Humphrey Bogart, 57 (1899-1957) US Actor

my name is Humphrey Bogart in cases those of you in the audience who are either too young or too old know who I am I can't talk to you cuz he's dead Bogart is a kind of quintessence of some idea of an American hero that reverberates throughout the world it's a very strong cultural type as cute as you are nobody is what is your nationality I'm a drunkard he always thought that the world was three drinks behind and if it caught up the world would be a better place to live it looking at you kid he really put this stamp on a new brand of romantic male lead that did not exist before Bogart started developing it well Joseph takes 15 years to go stubble everyone is not a star star as someone who really lasts you've got to last [Music] until recently Bogaerts son Steven had shown little interest in his father's life the burden of being the son of a legend was simply too bright though God died when Steven was only 18 so most of his knowledge of his father came from the image he saw on the screen he was even named after the Rober God played when he met Stephens mother lauren bacall in the movie to heaven have natural dad breakers an active Bogart was a distant figure to whom it's been hard for Steven to relate the call is told Steven about him of course and how he wasn't the tough guy he often portrayed his classic images show his streetwise course and rough-edged but in fact that couldn't be further from his real-life upbringing Bogart actually came from a background with money he was born on Christmas Day 1899 in an affluent area of New York [Music] my father was brought up well his father was a doctor and his mother my grandmother was an internationally known illustrator Maude Humphrey in fact one of her most famous illustrations was of my father as the melon baby melon was a baby food company back in the early 1900s and she used my father as the model which melon used on their products he grew up headstrong and rebellious he was suspended from Phillips Academy in 1918 thought he called youthful high spirits he then joined the Navy but his brief career was notable for long spells in the brief his parents despaired of him and eventually he drifted into theater work I get the sense that he was a spoiled rich boy he used family connections to get in to start his career after the war the theatrical producer William Brady lived next door and Alice Brady his wife was an actress and so there was a kind of entree for him he began to get small rose as the juvenile love interest for which is lack of height all good looks didn't suit him his first ever reviews were typical and rankled enough to be remembered he said the young man who embodies the aforesaid sprig what might mercifully be described as inadequate and and Allendale whom you might remember said that mr. Bogart gave some other pension examples of bad acting his lack of success led to a kind of desperation which upset many of his colleagues there were a lot of actors in New York that hated his guts and I didn't know why for quite a while and then I worked with him and then I found out he'd really loathe being in the Heckscher he thought it was [ __ ] it only sought something you did if you were a man you know and he was very angry that he was not a big hit his frustration sometimes boiled over in 1926 Bogart lost his temper and struck a fellow actress called Helen Menken as happens in all the worst scripts they then fell in love on Menken a Humphrey Bogart married by a deaf-mute rector no one Rankin she was pretty cute she was a big star a bigger star than bogie and people would say to him you know you gonna end up as the tail of the dog where she goes you're gonna have to follow and unhappily it turned out to be pretty true she had an affair bogie found out about it and we had a breakup and finally did get a divorce it was a very short marriage as I recall only a year yeah maybe even less treated her cruelly and told her he did not love her he probably didn't her husband's temper was violent and he struck her former husband of Helen Menken to Wed actress detecting a pattern here he married Mary Phillips in 1928 and they sometimes acted together on stage but Bogart sites were set on Hollywood and he began getting small parts in forgettable movies I want getting that Roman shut up he moved on from young lover to rupee gangster okay I'll bear that in mind it was as a gangster that his big break eventually came back on Broadway in 1936 without a movie contract he appeared in a play called the Petrified Forest the main star was Leslie hard plans were made to film the Petrified Forest and of course Warner's wanted to cast someone else other than Bogart because Bogart was a film unknown and Howard said hey Bogart said it or I'm not that's it and with that kind of weight they decide to sign your dad tell us do you what kind of a life have you had what do you think I spend most of my time since I grew up in jail it looks like I spend the rest of my life dead he played to many pretty boys let's say when he was a young actor and that's why he enjoyed playing the heavy city played because they gave him a chance to really cut loose some of those felt real feelings let's keep in mind that I am the boy whose candidate for hanging the first time any one of you makes a wrong move I'm gonna kill the whole lot of you keep beat finally