Baby, I do love you so dearly and I never, never want to hurt you or bring any unhappiness to you – I want you to have the loveliest life any mortal ever had. It’s been so long, darling, since I’ve cared so deeply for anyone that I just don’t know what to do or say. I can only say that I’ve searched my heart thoroughly these past two weeks and I know that I deeply adore you and I know that I’ve got to have you. We just must wait because at present nothing can be done that would not bring disaster to you.
And a week later:
Baby, I never believed that I could love anyone again, for so many things have happened in my life to me that I was afraid to love – I didn’t want to love because it hurts so when you do.
And then:
Slim darling, you came along and into my arms and into my heart and all the real true love I have is yours – and now I’m afraid you won’t understand and that you’ll become impatient and that I’ll lose you – but even if that happened, I wouldn’t stop loving you for you are my last love and all the rest of my life I shall love you and watch you and be ready to help you should you ever need help.
All the nice things I do each day would be so much sweeter and so much gayer if you were with me. I find myself saying a hundred times a day, ‘If Slim could only see that’ or ‘I wish Slim could hear this.’ I want to make a new life with you – I want all the friends I’ve lost to meet you and know you and love you as I do – and live again with you, for the past years have been terribly tough, damn near drove me crazy. You’ll soon be here, Baby, and when you come you’ll bring everything that’s important to me in this world with you.
One Saturday he had to be in town for a little while on business. So naturally he came to my apartment. We were together for just a couple of hours – my mother stayed away, which was really good of her considering the degree of her disapproval. Then the June 14 letter:
Darling, sometimes I get so unhappy because I feel that I’m not being fair to you – that it is not fair to wait so long a time – and then somehow I feel that it’s alright because I’m not hurting you, not harming and never shall.
I’d rather die than be the cause of any hurt or harm coming to you, Baby, because I love you so much.
It seems so strange that after forty-four years of knocking around I should meet you, know you and fall in love with you when I thought that that could never again happen to me. And it’s tragic that everything couldn’t be all clean and just right for us instead of the way it is because we’d have such fun together. Out of my love for you I want nothing but happiness to come to you and no hurt ever.
Slim darling, I wish I were your age again – perhaps a few years older – and no ties of any kind – no responsibilities – it would be so lovely, for there would be so many long years ahead for us instead of the few possible ones.
And he always cautioned me to stay away from the Hollywood folk – the ones who thrived on gossip and other people’s troubles. I had started so well on my career, and the more successful I became, the more people would try to latch on to me. Don’t ever do anything cheap – don’t ever hang around with people who do cheap things.
On July 5 the following communiqué was sent to the Warners staff on both coasts from their head of publicity, Charlie Einfeld:
Polish up the picks, shovels and pans for the gold mine on the way in Howard Hawks’ production of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, which we sneaked last night and which is not only a second Casablanca but two and a half times what Casablanca was. Here is a story of adventure and basic sex appeal the likes of which we have not seen since Morocco and Algiers. Bogart terrific, never was seen like this before. Lauren Bacall, new find of ours playing opposite Bogart, distinct personality who positively will be star overnight. Nothing like Bacall has been seen on the screen since Garbo and Dietrich. This is one of the biggest and hottest attractions we have ever had. If this sounds like I’m overboard, well I am.
I was not allowed to go to the first preview, but Charlie Feldman told me about it. It went fantastically well – all the audience-opinion cards were great. Howard was very happy – Warners were thrilled – and I would be a big hit. It would be almost a year before I understood what this meant. I didn’t know what a studio and its publicity department could do, plus a director of Howard’s stature who was totally behind me. Being a star to me only meant my name in lights. I was completely unaware of what publicity would bring.
They had a second preview about ten days later and Howard and Charlie took me to it. It is weird to see a movie that you’ve worked on scene by scene all put together. First the opening titles and credits and the music. I was so nervous and so excited. I was uncomfortable watching and hearing myself, but seeing Bogie’s and my scenes together, I was able to relive all the moments we’d shared on the set – all the funny, silly things we’d done. And I knew how far the relationship had traveled by each scene. I could have spent weeks seeing the film over and over because it brought me close to Bogie again. But the audience reaction threw me – I had not expected so much laughter, so much sheer enjoyment, from strangers. It would have been wonderful if Bogie had been there with me to see and hear it all. Maybe one day we could see it together. I couldn’t wait to tell him about it.
After the preview I stood in the background with Charlie Feldman while Howard talked to Charlie Einfeld and some other Warner people and they looked at more opinion cards. Then Howard and Charlie F. took me for coffee and asked how I liked it. I told them as best I could. How could I help but love something that had changed my whole life – that had given me the chance to realize my dream of being an actress and had introduced me to the man I had fallen in love with, who had to be the best man who ever lived. It was a marvelous night. I felt really close to Howard, so relieved when he smiled, when he seemed satisfied. I wanted his approval, and when he gave it, I felt terrific. Charlie Feldman I always felt good with. He was a friend I could trust and talk to – but not about Bogie. I couldn’t talk about him to anyone but Carolyn yet.
