Humphrey Bogart life and biography

Humphrey Bogart (Also known as: Humphrey DeForest Bogart, Humphrey de Forest Bogart, Bogey, Humphrey De Forest Bogart) January 23, 1899 in New York, New York, United States - died January 14, 1957 in Hollywood, California, United States was an American actor.


A Hollywood Legend.
A top movie star of the 1940s and early 1950s, Humphrey Bogart played tough, cynical but fair-minded and sympathetic characters in a number of highly regarded films, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and The African Queen (1951). An average looking man of slender build and medium height, Bogart derived his toughness from attitude rather than brawn. A deadpan yet somehow expressive countenance, cutting remarks, and sardonic humor were his stock in trade. Like most other stars of Hollywood's "Golden Age," Bogart did not have a wide dramatic range. Instead, he used a combination of natural and studied attributes to create a unique screen image. "He was always Bogart: he took all sorts of characteristics and varying situations, and made them fit the Bogart persona," wrote David Shipman in Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years.

Prep School Boy. In sharp contrast to the hardscrabble characters he often played on screen, Bogart came from a well-to-do background. He was born Humphrey DeForest Bogart in New York City in 1899, the son of Belmont DeForest Bogart, a doctor, and Maud Humphrey, a noted illustrator who specialized in baby portraits. Her infant son Humphrey often posed for her, and his visage appeared on advertising for a brand of baby food. The family included Bogart's two sisters, Frances and Catherine. Bogart grew up in a fashionable neighborhood on Manhattan's upper west side near the Hudson River. He considered his childhood unhappy and recalled his parents as cold and distant. Bogart attended the Trinity School, an elite Manhattan prep school. The adult Bogart liked to describe his younger self as a rebellious hellion. However, a former classmate remembered Bogart as a quiet, unathletic boy who was always immaculately dressed, a misfit more than a rebel. "His good looks and his tidiness, plus the fact that he posed for his mother's `pretty' illustrations, helped earn him a reputation as a sissy. We always called him `Humphrey' because we considered that a sissy name. We must have made life miserable for Bogart," the classmate told Bogart biographers A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax.

World War I Involvement.
A poor student, at age 17 Bogart was sent to boarding school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in the hope that he would improve his grades enough to get into Yale University. His performance did not improve, and he was asked to leave the school before the year was out. With that, his formal education ended. In 1918, when the United States was involved in World War I, Bogart enlisted in the Navy. "Because I loved boats and water, I joined the Navy . . . I think my father thought maybe it was just as well. The war was a big joke. Death? What does death mean to a kid of seventeen? The idea of death starts getting through to you only when you're older--when you read obituaries about famous people whose accomplishments have touched you--and when people of your own generation die," Bogart is quoted in Films in Review. The war ended shortly after Bogart enlisted, and he spent most of his military service aboard the troopship Leviathan bringing soldiers home from Europe.

Show Business Beginnings.
After a year in the Navy, Bogart was given an honorable discharge and he returned to New York City where he worked as a runner for an investment firm and conducted a busy social life. The theatrical producer William A. Brady was a neighbor of the Bogart family, and Brady's son was Bogart's close friend. It was through his connection with William A. Brady that Bogart got his start in show business. He was given an office boy job at Brady's new motion picture company, World Films, then became a stage manager on a series of Brady theatrical productions. Though he had no acting experience whatsoever, he was occasionally called upon to understudy young man roles, and he soon decided that he preferred being on stage, rather than behind it. Bogart made his official debut as an actor in May 1921, playing a Japanese butler in a Brooklyn tryout of a play that never reached Broadway.

Broadway "Juvenile."
Bogart spent the next several years essaying "juvenile" parts in mostly undistinguished plays, including Meet the Wife (1923), Nerves (1924), Hell's Bells (1925), and Baby Mine (1927). At first, his dark good looks seemed his major qualification and his early performances were sometimes unkindly reviewed by critics. His acting skills quickly improved, and he was regularly employed on Broadway for several years.

