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Infobox_Biography |
  subject_name=Humphrey Bogart |
  image_name=Humphrey Bogart by Karsh (Library and
Archives Canada).jpg |
  image_caption=Legendary American film actor |
  quotation=Acting is experience with something
sweet behind it. |
  date_of_birth=December 25, 1899 |
  place_of_birth=New York, New York|New York, New
York, USA |
  dead=dead |
  date_of_death=January 14, 1957 |
  place_of_death=Los Angeles, California, USA

Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899
– January 14, 1957) was an iconic United
States|American actor who retains legendary status
decades after his death.  In 1999, the American
Film Institute named Bogart the
100_Years_Series#100_Years...100_Stars|Greatest
Male Star of All Time.

Bogart typically played smart, playful,
courageous, tough, occasionally reckless
characters, living in a corrupt world, yet
anchored by an inner moral code. He was also able
to play characters with flaws and weaknesses that
led to their destruction.  His most notable films
include Angels With Dirty Faces (1938 in
film|1938), The Maltese Falcon (1941 in
film|1941), Casablanca (movie)|Casablanca (1942 in
film|1942),
To Have and Have Not (film)|To Have and Have Not
(1944 in film|1944), The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The
Big Sleep (1946 in film|1946), The Treasure of the
Sierra Madre (1948 in film|1948), Key Largo
(movie)|Key Largo (1948 in film|1948), In a Lonely
Place (1950 in film|1950), The African Queen (1951
in film|1951) (for which he won an Academy Award
for Academy Award for Best Actor|Best Actor in a
Leading Role), and The Caine Mutiny (1954 in
film|1954). In all, he appeared in 75 feature
motion pictures.

Even outside of America, Bogart is seen as a cult
figure. France|French actors such as Jean-Paul
Belmondo were deeply influenced by his work and
image. In À bout de souffle (known in English as
Breathless), perhaps the best-known work of French
director Jean-Luc Godard, the protagonist Michel
worships the persona of Humphrey Bogart and mimes
some of Bogart’s best-known gestures in a
way that is both absurd and touching. François
Truffaut, another French director of the
“French New Wave|New Wave,” directed
Shoot the Piano Player, another homage to Bogart.
India’s great national movie star Ashok
Kumar (actor)|Ashok Kumar listed Bogart as a major
influence on his “natural” acting
style. When Bogart reached Kinshasa|Leopoldville
to film the movie The African Queen, his plane was
met by the United States|U.S. consul and the
History of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo|Congolese press.

Bogart is no less an icon in the country of his
birth. One of Woody Allen’s most popular
comic movies, Play It Again, Sam, is about a young
man in love with Bogart’s aura and
intimidated by it. The title refers to a frequent
misquote from Casablanca; Richard Blaine
(Bogart’s character) actually says
“Play it, Sam.” In 1997, the United
States Postal Service featured Bogart in its
“Legends of Hollywood” series. And
Entertainment Weekly magazine has named Bogart the
number one movie legend of all time.

Bogart’s exalted standing in the Hollywood,
California|Hollywood pantheon would have
astonished most of the agents, casting directors
and movie studio|studio bosses who knew him in the
1920s and 1930s as a good but hardly great
Broadway theatre|Broadway theater|stage actor and
B-movie player in Hollywood.

==Early life==

He was born Humphrey DeForest Bogart on 25
December 1899 in New York City, New York, the son
of Belmont DeForest Bogart and Maud Humphrey.

It was long believed that his birthday on
Christmas Day was a Warner Bros fiction created to
romanticise his background, and that he was really
born on 23 January 1899, a date that appeared in
many references.  This story is now considered
baseless.  Although no birth certificate has ever
been found to settle the issue conclusively, his
birth notice did appear in a Boston newspaper in
early January 1900, which would support the
December 1899 date.  Lauren Bacall always
maintained this was his true birth date.