The picture was going to be released in October. Until then I would do only what Howard and Warners, with Howard’s approval, wanted me to do. Warners owned half of my contract, but Howard had the final word about his discovery, and he still wanted me to keep a low profile. After the picture came out, I’d have enough to do. So again I found myself waiting for something to happen. Fortunately, my head was so full of my life with Bogie – living from phone call to phone call, from meeting to stolen meeting – that my career took a back seat. My focus was Bogie – I dreamed only of him, of our being together forever. I wanted to give him the fun he’d never had, the children he’d never had. I wanted to show him that it was all possible. I wanted to believe it myself.
At four one morning the phone rang. Bogie was a little drunk. ‘I’m walking back to town. Come and get me – I’ll be on Highway 101.’ My mother thought I was completely mad when I started to get dressed. She was furious. ‘You can’t jump every time he calls. He’ll have no respect for you. Let him know that you won’t meet him any hour of the day or night. He’s taking advantage of you – it’s ridiculous.’ But I would not be stopped. It was raining, but I didn’t care. I was in love, I was on my way to meet my man – that’s all that mattered. I rushed to my car and started out. Pitch dark and me not a great driver and with no sense of direction. Somehow I found Highway 101 – I’d driven it often enough on my Coast Guard nights. My Plymouth was such a light car that in rain and heavy wind it would weave from side to side. How in hell was Bogie walking on a highway in this weather? I drove for more than an hour – it was beginning to get light. The rain finally let up. I kept hugging the right side of the road, looking frantically for Bogie. At last, as the sun rose, I caught sight of him – unshaven, wearing espadrillas, and with a large sunflower in his lapel. We were about a half-hour out of Newport – I don’t know how he’d got there. I slammed to a halt, rushed out of the car – there was no traffic – and into each other’s arms we fell. It
was the funniest, craziest thing he’d done so far.
He was exhausted – directed me to drive to the O’Moores’ trailer. He’d called them and we were expected. It was a Sunday morning. I loved being with these friends of Bogie’s. There was no strain – we didn’t have to pretend anything. I had gotten to know Pat and Zell rather well – they were my lifeline to Bogie – I could ask how he was, what he was doing, what was happening – what did they think would happen – what about Mayo, what was he like with her, anything like he was with me? They were his friends, not hers. Zell had coffee made and we had a good leisurely breakfast. A friend who had the trailer next to theirs was away and had said they could use it, so Bogie could take a nap later on if he wanted to. He talked about his sister and how well she was doing – talked about his sailing. He had two small-class sailboats that he used to race in Newport all through the summer. Bogie loved sailing – everything about it. It made him feel so good to be on the water – painting, varnishing, anything to do with a boat was food to him, health. He talked about the fight he’d had with Mayo – he’d had to get out, couldn’t stand it anymore. After a while it was clear we wanted to be alone. We had to be. We had been sitting in dressing rooms, in automobiles, hiding for so long. We went to the trailer next door. It was the first time we’d had complete privacy – no anxiety about phones or doorbells ringing – we could do or say anything we pleased – it was our nest – it was the most natural thing in the world – we were so happy – we were so in love – it was beautiful. I shall never forget that day.
Bogie had to return to Newport, as he didn’t want to leave his sister. Pat would take him. I cried as he drove away.
I would see Bogie again that Wednesday – Coast Guard day. In his July 12 letter he wrote:
Sunday was so beautiful, so sweet, my dearest, and you were wonderful to come to the rescue of poor befuddled me – I was just about ready to give up and die under an oil well when I saw your blessed face – never was so glad to see anyone, and I must have been a beautiful sight. And then that lovely day with you darling – and the moments that were ours alone to cherish always in our hearts.
Throughout this period I had to keep telling myself it would all come true for Bogie and me. I never believed that marriage was a lasting institution – for obvious reasons spawned in my childhood. I thought that to be married for five years was to be married forever.
Mother was not a cynical woman – on the contrary, she had fantasies of her own, romantic dreams. But she was horrified at the thought of a married man chasing me – much less a three-times-married man. She didn’t trust Bogie at all. When from time to time I would read her passages from Bogie’s letters expressing his worry and care for my well-being, she’d only say, ‘He should say those things.’ She knew how headstrong I was, but she lectured me anyway about character – his, if he had any, a man who cheated on his wife, and mine for getting mixed up with him. ‘He should have waited until he was free if he loves you so much.’ She just didn’t understand at all – she didn’t know him, didn’t know all the problems. I did – but as there always was an element of doubt in my head, her talks fed that element.