Developed a Heavy Drinking Habit.
Actress Louise Brooks, who knew Bogart in the 1920s, recalled him as "a slim boy with charming manners, who was extraordinarily quiet for an actor." It was during his years as a young stage actor that Bogart developed a heavy drinking habit, and he frequented the fashionable New York "speakeasies" that flourished during the Prohibition Era. Bogart continued drinking heavily for the rest of his life but the alcohol did not seem to effect his career. He showed up for work promptly and well-prepared. "Unlike most Hollywood personalities, Bogart drank not only plentifully but openly. He professed a distrust of anyone who didn't drink and said the world was three drinks behind and would be a better place if it caught up," wrote Clifford McCarty in Films in Review.

Made His Film Debut.
In 1926, Bogart married Helen Menken, a well-known stage actress. The couple divorced about a year later but stayed on good terms. In 1928, Bogart married another actress, Mary Philips, with whom he acted in the play Skyrocket in early 1929. As he approached age 30, Bogart realized his days as a stage "juvenile" were nearing an end, and he began to look to motion pictures as the medium in which he could find major stardom. In the late 1920s, he appeared in two New York produced short films The Dancing Town, which also featured Helen Hayes, and Broadway's Like That, a ten-minute musical with singer Ruth Etting. Bogart's first real break in movies came in 1930, when he was appearing in the successful Broadway comedy It's a Wise Child. Executives from the Fox Film Corporation saw him in the play and signed him to a contract. Moving to Hollywood, Bogart made his feature film debut in 1930 in A Devil with Women, playing a rich young adventurer. He then acted in supporting roles in a number of low budget Fox pictures, including Up the River, Three on a Match, and Bad Sister. Disillusioned with Hollywood, he returned to New York City stage but continued to accept whatever film offers came his way. For about three years he bounced between stage and films, failing to find real success in either arena.

Developed Tough Guy Image.
Bogart's career leapt forward when he landed a flashy supporting role in Robert E. Sherwood's play The Petrified Forest, a drama about a disparate group of travelers held hostage in a remote Arizona restaurant by a gangster on the run. Bogart played the scruffy, tough-talking gangster, Duke Mantee, and Leslie Howard, the play's leading man, was a world-weary intellectual in the group of captives. The Petrified Forest opened at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre in January 1935 to good reviews. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote that "Humphrey Bogart gives does the best work of his career as the motorized guerrilla." Warner Bros. pictures bought the rights to make a screen version of The Petrified Forest and planned to cast the already established movie "tough guy" Edward G. Robinson as Duke Mantee. However, Leslie Howard, whose name had box office clout, refused to appear in the film version unless Bogart played Mantee. Warner Bros. capitulated and Bogart returned to Hollywood. Released in 1936, the film version of The Petrified Forest was well-received but did not establish Bogart as a first rank movie star. However, he never acted on stage again.

Early Warner Bros. Roles Warner Bros. gave Bogart supporting parts in top-level projects and starring roles in second-tier efforts, or "B pictures," usually portraying a hoodlum or other type of shady figure. His better films of this period include Dead End (1937), in which he played a gangster visiting the New York City slum where he grew up, and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), in which he portrayed a crooked lawyer involved with underworld figures. A notable exception to his "bad guy" portrayals was the 1939 drama Dark Victory in which he played an Irish stable manager in love with a doomed heiress played by Bette Davis. Although Bogart was often displeased with the quality of the films to which he was assigned, he took every role seriously and gave his all before the camera. Bogart's professionalism and his growing on-screen charisma was eventually noticed by executives at Warner Bros., and increased effort was made to promote him as star.

Second Marriage Ends.
In 1938, Bogart divorced his second wife, Mary Philips. The following year he married yet another actress, Mayo Methot. The Bogart-Methot union was stormy, and the couple was dubbed "The Battling Bogarts" by the Hollywood press. Bogart enjoyed life in the film capital and caroused with hard-drinking friends who called him "Bogie." The nickname came to symbolize the non-conformist image that Bogart was beginning to cultivate off-screen as well as on-screen.

Gained Stardom. When actor George Raft, a star in the tough guy mold, turned down the lead role in the crime drama High Sierra, the part was given to Bogart. The story of an aging criminal named Roy Earle whose one last heist goes tragically awry, High Sierra, released in January 1941, was the vehicle that launched Bogart into the ranks of major stars. He quickly shored up his new position with a finely crafted performance as private detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, a screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's complicated novel about murder, deceit, and a jewel encrusted bird. Released in the autumn of 1941, the film was directed by John Huston, a close friend of Bogart's. In an essay on Bogart, critic Andrew Sarris wrote-- "Roy Earle and Sam Spade placed Bogart at vital center of first-rate scenarios. No longer was he the peripheral punk, albeit with a touch of class. Nor was he the second-string lead. Suddenly he was the big noise, the brooding, sardonic protagonist."

