In 1936, Humphrey Bogart, a rich kid from New York City who became a professional actor by default, finally achieved stardom on Broadway and in the movies.
Leslie Howard's Role in Bogart's Stardom
The role that put him on the map was Duke Mantee, the ruthless mobster in the Broadway hit The Petrified Forest. Warner Bros. bought the rights to the Robert Sherwood melodrama and wanted Edward G. Robinson to play Mantee.
But Leslie Howard, who starred with Bogart in the Broadway production, held casting approval and insisted Bogart play Mantee on film.
The movie won Bogart acclaim and a Warners studio contract. But the studio proceeded to cast him as -- surprise! -- gangsters and other unsavory outsiders.
He hated being typecast.
Bogart Stars in The Maltese Falcon, Often Considered the First Film Noir
1941 brought Bogart's next breakthrough, the landmark film noir The Maltese Falcon. Screenwriter John Huston was making his directorial debut with the twice-before filmed Dashiell Hammett detective story.
Huston and Bogart were a cinematic dream team and the movie was not only a hit -- it also helped establish the Bogart persona mixing tough-mindedness and idealism.
The rest of the 1940s pretty much belonged to Bogart.
Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca
In 1942 came the wartime melodrama of intrigue, romance and patriotism, Casablanca, considered among the greatest of Hollywood films. Directed by Michael Curtiz and featuring a remarkable cast, Casablanca took the Best Picture Oscar.
As world-weary, cynical saloon keeper Rick Blaine, "Bogie" reclaims his idealism while sacrificing a star-crossed love. Bogart and Warners had found a character template for the ages. But amazingly, Bogart lost out on the much-deserved Best Actor statuette, which went instead to Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine.
(The role in Casablanca fit Bogart like a custom suit, reflecting his personal disdain for pretension, authority and anything "phony." Not coincidentally, while Bogart felt compelled to wear a toupee on screen starting in the early 40s, he refused to wear it off camera. And he didn't give a damn about being photographed without it.)
Bogart, Bacall and To Have and Have Not
At this juncture, Bogart was engaged in a nightmarish third marriage to minor actress Mayo Methot. Their infamous drunken brawls inspired the moniker "the Battling Bogarts." The doomed union was finally pushed over the matrimonial cliff when Bogart began production on To Have and Have Not.
Bogart was cast opposite 19-year-old fashion model and acting neophyte Lauren Bacall, who famously beckoned him in the film: "You know how to whistle, don't ya Steve? You just put your lips together...and blow."
Exit Mayo, enter "Betty" Bacall. Audiences watched them literally fall in love on the screen. Bogart became Bacall's mentor, acting teacher and lover. They married in the spring of 1945.
The first of their two children, Stephen Bogart, was born in 1949 and was named for his dad's character in To Have and Have Not. (Oddly, Bacall is the only character in the film who called him that. Everyone else called him Harry, his name in the Ernest Hemingway novel.)
Bogart's Love of Sailing Reflected in Key Largo
Bogart and Bacall re-teamed three more times in the 1940s, including the outstanding 1946 noir The Big Sleep and 1948's Key Largo. The latter, a thriller set in the Florida keys, showed off Bogart's real-life love of sailing. Ironically, it co-starred Edward G. Robinson as a ruthless gangster. (Robinson was Warners' original choice to play the role of Duke Mantee.)
By the late 1940s, Bogart had acquired enough contractual clout at Warners to refuse film assignments he didn't like and to form his own indie production company, Santana. (The firm was named for his beloved boat, which he helmed as the hero in Key Largo.)
Mr. Bogart Goes to Washington
Around this time, the politically liberal couple headed a Hollywood delegation to Washington to protest the tactics of the red-baiting House Un-American Activities Committee. But pressures from the (very nervous) studios forced Bogart, Bacall and the others to back off their criticism.
Back at work, Bogart branched out in increasingly diverse roles, as if to prove he was capable of being much more than just "Bogie."
He was a petty and ultimately unhinged prospector in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which re-teamed him with John Huston.
And under the Santana Productions banner, Bogart played an ill-fated attorney in Knock on Any Door, a displaced saloon keeper in the postwar drama Tokyo Joe and a gun-runner in Sirocco. He also made the sly Maltese Falcon parody Beat the Devil.
Among Bogart's best films of the period was 1950's In a Lonely Place, a backstage Hollywood noir in which he played a violent, hard-drinking screenwriter suspected of murder.
Humphrey Bogart Wins Oscar For The African Queen
It took another project with Huston to earn the star his only Academy Award. The rugged romance The African Queen, co-starring Katharine Hepburn, was shot on location under arduous circumstances.
Bogart's final years were busy, even as decades of smoking began taking their toll. Among his last films were the frothy romance Sabrina, the character study The Barefoot Contessa and the service drama The Caine Mutiny, in which Bogart memorably played the unstable but strangely sympathetic Capt. Queeg.
Bogart Finally Fulfilled in Private Life
Away from the cameras, the hard-drinking Bogie held court as founder of the famed Rat Pack that included Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and others.
He sailed frequently, often leaving the seasick-prone Bacall at home.
And he enjoyed the kind of warm family life denied him as a child and in his three earlier, failed marriages.
Humphrey Bogart was in bed at home in Los Angeles when he succumbed to esophageal cancer on Jan. 14, 1957, at age 57.
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In Part 1, we trace Humphrey Bogart's roots from a privileged childhood in New York through World War I naval service to the first years of his career on stage and in films.
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
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