at the age of 36 he'd arrived as a screen actor he moved to Hollywood Jack Warner offered him a contract or beard for a paltry six hundred and fifty dollars a week and you've sustained the studio for the next 15 years [Music] between 1936 and 39 Bogart appeared in 25 movies he became expert at playing the bad guy shooting people and getting shot at the end he was the fourth in line on Warner's murderers row behind James Cagney George Raft and Edward G Robinson but he hated the fossil scripts and stereotyped Rose who was always giving and complained long and loud to Jack Warner one thing about him he never ever kept his mouth shut and so he'd go and say this is a this script is his junk I'm not going to do it and one would say you're gonna have to do it you've got a contract and bogey would probably shove a finger up in the air and a well-known gesture suspended Bogart from salary for refusing a leading role in bad men of Missouri it's very lucky did like it can't live forever Warner Brothers we didn't know what to do with him as an actor throughout his time there and it may be that simply this this notion of a one-dimensional type was something that they needed and wanted and couldn't deal with what he actually was the audience I'm Sam Spade Tom pool house ball oh I didn't know you at first they're back there it took five years before Bogart got a part it gave him room to express himself as an actor he seized his opportunity but it might easily never have happened at all he was given the part by default not on merit thanks John what happened George Raft turned down the part because he didn't want to work with a first-time director and named John Huston which was one of the many decisions that bad decisions that George Raft made in his career Bogart to my secret delight was substituted and that picture began I think a whole new career for bogey now let's see your first guess was that I have the bird there's nothing to that what's your second guess or please do you know it is where you can get it you're not hiring me to do any murders or burglaries but simply to get it back if possible in an honest lawful way if possible but everything in that movie fits it feels right Bogart steps into that role Sam Spade he wears it like a like a suit of clothes and the extra element is that this is the first time he'd been able to play a tough guy as an inherent good guy without losing any of the attractive qualities that he naturally felt as a tough guy I won't play the SAP for you you know down deep in your heart and in spite of anything I've done I love you I don't care who loves who I won't play the SAP for you I won't walk in those B's neither the how many other footsteps you killed miles and you're going over for it [Music] his relationships with women were as turbulent off-screen as on his second wife had left him and he married another actress Mayo mytha but this time there was violence on both sides are not caused by Bogaerts career frustrations studio publicists dubbed them the battling Bogaerts trying vainly to portray them as a volatile but loving couple outwardly it may seem that everybody's having a good time and it's no big deal inwardly it's not I mean inwardly there's a lot of turmoil and a lot of problems and and and they would have killed each other I mean she stabbed him once for gosh sakes my wife just missed me with an ashtray I don't know what's wrong with her aim lately he said he had a carpenter on call in their house to repair the doors that she shot holes through it but bogey once told me that the way she kept him was she got him drunk and kept him drunk and I believe that's probably true they drank together and when they get drunk they get hostile he would say every time she'd start to say embraceable you he'd start to get out because he knew that she was gonna get a gun or she was gonna get something and come after mayo had an addiction and it was was very evident once we'd had a few drinks and all of a sudden bogey said sluggy if you say that once more I'm gonna push you over so she said it once more and he leaned over and pushed her over and she fell into the next table and onto the floor and she was crying and yelling and bogey I remember turned to my husband and said well wouldn't you have and my husband said well not necessarily so did he do that yeah he went crazy it is his relationship with a battered woman that was at the center of his next important role as royal the soft-hearted gangster give me that you stay here oh boy you'll only get yourself in a jam girl you Lock this door behind me Bogart needed an extra element to tow his persona to make him stand out from the crowd and he needed to get in touch with a nobility of vulnerability a romanticism within that tough-guy role [Music] put a bullet through his head I got enough trouble without a fool dog when he got the part of Roy Earle and he showed that he could be humorous and that he could play a different role than the type he played before it was the transition from the gangster role to wide variety of rows which he would end up playing all the 14-karat saps starting out on a caper with a woman and a dog at least boy has this job oh your fella talk he recognized that this was a way for not only to him to grow as an actor but for his persona to grow and really after that movie there's no looking back it really forged the