Bogart's father was a successful surgeon. 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, then a
vast sum for a woman to earn (or a man for that
matter). The Bogarts lived in a fashionable Upper
West Side apartment, and had a cottage in upstate
New York.

Maud Humphrey was a distant woman and the Bogarts'
marriage was troubled.  Both parents were
alcoholics and/or morphine addicts at various
times.  Maud also suffered intense migraine
headaches. "I can't say I ever loved my mother,"
Bogart once said. "I admired her."  He was raised
mostly by an Irish nurse. "My parents fought," he
said another time. "We kids would pull the covers
over our ears to keep out the sound of fighting.
Our home was kept together for the sake of the
children as well as for the sake of propriety."

From his father, Bogart inherited a tendency for
needling people, and a love of fishing and
especially sailing. 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 goddamn relatives than I've ever seen.")

As a boy, Bogart was teased for his curls, his
tidiness, his lisp, for the "cute" pictures his
mother posed him for, the Little Lord Fauntleroy
clothes she dressed him in—and for the name
"Humphrey." In a childhood accident, Bogart got a
splinter of wood embedded in his lower lip.
"Goddamn doctor," Bogart later told David Niven,
"instead of stitching it up, he screwed it up."
The accident left Bogart with a slight lisp.

The Bogarts sent their son to the Trinity School
(New York)|Trinity School in New York and then to
the prestigious prep school Phillips Academy, in
Andover, Massachusetts. They hoped he would go on
to Yale University|Yale, but in 1918, Bogart was
expelled from Phillips Academy. The details of his
expulsion are disputed. One story says that he was
expelled for throwing a janitor into the local
pond, while others say that he was expelled for
smoking and drinking. His study habits were
erratic and his grades low, and he may have
hastened his departure by some intemperate
comments to those in authority. He had a lifelong
dislike of authority figures.

==Early career==

Bogart did menial labor, joined the United States
Naval Reserve|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.

He began his acting career on the Brooklyn stage
in 1921, playing a Japan|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.

Bogart was in 21 Broadway theatre|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.

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.

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.

In 1934, Bogart starred in the stage play|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."

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.

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."

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.

Robert Sherwood remained a close friend of
Bogart's. In 1936 in film|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.

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

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
American Civil War|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. 

In 1938 in film|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 in film|1939, Bogart
reached a new low when he had 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 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 in film|1936 and 1940 in film|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."

In California, in the 1930s, Bogart bought a
55-foot sailing yacht from Dick Powell and June
Allyson. 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."

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.
Bogart rarely saw his own movies and didn't even
attend the premieres, which were an expected part
of the actor's job.

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.

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."

==Rise to stardom==

High Sierra, a 1941 in film|1941 Raoul Walsh
movie, was written by Bogart's friend and drinking
partner, John Huston. The movie was a step forward
for Bogart. He still played the villain, "Mad Dog"
Roy Earle.  He still died at the end; but at least
he got to kiss Ida Lupino, and to play a character
with some depth. In a climactic scene, Bogart's
character slid 90 feet down a mountainside to his
punishment. His stunt double, Buster Wiles,
bounced a few times going down the mountain and
wanted another take to do better. "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
self-conscious about being a small man; Huston was
about 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m). Bogart had never been
close to his father; 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. Though a poor student,
Bogart was a lifelong reader. He could quote
Plato, Alexander Pope|Pope, Ralph Waldo Emerson
and over a thousand lines of William
Shakespeare|Shakespeare. He admired writers, and
some of his best friends were screenwriters,
including Louis Bromfield, Nathaniel Benchley and
Nunnally Johnson.

John Huston reported being easily bored, and
admired Bogart not just for his acting talent but
for his intense concentration.

James Cagney and George Raft had both turned down
Bogart's part in High Sierra; Raft didn't want to
play a character who died at the end. Now George
Raft turned down the male lead in John Huston's
directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon, also 1941
in film|1941.