She and I had gone to another preview of To Have and Have Not with Charlie and Howard and she was flabbergasted. It must have been a shock to see one’s pure and innocent daughter behaving like a wanton, life-bitten woman of the world. Of course both of us wrote the entire family all about the movie – they were waiting breathlessly to see it. None of them knew anything of Bogie and me. Grandma, who was true Old Country, would have been very upset. As far as her values went, Bogie had nothing going for him – he was too old for me, he’d had three wives, he drank, he was an actor, and he was Goyim. So I wrote her my usual letters – all about work, California – and we sent pictures to her. She hadn’t been very well and she missed her darling granddaughter – my year in California was the first in nineteen that she hadn’t seen me at least twice a week, except for school and camp. She needed her children around her and she had had them for most of her life. I always thought of what she might think or say when she saw me in the movie or if she learned about Bogie. Kirk had always been her favorite because he was Jewish. I hadn’t told Bogie I was – it had never come up, and religion as such was not important to him.
Infant me in baby carriage, 1925
Alone
Alone at Highland Nature Camp, Lake Sebago, Maine
Nine- or ten-year-old me at Highland Manor School
With my mother at camp
At camp (middle of front row – of course), 1937
At the Night of Stars with Burgess Meredith, 1941
Hostess at the Stage Door Canteen. John Carradine is at the mike, 1942
With Uncle Charlie
Mother and Lee
The Family, 1943: Vera, Jack, Renee, Bill, Grandmother, Charlie, Rosalie, Mother
Being pulled and tucked by Diana Vreeland, 1943
Modeling photo in Harper’s Bazaar, 1943
The famous cover of Harper’s Bazaar, March 1943
My screen test for Claudia, 1943
Experiments with hairstyles for To Have and Have Not tests, 1944
‘The Look’ -great red dress, 1944
‘The Look’ – shot by John Engstead at Howard Hawks’s home, 1944
Opening scene in To Have and Have Not, 1944
A publicity still from To Have and Have Not, 1944
With my first dog, Droopy, 1945
On Harry Truman’s piano, National Press Club, Washington, D.C., 1945
The Big Sleep – on the set with Bogie, John Ridgely and Howard Hawks, 1945
With Bogie on the lot during The Big Sleep, 1945
Our wedding: Louis Bromfield, Bogie, Mary Bromfield, Mother, me, George Hawkins and Judge Shettler, 21 May, 1945
Sailing on Bogie’s beloved Santana, 1947
On location for The African Queen with Katie and Bogie, 1951
With Adlai Stevenson, 1952
The New York premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire, 1953
At lunch for the Oliviers: Laurence Olivier, Clifton Webb, Dick Sale, Vivien Leigh, Joan Bennett, Charlie Feldman behind Bogie and me, Mary Anita Sale next to Charlie, Najda Gardiner leaning on me, and Reggie Gardiner sitting next to Maybelle Webb, 1953
The family visiting Bogie on the set of The Desperate Hours, 1955
Bogie with Leslie, 1955
The first week in August it had been arranged that I would drive down to Newport and stay on Pat and Zelma’s boat for a couple of days. A dangerous decision, but Bogie wanted me to see Newport – to feel the atmosphere that he had described to me so many times and loved so much. I loved the idea – forbidden territory is excitement incarnate.
I would be kept under wraps and below until the boat moved away from the slip. Mother was so worried: ‘If his wife catches you down there, it will be just awful.’ The understatement of the century.
I drove down in the morning. Bogie would keep Mayo occupied until I was safely aboard. There was no danger of her leaving his boat as long as he was on it. The whole scene was really a B movie. Funny now. When I got there, Pat gave me a letter from Bogie. It turned out that Mayo had to go to town the next day for an entire twenty-four hours, so I’d be with him all that time. Glorious!
I had never been on a large boat before – my sea-going life had been confined to rowboats and canoes. The O’Moore boat was a power boat that had bunks, and a galley (kitchen) and a head (john). It was thirty feet long, which made it almost ocean-going to my city-bred eyes. Being aboard was like playing house. Not really roomy, but very nice. The yacht basin was a series of boats of all sizes separated by small wooden walks called slips at the water level or just above. I’d never seen so many boats – my God, were there that many people who lived on the water?
The next day Bogie came on board for lunch. It was so wonderful to see him, to be with him again – to touch him. Mayo had to go to the doctor – she had broken her foot, falling down drunk, of course
– had been in a cast, and had to be checked out. What a windfall! Bogie pointed out his boat. It, too, was a power boat, about thirty-six feet. He thrived on small sailboat racing – had already won two cups that summer, which gave him more of a kick than any movie could have done. He loved competing and being accepted as a sailor by other sailors. He greatly resented their resentment of actors – their attitude of ‘For an actor you’re a good sailor.’ But Bogie did not play at sailing and they knew it – he knew all the rules of racing, had read every book ever written about it, and, best of all, he could do it well – and each cup he won proved it.
He kept saying, ‘This is why I love sailing – the sea – the air – it’s clean and healthy and away from the Hollywood gossip and leeches.’ It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day. Bogie had told me he might work with Howard again – Howard had talked to him about a Raymond Chandler story, he wanted to put us in another picture together right away. Bogie was having contract arguments with Warners and was worried about the outcome. He wanted some security and, after Casablanca and To Have and Have Not, was in a good position to renegotiate. He couldn’t decide anything about Howard’s project until that was settled. If we could work together again, we could be together again. What a lovely, happy thought.
By Myself and Then Some Page 16