Born to a prosperous New York family, young Humphrey DeForest Bogart lived a life very dissimilar to that of the hard-bitten hoodlums and toughs he later played on the screen. After serving on a merchant ship during World War I (during which he received the distinctive wound to his lip that gave his face so much character), he went into the theater. In his early stage career, he usually played callow society types. Photos of him from the 1920s show a young man with striking Valentino-like good looks.
After he attained stardom, Humphrey Bogart often joked that he was the kind of stage actor who would enter a scene with a tennis racquet in his hand, calling out “Tennis, anyone?” When the sound revolution hit Hollywood in the late 1920s, the film studios needed actors who could talk: Broadway was the answer. It was in that atmosphere that Humphrey Bogart was signed by Fox. His first feature-length film was Up the River (1930), in which he had a substantial role. But his parts kept diminishing in size. He appeared in a total of 10 films between 1930 and 1934; the most interesting among them is Three on a Match (1932), in which he played a gangster for the first time. Here one can catch an early glimpse of his tough-guy persona. With his career seemingly going nowhere, Fox let Humphrey Bogart go. A failure in the movies, he went back to Broadway. It was here that he had his first big break. He landed the supporting role of Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest.
The hit play starred LESLIE HOWARD, and when Warner Bros. bought the rights to the story, they wanted the famous actor to play the lead. But they didn’t want Humphrey Bogart. Leslie Howard, however, insisted that Humphrey Bogart be cast or else he wouldn’t make the film. Warners finally relented and, when the film was released, Humphrey Bogart received raves for his electric performance. As a result, Warner Bros. signed Humphrey Bogart to a long-term contract. Further, Humphrey Bogart later named his first child (with Lauren Bacall) Leslie, in honor of the man who helped make him a star.
From 1936 through 1940, Humphrey Bogart played a variety of roles, from gangsters in melodramas such as Bullets or Ballots (1936) and San Quentin (1937) to well-meaning heroes in such films as Marked Woman (1937) and Crime School (1938). Whenever Humphrey Bogart had a leading role, it was either in support of another more famous actor or actress or in a low-budget movie for which Warners could find no other actor in their stable. Thus he appeared in The Oklahoma Kid (1939) and Virginia City (1940), two westerns for which he was thoroughly miscast. Even more striking was his being cast as a zombie with a white streak through his hair, making him look like a skunk, in The Return of Dr. X (1939). But when Humphrey Bogart had a good role during these difficult years, he made the best of it. He gave a strong performance in Black Legion (1937) as an ordinary working man who falls under the spell of a hate group patterned after the Ku Klux Klan. As a gangster coming home in the classic Dead End (1937), he steals the movie from its star, JOEL MCCREA.
Before he became a star, Humphrey Bogart made 29 films during his second stint in Hollywood. The breakthrough occurred with High Sierra (1941). The lead role of gangster “Mad Dog” Roy Earle was first offered to GEORGE RAFT, but Raft turned it down because he didn’t want to play a character who dies on screen. It was then offered to PAUL MUNI, who turned it down because George Raft turned it down. The other Warner stars, JAMES CAGNEY, JOHN GARFIELD, and EDWARD G. ROBINSON, weren’t going to star in a film that both George Raft and Paul Muni had refused. That left Humphrey Bogart. Under the direction of action expert RAOUL WALSH, Humphrey Bogart created a tough guy of touching vulnerability, a new kind of hero—the ANTIHERO. JOHN HUSTON had written the screenplay of High Sierra, and soon thereafter the young writer was given a chance to direct his first film. He chose The Maltese Falcon and he requested Humphrey Bogart for the lead. He got him, and the film was a smash hit.
As Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Humphrey Bogart became a solidly bankable Warner Bros. star. But he was an action star and had yet to prove himself as a romantic leading man. There was some doubt in Hollywood that he could make the leap. But then came Casablanca, directed by MICHAEL CURTIZ in 1942. Starring opposite INGRID BERGMAN at her most beautiful, Humphrey Bogart’s performance (he was nominated for an Academy Award) further refined the definition of antihero and made him a full-fledged movie star of the first magnitude. It’s worth noting, however, that RONALD REAGAN was offered the part of Rick Blaine but he turned it down. Humphrey Bogart’s career was advanced by default yet again, but the result was what many people consider Humphrey Bogart’s quintessential performance.
Humphrey Bogart’s enduring fame during and after his lifetime is due both to his screen persona and to his good fortune at having worked with some of Hollywood’s greatest directors. He worked, for instance, with HOWARD HAWKS in To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946) and NICHOLAS RAY in In a Lonely Place (1950). But most important, Humphrey Bogart worked with John Huston, not only in The Maltese Falcon but also in five other top-notch films: Across the Pacific (1942), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947), Key Largo (1948), The African Queen (1952)—for which he won an Academy Award as Best Actor—and Beat the Devil (1954). Every one of the collaborations between Huston and Humphrey Bogart were either critically or commercially successful, or both.
Humphrey Bogart took many chances with his career in the late 1940s and up until his death from cancer in 1957. Nonetheless, he had very few flops. In The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) he played a psychopathic painter trying to kill his wife (BARBARA STANWYCK). In The Caine Mutiny (1954) he gave a remarkable performance as Captain Queeg, a bully falling apart under the strain of leadership. In The Desperate Hours (1955) he played a heavy not unlike the character of Duke Mantee that launched his career 20 years earlier.
Humphrey Bogart’s personal life was as rocky as his early film career. In 1926 he married a popular stage actress named Helen Menken. The marriage lasted barely a year. In 1928 he married yet another Broadway actress, Mary Phillips. This union lasted much longer—until 1937. He married Mayo Methot soon thereafter, but the marriage ended in divorce after Humphrey Bogart met and fell in love with Lauren Bacall during the filming of To Have and Have Not. In 1945, Humphrey Bogart married Bacall and the two collaborated in several hit films (The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo), as well as in raising their two children.
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