Bogart grabbed the part and audiences saw him play
a leading role with real complexity. His character
Sam Spade was still capable of duplicity and
violence, but he was a leading man: handsome,
smart, fated to survive. When he discovered his
sexy client was a murderess, he turned her in,
with a speech he made famous: "I don't care who
loves you. I won't play the sap for you! You
killed Miles and you're going over for it. I hope
they don't hang you by your sweet neck. If you're
a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years and you'll
come back to me. If they hang you, I'll always
remember you."

As America entered World War II, it turned to a
new kind of leading man, less dapper and 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 1930s. Bogart played a guy who'd
grown up on the streets, a guy who knew how to
fire a gun, how to punch a guy on the jaw, and
spit out "Tell that to your boss."

Bogart got his first real romantic lead in
Casablanca, playing Rick Blaine, the nightclub
owner. Bogart had learned how to convey pain in
his eyes and to show emotion with subtle shadings
of his voice. He was still young but looked like a
man who had lived hard.

As Casablanca became an iconic movie, much was
made of the fact that its script was still being
written as shooting on the movie began.  Less well
understood is that the character of Rick Blaine
drew powerfully on the persona that Bogart had
been cultivating in real life for at least six
years.  The soured idealist; the loner; the
hard-drinking man exiled from better things in New
York—all of these were crucial parts of Rick
Blaine—and of Bogart.  Bogart played a
complex man wary of showing his emotions or
ideals, a chess player who kept even his friends
off balance.
In real life, Bogart himself played tournament
chess, achieving expert strength, one level below
master level. Bogart reportedly asked that Blaine
also be portrayed as a chess player.

Bogart was surrounded by a fine international
cast, including Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains,
Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid and
Conrad Veidt. Dooley Wilson played the part of
Sam, Rick's confidant and piano player, even
though he could not play the piano. The script and
Max Steiner's musical score have both been praised
extensively, as has the cinematography.

The stories that Ronald Reagan had been offered,
but passed on, the role of Rick are just that,
stories, resulting from the casual lies pumped out
by studio publicity departments in those days to
keep fans interested in the activities of a star
who was not doing anything newsworthy at the time.
Warner Brothers' publicity department concocted
similar tales during the shooting of Casablanca,
e.g., that Bogart was learning Swedish so that he
could woo Bergman, that were just as spurious.

Off the set, Bergman and Bogart hardly spoke
during the filming of Casablanca. She said later,
"I kissed him but I never knew him." Years later,
after Ingrid Bergman had taken up with Italian
director Roberto Rossellini, and borne him a
child, Bogart bawled her out for it. "You used to
be a great star," he said. "What are you now?" "A
happy woman," she replied.

Casablanca won the 1943 in film|1943 Academy Award
for Best Picture. Bogart was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Actor|Best Actor in a
Leading Role, but lost out to Paul Lukas for his
performance in Watch on the Rhine.

==Bogart and Bacall==

Only Bogart's fourth marriage, to Lauren Bacall,
was a happy one. They met while making To Have and
Have Not. Bogart played a tough, independent
fisherman named Steve, who got pushed to his limit
by some unsavory people and then got his revenge. 
They were married on 21 May 1945 at Malabar Farm,
the home of Louis Bromfield.

Bacall became an overnight sensation with her
famous line to Bogart. Leaning against a doorway,
her head down and voice low, she told Bogart's
character: "You know how to whistle, don't you,
Steve? Just put your lips together, and blow."

Bogart fell in love with Bacall. The movie's
director, Howard Hawks, once commented: "When two
people are falling in love with each other,
they're not tough to get along with, I can tell
you that. Bogie was marvelous. I said "You've got
to help" and of course after a few days he really
began to get interested in the girl. That made him
help more." Hawks also said of Bacall: "She had to
keep practicing for six to eight months to keep
that low voice. Now, it's perfectly natural. And
the funny thing is that Bogie fell in love with
the character she played, so she had to keep
playing it the rest of her life."