Starred in a Wartime Classic. Bogart's most celebrated film is Casablanca (1942), in which he played Rick Blaine, an elusive proprietor of a North African cafe who reluctantly helps an old flame and her husband escape from the Nazis. An unpromising project that went into production with an incomplete script, Casablanca emerged as a classic wartime romantic drama. The film's melancholy attitude struck a chord with audiences embroiled in a war with no end in sight. Casablanca earned Bogart a best actor Academy Award nomination and gave him a more complex screen image as a tough but tender character who can capture the heart of beautiful leading ladies. In her autobiography, Ingrid Bergman, Bogart's co-star in the film, wrote of him, "He was polite, naturally, but I always felt there was a distance; he was behind a wall. The Maltese Falcon was playing in Hollywood at the time and I used to go and see it quite often during the shooting of Casablanca, because I felt I got to know him a little better through that picture."

Teamed with Lauren Bacall. In 1944, Bogart starred in a screen version of Ernest Hemingway's story of anti-Nazi intrigue in the Caribbean, To Have and Have Not. His leading lady was Lauren Bacall, a stunning young actress/model from New York. Bogart and Bacall fell in love during the making of the movie. "He was a gentle man, diametrically opposed to most of the parts he played . . . I was in awe of him and his position as `movie star.' I aware of being nineteen and he forty-four but when we were together that didn't seem to matter. I was older than nineteen in many ways and he had such energy and vitality he seemed to be no particular age," Bacall wrote in her autobiography. Bogart and Bacall were married in 1945, shortly after Bogart's divorce from Mayo Methot was finalized. They became one of Hollywood's most glamorous couples and appeared together in three more films, all darkly atmospheric crime stories: The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948). Bogart and Bacall had two children, a son, Stephen, and a daughter, Leslie, named in honor of Leslie Howard who had helped Bogart get an important break in the movies.

Starred with Katharine Hepburn.
Bogart's career reached its peak in 1951 with his Academy Award winning performance in The African Queen, directed by his old friend John Huston and co-starring Katharine Hepburn. In an inspired pairing of screen luminaries, Bogart was a grizzled, cynical riverboat captain taking Hepburn, a haughty, high-minded missionary, down a dangerous African river during World War I. The film was shot on location in remote regions of East Africa, an experience that the comfort-loving Bogart found almost unendurable.

Later Film Roles. Although Bogart was always remained essentially "Bogie" in his film portrayals, he added depth and versatility to his familiar character. In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, (1948) also directed by John Huston, Bogart was a prospector whose greed for gold turns him into a homicidal maniac. In The Caine Mutiny (1954), he was a neurotic, cleanliness-obsessed naval captain whose crew questions his sanity. Bogart made a rare foray into comedy with Sabrina (1954), as a sober-minded business executive who falls in love with his chauffeur's daughter, played by Audrey Hepburn. One of Bogart's most sensitive roles came in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), in which he played a veteran Hollywood director guiding a beautiful young Spanish dancer, portrayed by Ava Gardner, to film stardom.

A Courageous End.
Bogart's heavy drinking and smoking finally caught up with him. In early 1956, after completing work on the boxing drama The Harder They Fall, he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. It would be his last film. Bogart spent the final year of his life undergoing medical treatments and receiving visits from friends who came away deeply moved by Bogart's gallantry in the face of death. He died at his home in Los Angeles on 14 January 1957. A week after Bogart's death Thomas M. Pryor wrote in the New York Times --"Humphrey Bogart was a man without pretense who fiercely resisted being trapped by the hypocrisy and sham that are so much a part of the Hollywood scene . . . a combination of personal vitality, artistic ability, which expanded impressively of late years, and a deep-rooted sense of honesty that was reflected in his acting enabled him to stay on top for twenty years. Those who have said Hollywood will never be the same without "Bogie" weren't exaggerating."

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