Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart (January 23 1899 - January 14 1957) was one of the greatest American film actors of his day, and remains a legend almost 50 years after his death.
His most famous role is Casablanca.
Other well-known Bogart films include, in chronological order, Angels With Dirty Faces,(1938) The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep(1946) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The African Queen (1951) (For which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor), and The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Bogart remains something of a cult figure overseas. The French cinema is greatly in his debt. French actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo were greatly influenced by his work and image.
In "Breathless," perhaps the best-known work of French director Jean-Luc Godard, the main character, Michel, openly worships the persona of Humphrey Bogart, and mimes some of Bogart's best-known gestures in a way that's both absurd and touching.
Francois Truffaut, another first-rate French director of the "New Wave," directed a film "Shoot the Piano Player" which is almost as direct an homage to Bogart.
In India, the greatest national film star, Ashok Kumar, listed Bogart as a major influence on his "naturalist" acting style.
Bogart is no less an icon in America. One of Woody Allen's most popular comic films, "Play It Again, Sam", is about a filmloving young man in love with Bogart's aura and intimidated by it.
In 1997, the U.S. Postal Service featured Humphrey Bogart in its "Legends of Hollywood" series.
Bogart's exalted standing in the Hollywood pantheon would have astonished most of the agents, casting directors and studio bosses who knew him in the 1920's and '30's as a good but hardly great New York stage actor and a B-movie player in Hollywood.
Bogart began his acting career on the Brooklyn stage in 1921, playing a Japanese butler. He never took a single acting lesson, and had no formal training. An early reviewer described Bogart's work in a small role: "To be as kind as possible, we will only say that this actor was inadequate." Bogart loathed the trivial roles he had to play early in his career, "White Pants Willie" roles, as he called them. He was asked only to walk on stage in tennis whites, asking `Tennis anyone?'.
But Bogart was serious about his work, learned his lines quickly, absorbed his roles deeply, and kept improving. He was in 21 Broadway productions between 1922-1935.
Spencer Tracy was a serious actor whom Bogart liked and admired, and it was Spencer Tracy, in 1930, who first called Bogart "Bogie". The name stuck.
In 1934, Bogart turned in a sterling performance as the escaped killer "Duke Mantee" in Robert Sherwood's play "The Petrified Forest." The play had 197 performances in New York, and Bogart made every audience gasp. Leslie Howard, who played the lead actor, knew how crucial Bogart's performance was to the success of the play. Howard refused to reprise his role in a Hollywood film unless Bogart played Duke Mantee. Bogart never forgot this, and named his only daughter Leslie after Leslie Howard. Robert Sherwood also became and remained a close friend of Bogart's. In 1936 came the release of the screen version of "The Petrified Forest." Bogart got excellent reviews.
Nevertheless, Bogart was stuck in a series of crime dramas for Warner Brothers, cast in conventional tough guy roles, with little acting range. 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.
In 1939, Bogart was forced to play a vampire in "The Return of Doctor X." Bogart 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 Brothers had no interest in making Bogart a star. The system was made for quantity, not quality. Shooting on a new movie might begin days or only hours after shooting on the last movie had been completed. Any actor who refused a role could be suspended without pay.
Bogart thought that Warner Brothers were cheap in their wardrobe department, and often wore his own personal suits in his movies. On the film "High Sierra," Bogart used how own mutt to play his character's dog "Pard."
The leading men ahead of Bogart included not only such classic stars as James Cagney, Spencer Tracy 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 went to these men, and Bogart had to take what was left.
Bogart had been raised to believe that acting, especially acting tough-guy roles in "B" pictures, was a life beneath a gentleman. Sensitive, caustic by nature, and feeling aggrieved by the inferior films 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, cursed to live out his life among second-rate people and projects, keeping even his friends off balance.
Bogart's father was a successful surgeon and his mother, Maud Humphrey, was a very successful commercial illustrator. Indeed, she used a drawing of her baby Humphrey Bogart in a well-known ad campaign for Mellins Baby Food. In her prime, she made over $50,000 a year as an illustrator, a vast sum for a woman to earn in those days. They lived in a fashionable apartment on the Upper West Side, and had a cottage in upstate New York.
But Maud Humphrey was a very distant woman, her husband was not well-suited to her, and the Bogarts' marriage was troubled. There was a lot of screaming in the house, and both parents were addicted to alcohol and to morphine, at various times.
Humphrey was the oldest child of three. Both of Bogart's younger sisters were troubled adults; Kay ("Catty") died at 34 of peritonitis complicated by alcoholism. Frances "Pat" Bogart Rose was tall, shy and sweet, but mentally unstable. Bogart was gentle with her and paid for her care.
Other relatives were few and rarely saw the Bogarts. (When Bogart fell in love with Lauren Bacall and she introduced him to her large extended family, he said "Christ, you've got more goddamned relatives than I've ever seen.")
As a boy, Bogart was teased for his curls, his tidiness, for the "cute" pictures his mother posed him for, the Little Lord Fauntleroy clothes she dressed him in -- and for the name "Humphrey."
From his childhood, Bogart learned the manners of a gentleman, learned to stage manage appearances, to hate hypocrisy, and to channel his pain into caustic wit. All of these things played a part in his movie image.
He also learned to love sailing, and several of his classic films involve ships ("Key Largo," "The African Queen," "The Caine Mutiny.")
In 1918, Bogart was expelled from the prep school Phillips Andover. He joined the Naval Reserve, did menial labor, and drifted into acting.