Boggart that we recognized [Music] of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world he walks in a mine the defining BER gartrell followed two years later in 1943 it was to turn him into one of the greatest of screen icons in fact it was so good that George Raft later claimed it too had been offered to him personally it hadn't and I can play during production there were no signs at all that the movie was headed for greatness [Music] those days estudios made a picture a week in casablanca was just another picture coming off the assembly line it was though they had no more regard for or less regard for that any other of the 49 pictures the script kept changing every day and they kept coming back and they'd rewrite every single day so it was a difficult film for him to do but the main thing that the studio's had to deal with was the fact that they didn't think that he could get the girl and he had a very difficult time with Ingrid Bergman and dealing with that relationship and being a sex symbol because he was never thought of that way the day you left Paris if you knew what you know how much I love you how much I still sibo guardian himself is not a very romantic figure he needs to have his romanticism his attractiveness reflected in the actress who's playing opposite him you get somebody like Bergman who just swoons when you put the camera on her and there's interesting stuff going on there that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him you'll regret it maybe not today maybe not tomorrow but soon and for the rest of your life but what about us you'll always have Paris we didn't have we we lost it and to do cam to Casablanca I feel that he really rises to the occasion it's really one of the great moments of his career in that scene he really he gives what he could not give before some sense of nuance and expression of pain and love and sorrow it's all there I've got a job to do to where I'm going you can't follow what I've got to do you can't be any part of those I'm no good at being noble but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world someday you'll understand that ah is looking at you kid I just wish I could have been in Ingrid Bergman's shoes and Casablanca this may be no better romantic story ever done to me that's the epitome of bogies work he was awesome let's face it suddenly he was acclaimed as one of the great screen actors of his time at the age of 43 he'd achieved his ambition but he's added you to stardom was ambiguous his reputation was now greater than any other actor could measure up to so he could afford to seem indifferent it I don't think he gave a damn about started I really don't think that concern him in bed he was totally uninterested in all of that what he what Katharine Hepburn would call Buncombe absolute nonsense I think he cared what interested in was that Amelie didn't that was part of the Bogart facade he cared very much so he pretended he didn't and acted outrageously occasionally to prove whose but that didn't prove you would meet him and the first thing that he would do would be to put you off and that was a defense mechanism that comes from years of being alone from years of being in unhappy relationships in my opinion but that was the I mean he would he was very difficult to get close to and he wouldn't let you get close it was very hard to know what he was thinking ever and he could be charming when he wanted to be charming and he could be a bastard when you want to be a bastard he just did whichever one was coming up the first time you met Sinatra he said Frank I hear you have a voice that makes girls faint make me faint and he met Steinbeck who of course is one of the great writers of all time and he said to him Hemingway tells me you're not a good writer he was a loner he was a lonely man I think and I think that was part of the problem and when he got famous and when he started to really get big he was in his late 30s but there was still that loneliness there until he met my mother when he was 43 anybody got a med Bergen met his future fourth wife Miss Betty be called when she became his co-star Thanks that the first what three four weeks that we were working on the Hundley on the film well I mean we were just working on the film and just having a very good time but certainly there was no romance of any kind I mean that just accidentally just kind of happened much to my amazement and I suppose is as well if you say here's the greatest actor highest-paid actor of his time and here's the sinewy gorgeous 19 year old model and you get them together and you use every cliche you could possibly use regarding that relationship I mean it was her first movie he's the movie star they fall in love on screen they have to change the movie because it's so obvious that he's gonna get the girl I mean I think that I think that it was the stuff that dreams are made of how did you do that for what's the decision I think a lot of the excitement of that movie is watching the call unleashed and watching Bogart react to her and it's a Howard Hawks saying to Bogart this little girl is going to do something that's gonna she's gonna make you very very angry he wanted me to be the kind of woman that he had always I supposed fantasized about and dreamed up a woman who was who behaved kind of like a man who was as our gun as a man as tough as a man and yet