Humphrey Bogart
Some people are famous for 15 minutes, others are famous to 15 people but it's only a chosen few who get to be legends of the Silver Screen. Each month, Jo Mama selects a star and celebrates their life and work. This month: Humphrey Bogart. Illustration by Leonie Woods.
Despite being born into a wealthy family, Humphrey Bogart was born on Christmas Day and predictably always felt he'd been cheated out of a birthday. He's been celebrated in songs such as 4HB by Bryan Ferry and spoofed in bugs bunny cartoons. The three films most people associate Humphrey Bogart with are; Casablanca (1942), The Big Sleep (1946), and To Have And Have Not (1944). All of these films are incredibly likeable and watchable movies that I'd recommend you watch one day. When comedians impersonate Bogart they tend to have him respond to the "you know how to whistle" line from To Have And Have Not. Or they have him dressed in the white suit from Casablanca telling a piano player to, "Play it Again, Sam." (even though Bogart never said those exact words.)
However, Bogart's best work were the films he made with the director John Huston; The Maltese Falcon (1941), Key Largo (1948), The Treasures Of Sierra Madre (1948), and The African Queen (1951), and Beat The Devil (1953). Bogart believed the best of his collaborations with Huston was, The Maltese Falcon which he described as being a masterpiece.
Humphrey Bogart appeared in 75 motion pictures, the first was a Gangster movie called, The Petrified Forest. For several years Bogart was offered similar roles in similar movies.
He once said, “There must be something in my tone of voice, or this arrogant face — something that antagonises everybody. Nobody likes me on sight. I suppose that’s why I’m cast as the heavy.”
One of the best of the early films is Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) in which Bogart's character gets shot by James Cagney. Bogart rarely saw his own films and didn’t attend the premieres.
Bogart was friends with the Rat Pack and like them he was rarely seen without a drink in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth. There are probably as many witty booze-based quotes attributed to Bogart as there are to Dean Martin. My Top 3 lines are; "The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind." "Things are never so bad they can't be made worse." and “I don't trust any bastard who doesn't drink. People who don't drink are afraid of revealing themselves.” The last of these quotes was said whilst in conversation with his friend Joe Hyams. It was Hyams who got to write the only authorized biography of Bogart. According to Hyams Bogie loved to play chess and would quote from Plato, Emerson and Pope and was slightly obsessed with the works of Shakespeare. Another of Bogart's passions was sailing. During the war he had served in the Navy and as soon as he was rich enough, he bought himself a yacht.
The weirdest fact I could discover about Bogart is that he is a distant relation of Princess Diana they are ninth cousins, once removed. Despite being of English descent Bogart he was unable to master a Cockney accent, so his character in The African Queen had to become a Canadian.
When Humphrey Bogart died of Cancer in 1957 Lauren Bacall, who was the love of his life said, " There is not a good friend or acquaintance of Humphrey Bogart's life who was not better for having known him and whose life is now less good because he's not around."
