Martha Vickers in the opening scene of 1946’s The Big Sleep says to Humphrey Bogart: “You’re not very tall are you?” He looks askance at himself and responds: “Well I try to be!” A metaphor if there ever was one for this months Golden Age Star. Entertainment Weekly has called him The Greatest Movie Star of All Time and The Greatest Screen Actor by the American Film Institute.
As Robert Osborne noted a male movie star had to be tall dark and handsome. Leading men like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor and Cary Grant come to mind to name a few that would fit that bill easily but Humphrey Bogart? Well hardly. He had a craggy face, somewhat of a lisp, he stood but 5 foot 8 inches and when he spoke his mouth looked like a man with a twisted lip.
Born on Christmas day in 1899 in New York. His father a successful heart surgeon and his mother an accomplished painter and illustrator and artistic director of a woman’s fashion magazine The Delineator. Oddly enough one of his mother’s drawings of him as a baby was used in a national advertising campaign for Mellin’s baby food and Humphrey was a brief national sensation. Never a grade A student he ended up being expelled for poor grades from and exclusive boarding school. Often derided by his name in school Humphrey was glad to get away and he enlisted in the Navy at 17 and it was rumored that in a scuffle with a prisoner and a pair of handcuffs that gave him that iconic scar above the right corner of his lip. When he came out at age 19 he became a manager with a touring company and two years later he broke in with his first role with one line playing a Japanese waiter. He thrashed around Hollywood for 10 years before he landed his breakthrough role in 1934’s The Petrified Forest. Humphrey with his dead stare, dangling arms, and bent body shocked the screen audience and cemented his nook as the arch villain of the screen. Roles in The Great O’Malley 1937, Dead End 1937 which featured Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, Crime School 1938, and King of the Underworld 1939 emblazoned his image across the screens of America.
But even with this great success he felt typecast and the perfect transitional role came to him in The Maltese Falcon in 1941. Often called the first film noir masterpiece Bogart playing the detective Sam Spade a slightly less than reputable shamus gets involved with some shady characters in pursuit priceless "Falcon". In the films climax Bogart’s character turns virtuous and turns in his love interest murderer Mary Astor and departs his villainous portrayals albeit for a time for maybe his greatest role in 1942 Casablanca. The film winning Best Picture to this day carries memorable quotes often used in everyday speech. Ten years later in 1951’s The African Queen alongside Katherine Hepburn he would finally win his Oscar. His final films all notable The Caine Mutiny 1954, Sabrina 1954 co-starring with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden and The Harder They Fall in 1956 would round out his glorious 80 film career.
Married four times but there was only one and that one was Lauren Bacall. When they met on the set of To Have and Have Not she was only 19 he was more than 20 years her senior but the electricity jumped off the screen and even the audiences knew that these two were headed for a love that would be heralded as one of Hollywood’s iconic ones that would rival any you could name. They had two children together. Often in almost every film Bogart could be seen with a cigarette dangling from his lip and even lighting one for his costar but ultimately that habit would hasten his death at 57 succumbing to esophageal cancer. He and Bacall had 10 glorious years together.
Humphrey Bogart didn’t fit your typical tall dark and handsome movie start but he certainly acted like he did