you don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything not a thing oh maybe just whistle do you know how to whistle don't you Steve you just put your lips together and blow [Music] Bogey's gonna have a lot of fun little did I know how much fun we were going down [Music] was around my name is Marlo he's expecting me just wait here not find that Humphrey Bogart capitalized on the success of his pairing with Lauren Bacall by teaming up again for the Big Sleep [Music] by now his confidence as a romantic hero is so well-founded that every woman in the cast seen before Pharma but it was the electricity between Bogart and Bacall that gave the film its life there was only one problem Bogart was in love with Bacall but still married to Mayor methane and splitting up with someone as unbalanced and violent as she was promised to be traumatic and dangerous I wanted to encourage him to believe that he could have a life because I had heard terrible stories about mammoth oh and I had been warned that she might drop a lamp on my head and all this and and bogie was terribly worried about my being damaged and that he would never allow anything to happen that would hurt me and so he was filled with his own adult emotions while I was this infant [Music] the other one is shaking not scared angel he was very much involved with lauren bacall he had moved out partially from his home he was drinking very heavily you get this evidence simply from the Big Sleep daily production reports about a boggart arriving drunk or hungover or arriving late or not being prepared so it's very much a crisis moment for him I don't know yet what I'm gonna tell him it'll be pretty close to the truth you forgot the one thing me what's wrong with you nothing you can't fix and in May 1945 Bogart did fix it he divorced mayor without anyone getting shot on eleven days later married an actress for the fourth time [Music] I thought the relationship between Betty and bogie was volatile but deeply committed to each other and I think he enjoyed Betty and Betty represented a challenge to him although they fought I've seen him have big fights about things but they really were devoted to each other you've never had kind of a real married life and I'm in the first few years we we have the most wonderful time I was a real three year honeymoon Bogart had found real happiness and for the first time in his life he proved lasting they traveled in Europe together and made two more movies but by the time of Key Largo in 1948 the previous spark seemed to have dulled a little after all they weren't secret lovers anymore but an established married couple loved acting and he was a student of it and he cared about a lot but this was his his real passion and he was a brilliant sailor I mean he won a lot of Catalina races and he was not a journeyman he was a champion unless you really understand the water and understand the reason for being on it and understand the love of sailing and their feeling of quietness and solitude you don't really belong on a boat anyway I think Hemingway said one time to sea was the last free place on earth are you a member of the Communist Party or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party it's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of Americanism in 1947 the house on American Activities Committee began to call Hollywood to account for its supposed communist connections Bogart was one of the many who are outraged believing that their politics were known of Congress's business all of us new members that had been named and I think that Lauren I had a lot more social conscience than Bogart but she imparted that to him and he took up the cause to the final days of the hearings also saw a group of prominent film personalities fly in from Hollywood led by Humphrey Bogart they came to demonstrate against what they felt was an unfavorable impression of their field we were all so naive it was ridiculous if you went to Washington and didn't know what didn't know anything about this political thing we went on an emotional level you know that you have the right to speak and to say what you are and be what you are and you don't have to be condemned for that you shouldn't be thrown out of work for that so we went there and of course it was kind of a farce in a way because we were in the middle of something that we didn't know anything about the group of 10 Hollywood figures the Bogart's had gone to support failed to proclaim the right to free speech they meekly refused to answer questions and the witch-hunt continued people involved with the unfriendly tennis they became known were starting to get blacklisted from the industry themselves and my father wrote a letter distancing himself from the unfriendly ten he claimed he was let down by the tens cowardly silence his colleagues felt outraged and betrayed [Music] he felt he was misled and other people felt he chickened out and it's probably it's he definitely was misled and he definitely chickened out Humphrey Bogart appeared before chairman Martin dies of the house on American Activities Committee and his own requests and denied he was a heavy contributor to the Communist Party I regard as a mistake that bogey did this he should have stuck to his guns but I quite understand why he didn't no one literally no one had the the courage to speak up at that time everyone was