Bogart had another strong, unspoken friendship
with Walter Brennan, who played a harmless drunk
named Eddie in To Have and Have Not. Hawks
recalled: "The fellow who rented their boat said
'What do you take care of him for?' Bogart looked
at him and said, 'He thinks he's taking care of
me.' And he wasn't very nice the way he said it.
Those are the relationships that happen between
men."

Bogart and Bacall's relationship is at the heart
of the film noir masterpiece The Big Sleep. The
plot is complex and has holes in it that even
Raymond Chandler, who wrote the novel on which it
was based, could not explain. Hawks himself
admitted "I never figured out what was going on
but I thought it had great scenes in
it…After that got by, I said, 'I'm never
going to worry about being logical again.'"

Chandler thoroughly admired Bogart's performance:
"Bogart can be tough without a gun. Also he has a
sense of humor that contains that grating
undertone of contempt."

Bacall allowed Bogart lots of weekend time on his
boat. She got seasick on boats and Bogart liked
the boat to be an all-male preserve, stating "The
trouble with having dames on board is you can't
pee over the side." Bogart would frequently sail
to Catalina with friends or set some lobster
traps.

Bogart allowed Bacall romantic crushes on Adlai
Stevenson and Leonard Bernstein, knowing she'd
married young before ever having much chance to
date. But he made clear he'd leave Bacall if she
ever had an affair. She never did. 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 moved into a $160,000 white
brick mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles,
California|Holmby Hills, an exclusive neighborhood
between Beverly Hills, California|Beverly Hills
and Bel Air, Los Angeles, California|Bel Air. 
Bogart and Bacall had two Jaguar (car)|Jaguar
cars, and three blooded Boxer (dog)|Boxer  dogs.
Bogart said "We moved where all the creeps live."
But he enjoyed some of his neighbors, especially
Judy Garland.

When Lauren Bacall learned she was pregnant, she
was ecstatic. Bogart came home from a day at the
studio, and she met him with the great news. He
grew very quiet. He put his arm around her and led
her gently into the house. He was quiet during
dinner—and then, after dinner, Bogart and
Bacall had the worst fight they ever had. Bogart
had finally found a woman he truly loved, and he
didn't want to share her. He was scared of losing
her affection to a baby.

When Lauren Bacall gave birth to a son, Stephen
Bogart|Stephen, Bogart became a father at 49. 
He'd had months to absorb the news, had even had
his own baby shower. (Frank Sinatra had brought
him baby rattles.) But Bogart still felt awkward
about being a father. ("What do you do with a
kid?" he asked a friend. "They don't drink.") In
1952, they had their second child, Leslie (a girl,
named after actor Leslie Howard).

In 1950, Bogart and his friend Bill Seeman arrived
at the El Morocco Club in New York after midnight.
Bogart had bought two giant stuffed panda bears
for Stephen and he and Seeman introduced the bears
around as their "dates" and demanded a table for
four. They propped up the bears in separate
chairs, and began doing some heavy drinking.

Two young women at the club saw the pandas. One of
them picked up one of the pandas. Bogart got angry
and pushed her. After she fell to the floor, her
friend picked up the other panda, Bogart said
something cruel, and her boyfriend arrived and
began throwing plates. After a wild scuffle,
Bogart, Seeman and the pandas were thrown out of
El Morocco and told never to return.

One of the women sued Bogart for $25,000. He
showed up in court and was asked: "Were you
drunk?" "Isn't everybody at three in the morning?"
he replied. The case was dropped. Later, he mused:
"Errol Flynn and I are the only ones left who do
any good old hell-raising."

Bogart also loved to go to Romanoff's in Beverly
Hills. A valet would take the Jaguar, and a maitre
d'  would lead Bogart to his regular booth.
Friends would stop by to chat or talk shop: David
Niven, Judy Garland, Richard Brooks, Swifty Lazar,
Spencer Tracy. Rock Hudson was a rising star; when
he saw him, Bogart would ask, "What the hell kind
of name is 'Rock' Hudson?"

