Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an iconic American actor who retains legendary status decades after his death. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Bogart the Greatest Male Star of All Time.

Early career

Bogart did menial labor, joined the Naval Reserve, and eventually drifted into acting. 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.

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He 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 roles he had to play early in his career, calling them "White Pants Willie" roles.

Related Topics:
Brooklyn - 1921 - Japanese

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Bogart was in 21 Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935. He played callow juveniles, or the romantic second lead in drawing room comedies. The legend persists that he was the first actor to say "Tennis, anyone?" on stage.

Related Topics:
Broadway - 1922 - 1935

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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, once biting the finger of a cop who tried to arrest her for drunkenness.

Related Topics:
Helen Menken - 1926 - 1927 - 1928 - Mary Philips

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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 Bogart "Bogie." The name stuck.

Related Topics:
Spencer Tracy - 1930

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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 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."

Related Topics:
1934 - Play - Arthur Hopkins - Robert Sherwood

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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 movie.

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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."

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Warner Brothers 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 Brothers saw that Leslie Howard would not budge, they hired Bogart to play Mantee. Bogart never forgot this, and named his only daughter Leslie.

Related Topics:
Warner Brothers - Edward G. Robinson - Scotland

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Robert Sherwood remained a close friend of Bogart's. In 1936, the movie version of The Petrified Forest came out. Bogart got excellent reviews. Still, he was stuck in a series of crime dramas for Warner Brothers and cast as a heavy, 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.

Related Topics:
1936 - Jack Warner

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Mary Philips refused to give up her Broadway career to come to Hollywood with Bogart, and soon they were divorced.

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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 and the more she 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 lightheartedly named Sluggy after his hot-tempered wife.

Related Topics:
August 21 - 1938 - Mayo Methot - Civil War - Julius Epstein

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In 1938, Warner Brothers made Bogart do a "hillbilly musical" called Swing Your Lady, playing a wrestling promoter managing the career of an idiotic giant. In 1939, Bogart reached a new low when he had to play a mad scientist 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."

Related Topics:
1938 - Hillbilly - 1939

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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 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 Brothers were cheap in their wardrobe department, and often wore his own personal suits in his movies. On the movie High Sierra, Bogart used his own mutt to play his character's dog "Pard."

Related Topics:
1936 - 1940

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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."

Related Topics:
1930s - Dick Powell

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The leading men ahead of Bogart included not just 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 Warner Brothers bought went to these men. Bogart had to take what was left. He made movies with names like Racket Busters, San Quentin, and You Can't Get Away With Murder. The only substantial roles he ever got during this period were in [[Samuel

Related Topics:
James Cagney - Victor McLaglen - George Raft - Paul Muni

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Goldwyn]]'s Dead End (1937) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) (another picture in which he gets shot by James Cagney). Bogart rarely saw his own movies and didn't even attend the premieres, which were an expected part of the actor's job.

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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 Brothers was not something to be mentioned in polite company.

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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 on the record. 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."

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