intimidated scared out of their wit's they had a mutual love and admiration and at the same time occasionally they wanted to kill each other because they were both very strong-willed individuals they sort of enjoyed the contest between the two of them Houston was very very meticulous he would keep filming and do shot after shot after shot take after take after take and my father had a boat race that he needed to go to and Houston ordered another take and and my father said I'm not doing it I'm leaving I want to go to the boat race and Houston leaned over and he said you're gonna stay and he gave him a little tweak in the nose and he kind of twists his nose a little bit my father and him would we're getting it on but my father stayed and they finished the film 200 300 that's it and it Kurt Bogaerts next production took place at home he'd moved into a new house with Lauren Bacall and was enjoying the new domesticity that she brought him in 1949 only one thing was missing when my mother announced that she was pregnant that was the completion of the puzzle and that scared him because he was a guy who basically did what he wanted to do he didn't have to deal with anybody else he didn't have to worry about anyone else now he had responsibilities for people other than himself loved responsibilities and he didn't really know probably how to deal with those feelings and he didn't expect that those feelings would ever come about he was an uneasy father and seemed in awe of what he produced but miracle though he may have been Steven wasn't allowed to disrupt the way Bogart ran his life when he went to Africa for another film with John Huston Bogart insisted on bringing Lauren Bacall with him leaving their two-year-old son behind the African Queen in which he played opposite his great friend Katherine Hepburn turned out to be a challenging movie Huson had chosen to film it in a remote part of the Belgian Congo Mowgli was never a man to enjoy going to remote places and the very fact that he'd go off on these forays with me indication of his affection for me and and willingness to to sacrifice for his art [Music] [Music] I think John wants to shoot in probably the most inaccessible part because he likes to shoot where it's almost impossible to shoot if we could get a camera on top of Mount Everest he'd have one there believe me if Bogart found the experience uncomfortable to Katherine Hepburn he was a great adventure my wife was on Katie side and they were both on John Huston's I guess I was the only one who thought it was too hot and too damped and why we were there so I just drank my scotch and griped it's something the matter mr. Allnut tell me yeah nothing nothing you'd understand they said the reason they stayed well is that they had plenty of booze sent down there and John was a bigger drinker than bogey but didn't seem to bother him he could stay up all night and drink and work all day the next day and nobody knew the difference so I think they both used alcohol to fight off the dysentery and they seemed to be successful at it all this foolish talk about the Louisa going down the river I mean we ain't gonna do nothing we all look said I didn't what does it say the idea what does it say the idea lady you got that absurd ideas for why one Hollywood turns out for the Oscar Award for his role as Charlie Allnut beau got one what he thought he'd never achieved and it always said he didn't want an Oscar when he got the award I thought he'd be delighted lion amused by him he was profoundly affected by this talents were so widely recognized why it gave him great great satisfaction he was now the man who seemed to have everything he could want the more so when his second child Lesley was born in 1952 to complete the Birgit family unit he'd even won independence from the dictatorial Jack Warner [Music] Moe Gartner had his own production company named Santana pictures after his yacht though the moves it produced were not his best it allowed him to select his own roles and spread his wings as an actor in romances thrillers and comedies what marks him in the post-war period is his desire his willingness to be versatile to try out new parts here's someone who at this point in his career obviously freed from the shackles of the Warner Brothers one-dimensional type really seems to be committed to doing new and unusual things in his portrayal of a paranoid ship's captain Bogart was prepared to examine the downside of his image of toughness the collapse that ensues when it cracks lieutenant maryk was the perfect officer but not captain queeg half of the strawberries that's that's where I had them they laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with geometric logic is there a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox it exists now to produced that key if they haven't pulled the cane out of action I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officer if I've left anything out why just ask me specific questions and I'll be glad to answer them one by one Bogart's reputation for hard living extended off-screen as well as on with occasional justification he and Bacall used to meet friends like Frank Sinatra Angie Dickinson David Niven and Joe Hyams but Romanovs restaurant why they founded the infamous drinking group the Rat Pack at Romanovs one night they hit on an idea of a group of kind of a clan