Bogart considered Mike Romanoff a poseur but
nonetheless counted him a close friend. Among
other things, Bogart admired him as a chess player
and appreciated his tendency to needle people.
Mike Romanoff was a man with a cultivated Oxford
accent, who insisted that his true name was
"Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitri Obolensky
Romanoff", and that he was a blood nephew of the
former Russian tsar.

Mike Romanoff would greet Bogart by saying, "Good
afternoon, Mr. Bogart. Are you going to be paying
your bill today? I thought that might be a
pleasant change."

Bogart would smile and reply: "Are you going to be
putting any alcohol in your drinks today? That
might be a pleasant change."

If Lauren Bacall was with Bogart, Romanoff might
turn to her and say: "I see that you are still
dating the same aging actor."

==Later career==


In 1951 in film|1951, Bogart starred in the movie
The African Queen, with Katharine Hepburn, and
again directed by his friend John Huston. It was a
difficult shoot, on location in Africa. One day
the boat The African Queen sank. (Lauren Bacall
recalled: "The natives had been told to watch it
and they did—they watched it sink.")

John Huston recalled: "Bogie didn't particularly
care for the Charlie Alnutt role when he started,
but I slowly got him into it, showing him by
expression and gesture what I thought Alnutt
should be like. He first imitated me, then all at
once he got under the skin of that wretched,
sleazy, absurd, brave little man. He realized he
was on to something new and good. He said to me,
'John, don't let me lose it.'"

Hepburn's proper spinster character scolded
Bogart's Charlie Alnutt: "Nature, Mr. Allnutt, is
what we are put in this world to rise above."
Bogart had a famous put down too: "You crazy,
psalm-singing, skinny old maid!"

The role of Charlie Alnutt won Bogart his first
Academy Award for Academy Award for Best
Actor|Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1952. He had
vowed to friends that if he won, his speech would
break the convention of thanking everyone in
sight. He would say instead: "I don't owe anything
to anyone! I earned this award by hard work and
paying attention to my craft." But when Bogart won
the Academy Award, he thanked John Huston,
Katharine Hepburn, the cast and crew of the movie.
He had always felt Hollywood people did not like
him much, and he was deeply moved to find himself
so popular now.

Bogart relied on his standing with his fellow
actors to organize a delegation who went to
Washington, D.C., during the height of
McCarthyism, to protest the House Unamerican
Activities Committee's harassment of Hollywood
writers and actors. Bogart was not, however,
prepared to deal with the industry pressure to
abandon this campaign; within a year he disavowed
his activities, retreating to his role as actor
and apologizing for speaking out on politics.

The Caine Mutiny was Bogart's last major movie. He
dropped his asking price to get the role of
Captain Queeg, then griped with some of his old
bitterness about it. ("This never happens to Gary
Cooper|Cooper or Cary Grant|Grant or Clark
Gable|Gable, but always to me. Why does it happen
to me?")

Bogart gave a bravura performance as Captain
Queeg. Queeg was in many ways an extension of the
character he had played in The Maltese Falcon,
Casablanca, and The Big Sleep—the wary loner
who trusts no one—but with none of the
warmth or humor that made those characters so
appealing. Like his portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bogart
played—but did not overplay—a
paranoid, self-pitying character whose
small-mindedness eventually destroyed him.

Bogart had always treated his body poorly, and
often drank heavily when not working. (Typically
contrary, the one night he refused to get drunk
was New Year's Eve.) He smoked unfiltered
Chesterfields. Once, after signing a long-term
deal with Warner Brothers, Bogart predicted with
glee that his teeth and hair would fall out before
the contract ended. That sent a fuming Jack Warner
to his lawyers.

In 1955 in film|1955, he made three movies: The
Desperate Hours, The Left Hand of God, and We're
No Angels.  Each movie had a special satisfaction.
The Desperate Hours gave him a third chance to
play a hostage drama. During The Left Hand of God,
Bogart was able to befriend Gene Tierney, and
encourage her to get the psychiatric help he
thought she badly needed. In We're No Angels, he
got a starring role for Joan Bennett, who'd been
out of work for three years after a family
scandal.

