showing up late for movie
shoots and appointments...
After The Petrified Forest, he spent next five years falling in and
out of top billing behind such actors as Wayne Morris and Barton
MacLane, usually as a bad guy, but he did shine in these roles ... Most of these movies were run of the mill quickies
with the exceptions being, "Dead End, 1937", "Angels With
Dirty Faces, 1938", "The Roaring Twenties, 1939", and "High
Sierra, 1941"... In 1941 he had the lead in "The Wagons Roll At
Night" and from that point on his name remained at the top of
the credits...
His next film "The Maltese Falcon, 1941", one of
the truly great murder-mystery films of all time, solidified him
as a box office biggie... The following film "All Through The
Night, 1942" was a comedy that was that was a bit of a change
for him but totally enjoyable... Two bad guy-good guy movies
followed this... But something special was on the horizon...
In 1943 "Casablanca" was released with Bogart in the lead and an international cast that included, "Ingrid Bergman", "Paul Henreid", "Claude Rains", "Conrad Veidt", "Sydney Greenstreet", "Peter Lorre", and "S.Z. Sakall" who was also lovingly known as "Cuddles"... The natural accents of the players only added to the realism of the plot... This film had it all, a love triangle, spies and theives, mystery and intrigue, Nazis and resistance fighters, exotic locales, and a surprise but happy ending... Casablanca is considered by many, myself included, to be the best film ever made... The success of Casablanca made him a mega-star...
Lauren Bacall
His next "Big One" would
be "To Have and Have Not, 1945"... Taken from a supposedly unfilmable
original story by "Ernest Hemingway", although very little of
the actual book remains in the script... It turned out to be a
bit of a Casablanca clone with all the intrigue intact but
different enough to be a great movie... Excellent acting with
"Walter Brennan" at his best as a lovable drunken sidekick to
Bogart and "Hoagy Carmichael" as a moody piano playing bar
singer to add to the atmosphere... It was sure to be a great
flick... And as an added attraction there was a very sultry
"Lauren Bacall", who would soon become Bogart's fourth
wife... The pair would go on to do three more films together,
"The Big Sleep,1946", "Dark Passage,1947'', and
"Key Largo,1948''...
This was Bacall's first screen
appearance and what a memorable debut it was... On screen she was
slinky, she was somewhat sleazy, but most of all she was sexy...
They flowed together like whiskey and water, their playful banter
amongst the other goings on was magic... Off screen she was
irresistible to Bogie... Mayo was still his wife at this time and
had wrongfully worried about his having an affair with
Ingrid Bergman during the filming of
Casablanca. She was wrong then but she got it right this time. She had no
chance with the new kid on the block and she knew it... Bogie fell head over
heels in love with Bacall and the two immediately started having
an extended affair...
Bogart and Mayo were divorced in 1945 and he and
Bacall were married within days of it becoming final... This very
happy union produced two children, a boy "Stephen" and a girl
"Leslie" named after his good friend Leslie Howard.... He remained with Bacall till his death...
Bogart then cruised through the rest of the 40's and into the 50's putting out films that ran from average to great... Some of the great ones are, "The Big Sleep, 1946", "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948", and "The African Queen, 1951"... The latter giving him his only oscar...
Humphrey Bogart died of cancer on January 14, 1957... The World lost a great one on that day...