"High Sierra," a 1941 Raoul Walsh film, was written by Bogart's friend and drinking partner, John Huston. This film was a step forward for Bogart. He still played the villain, "Mad Dog" Roy Earle; he still died at the end. But he got to kiss Ida Lupino, and to play a man with some depth to him.
Bogart's character slid 90 feet down a mountain to his punishment. Bogart's stunt double, Buster Wiles, bounced a few times going down the mountain and wanted another take to improve his fall. "Forget it," said Raoul Walsh. "It's good enough for the 25-cent customers."
Bogart and Huston enjoyed each other, and drew on each other's gifts. Bogart had always been conscious of being a small man physically; Huston was about 6'5". Bogart had never been close to his father, and avoided doctors generally; Huston was very close to his father, the actor Walter Huston.
Bogart admired and somewhat envied Huston because Huston got to write scripts, to shape a story and make sure it had heft. Bogart had been a poor student but he was a lifelong reader, and admired writers.
Huston had drifted a lot as a young man, and was always easily bored. He admired Bogart not just for his acting talent but even more for his ability to focus that talent at will.
James Cagney had turned down Bogart's part in "High Sierra"; now George Raft turned down the male lead in John Huston's directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon, also (1941).
Bogart grabbed the part and audiences saw him play a leading role with real complexity. Bogart's character Sam Spade was still capable of duplicity and violence, but he was a leading man: handsome, smart, fated to survive. Bogart's timing was razor-sharp. When he discovered his sexy client was a murderess, he coldly turned her in, with a line he made famous: "I won't play the sap for you!"
As America entered World War Two, it turned to a new kind of leading man, less conventionally handsome, less polished, but tougher and more willing to use violence to make the world safe and to get what he wanted. Bogart's persona was much better suited to the war years than to the 1930's. Bogart played a guy who knew how to fire a gun fast, how to punch a guy on the jaw, spit out "Tell that to your boss," and make it seem real.
After several others passed on the role, Bogart got his first romantic lead: playing Rick Blaine, the nightclub owner in Casablanca (1942). This remains, almost 60 years later, a fresh, riveting performance. Bogart brought his natural intensity to the role. He also brought humor, and his timing was never better.
He had learned how to convey pain in his eyes, and how to show emotion with subtle shadings of his voice. He was still young enough to look virile, but he also looked like a man who had lived hard.
Here was the role he was born to play, the man exiled from New York, living by his wits among people somewhat inferior in brains and morals. Here was a man wary of showing his emotions or idealism, a man who kept even his friends off balance.
Bogart was lucky to be surrounded by a superb international cast, including Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt. The script and the Max Steiner musical score were both excellent, and the camera work was fine.
But Bogart is the movie's center. The boy who was teased for being girlish became a male icon for his toughness, his smarts, his insolent humor. He plays the soured idealist with humor and grace, and regains his idealism at the end in a daring show of murderous bravery.
As in "The Maltese Falcon," Bogart's character was honor-bound in the end to give up the lovely woman who wanted him. But his love interest in the Maltese Falcon was a callow murderess; here his lady love, Ilsa Lund, was lovelier and a woman of honor.
As the French director Francois Truffaut later wrote, Bogart -- and Rick Blaine -- knew that causes are worth less than beautiful deeds. Rick sent Ilsa away.
"Casablanca" won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture, and Bogart won the Best Actor award that year, for his portrayal of Rick Blaine.
Bogart was married four times, but only the fourth marriage, to Lauren Bacall, was a happy one. They met while making To Have and Have Not a film loosely modeled on "Casablanca".
Bogart and Bacall's relation is at the heart of The Big Sleep one of the best films Hollywood ever made.
In Bacall, Bogart found a woman with the spunk and courage he admired but more domestic, gentler. Bacall didn't drink; none of Bogart's friends could remember him being in love with a woman who didn't drink. In Bogart, Bacall found an older man who deeply loved her, and who could show her how to make her way in Hollywood professionally and socially.
Bacall once wrote of Bogart: "You had to stay awake married to him. Every time I thought I could relax and do everything I wanted, he'd buck. There was no way to predict his reactions, no matter how well I knew him."
Bogart and Bacall had two children. Bogart became a father at 49. He felt awkward about it. ("What do you do with a kid?" he asked a friend. "They don't drink.")
In 1951, Bogart won a second Academy Award for Best Actor, for his role in "The African Queen". He had vowed to friends that if he won, he'd make a speech breaking the usual convention of thanking everyone in sight. Bogart had insisted he'd say: `I don't owe anything to anyone! I earned this award by hard work and paying attention to my craft.'
But when he won, he thanked John Huston, Katharine Hepburn, the cast and crew of the film. He had always felt that people in Hollywood didn't like him very much, and he was deeply moved to find himself so popular now.
Bogart had always treated his body poorly, and drunk heavily when not working. (The only time he refused to get drunk was on New Year's Eve.) He'd gotten alopecia areata -- a hair loss problem -- partly from vitamin deficiencies and poor diet. He also smoked unfiltered Chesterfields. Now, he came down with cancer of the esophagus.
In 1955, he made several films but his health was failing. True to his code, he almost never spoke of the disease that made his body waste away. He would not see a doctor until January of 1956, and by then surgery of his esophagus, two lymph nodes and a rib was too little, too late. He was only 80 pounds when he died on January 14, 1957. He had just turned 57.
John Huston gave the eulogy, 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."