if you will they were going to be the Rat Pack and to be a rat you had to undergo certain ritualistic kind of things that were all nonsense and the day after that as luck would have it I was having lunch with your parents and Betty or Bobby mentioned this right back and gave me the whole list of qualifications to be a rat to be a right you really had to be a sticker at this attack pranks all the time that stink bombs going and always trying to outdo you know outdo the other as far as some great gag to pull he went to the El Morocco with a couple of people including a couple of pandas actually stuffed pen that's not real ones and he meets two young ladies one of the women comes over and starts you know needling my father and wants to sit down and my father so finally says you know get away from me I got to get out of here and he gets up and they get into a little match and she and he pushes her down because she's trying to come at him and he kind of fends her off and the next day bogie thrown out of El Morocco woman sues him sworn out by a freelance model she charge the actor pushed and knocked her down if she playfully attempted to pick up a 20-pound stuffed panda toy here's a telegram from John Corona of El Morocco to Humphrey Bogart stay out of my [ __ ] joint somehow it was all too good to last in 1956 his constant drinking and smoking finally caught up with him at a dinner table Bogart took out a small vial so like a cocktail glass filled with a thick white liquid and he would take quick gulps about every 10 minutes and finally somebody said bogie what is that he says what's wrong he says what's wrong with a big smile I have cancer that's what's wrong it was obvious at the time that he didn't think he had cancer but that's what it turned out to be he didn't stop smoking he didn't stop drinking you know he would still have his cocktails he would still want his friends to come over and every day evening around 4:30 5 o'clock he would be loaded by the gardener Aurelio into the dumbwaiter which is a kind of an elevator an old-time elevator and he would he would get come in the dum-dum waiter and he would be lowered down and rolled out onto the into the living room and there he would greet his flock he entertained them he told him stories and he joked and he lasted as long as he could and then he would have to go back upstairs again but he had unbelievable strength and willpower to make this happen because the body was failing very noticeably in the end I was aware that he was sick but I wasn't aware that he was dying this is one of the problems never talked about death never wanted my mother to talk about death never allowed us to face the fact and to grieve for him until after he was gone there was no last words there was no message and he was sick for for a year so consequently I think it became as a one day Steve your your father's dead and it was boom like that On January the 14th 1957 aged 57 Humphrey Bogart died the funeral was held at All Saints Episcopal Beverly Hills all Hollywood seemed to have turned out for it and the loss was devastating to Stephen and Lauren Bacall it took me a lot of years before I could deal with it I remember a lot of funny times at good times and which is what he would have liked all of the pluses because he was a rare human being and that's why I believe he is will live forever because there was something about him as a man that permeated everything he did and I think it reaches every generation and I think that's why that and the fact that he did not ever get old I think of the two reasons that the kids identify with him and always will it'll go on forever he would never believe that he'd asked for his ashes to be scattered at sea which really was his spiritual home his Restless nature was well understood by John Huston who gave the funeral eulogy to begin with he was endowed with the greatest gift a man can have talent the whole world came to recognize it Boggan got all he asked for out of life and more we have no reason to feel any sorrow for him only for ourselves for having lost him he is quite irreplaceable there'll never be another life [Music] [Music] what finding out about my father has done his first calmed me because I can now put him in a place other than the image on the screen I can see him laughing I could see him smiling I can hear him talking and you know I didn't start finding out it till a couple of years ago but all that time it seemed as though I was running here and running there and really didn't have a sense of who I was so I think this is cemented who I was who I am regarding my family and certain things that I've gotten from him the needling and they and the caring and a lot of the things that I've gotten from him I'm kind of a loner kind of person I I don't let people get too close and those are the big things that that have changed me well I'm going you can't follow what I've got to do you can't be any part of those are no good at being noble but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world someday you'll understand that is looking at you kid [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: George Pollen

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Keywords: Humphrey Bogart

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Length: 44min 20sec (2660 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018