But his health was failing—Bogart had cancer
of the esophagus. He almost never spoke of it and
refused to see a doctor until January of 1956, and
by then removal of his esophagus, two lymph nodes
and a rib was too little, too late.

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy came to see
him. Bogart was too weak to walk up and down
stairs. He tried to joke about it: "Put me in the
dumbwaiter and I'll ride down to the first floor
in style. Come on—I'm a little
guy—I'll fit."

Hepburn has described the last time she and
Spencer Tracy saw Bogart: "Spence patted him on
the shoulder and said, 'Goodnight, Bogie.'  Bogie
turned his eyes to Spence very quietly and with a
sweet smile covered Spence's hand with his own and
said, 'Goodbye, Spence.' Spence's heart stood
still. He understood."

Bogart had just turned 57 and weighed only 80
pounds (36 kg) when he died on January 14, 1957. 
His funeral was held at All Saints Episcopal
Church with musical selections played from
Bogart's favorite composers, Johann Sebastian Bach
and Claude Debussy. Lauren Bacall had asked
Spencer Tracy to give the eulogy but Tracy was too
upset. John Huston gave the eulogy instead, 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."

Huston also noted of Bogart: "Himself, he never
took too seriously—his work most seriously. 
He regarded the somewhat gaudy figure of Bogart,
the star, with an amused cynicism; Bogart, the
actor, he held in deep respect…In each of
the fountains at Versailles there is a Esox|pike
which keeps all the carp active; otherwise they
would grow overfat and die. Bogie took rare
delight in performing a similar duty in the
fountains of Hollywood. Yet his victims seldom
bore him any malice, and when they did, not for
long. His shafts were fashioned only to stick into
the outer layer of complacency, and not to
penetrate through to the regions of the spirit
where real injuries are done."

Katharine Hepburn: "He was one of the biggest guys
I ever met. He walked straight down the center of
the road. No maybes. Yes or no. He liked to drink.
He drank. He liked to sail a boat. He sailed a
boat. He was an actor. He was happy and proud to
be an actor. He'd say to me, 'Are you comfortable?
 Everything okay?' He was looking out for me."

Bogart once said of himself: "I don't approve of
the John Waynes and the Gary Coopers saying
'Shucks, I ain't no actor—I'm just a bridge
builder or a gas station attendant.' If they
aren't actors, what the hell are they getting paid
for? I have respect for my profession. I worked
hard at it."

His cremated remains are interred in Forest Lawn
Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California.
Buried with him is a small gold whistle, which he
had given to his future wife, Lauren Bacall,
before they married.  In reference to their first
movie together, it was inscribed: "If you want
anything, just whistle."

Humphrey Bogart's hand and foot prints are
immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese
Theater and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame at 6322 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood,
California|Hollywood.

His last words were, "I never should have switched
from scotch to martinis."

== Films ==

For a list of all Bogart's films see Humphrey
Bogart filmography.


==References==
*imdb name|id=0000007|name=Humphrey Bogart
*ibdb name|id=32377|name=Humphrey Bogart
*Halliwell's Film, Video and DVD Guide (2004),
Lesley Halliwell, HarperCollins Entertainment,
ISBN 0007190816
*"Time Out" Film Guide (2004), John Pym (ed), Time
Out Group Ltd, ISBN 1904978215
*http://www.humphreybogart.com/index.php The
Official Website of Humphrey Bogart

==Further reading==
*The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart: The Early
Years (1899-1931) (2003), Darwin Porter, Georgia
Literary Association, ISBN 0966803051
*Bogart: A Life in Hollywood (1997), Jeffrey
Meyers, Andre Deutsch Ltd, ISBN 0233991441

==External links==
commons|Humphrey Bogart
* http://www.thegoldenyears.org/bogart.html
Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Humphrey Bogart