Howard felt The Big Sleep needed another scene between Bogie and me – one of those titillating double entendre scenes – but he’d wait until he’d cut the film. Meanwhile, Warners wanted me to make my first trip to New York since To Have and Have Not. I was ecstatic at the idea, I hadn’t been back in a year and a half. They would arrange it all – with Charlie Einfeld planning it, there’d be lots of publicity. He wanted me to go to Chicago en route – to the National Press Club in Washington – revisit Julia Richman High School – give tons of interviews. That was okay with me, and I’d see my darling family again – I couldn’t wait for that. But there would be no Grandma – what would that be like? It was planned that I’d leave on February 2 on the Super Chief, with Mother and Droopy and Jack Diamond, our publicity man on The Big Sleep, who’d become a friend.
Jack was a great pal of Walter Winchell, who was then known all over the world – he was a unique newsman, gossip columnist, radio commentator with machine-gun delivery. He was out in California for a couple of weeks and told Jack he’d loved me in To Have and Have Not and wanted to meet me. So one Sunday night Jack took me to the radio studio to sit in on the broadcast and go to dinner afterward. This was the big time – meeting Walter Winchell! He was a friend of Mark Hellinger as well, and I took quite a ribbing from Mark about it. So did Bogie. Mark would say, ‘Look out – Winchell loves young girls, loves to go dancing – he might make you forget Bogie. He’s turned more than one girl’s head in his time!’ Bogie was not crazy about the notion, but it did come under the heading of publicity and he didn’t want to deprive me of anything that might give me a boost. As I was sitting in the glass booth listening, Winchell came to his ‘Orchids to You’ section – a couple of minutes devoted to praise of someone. I heard my name and blushed purple. He was complimenting me on my performance and saying, ‘Look out for Bacall – hold on to your hats – she is something!’ Winchell was a good newspaperman but a vain man, convinced he could change the course of world events – slightly deluded, but never mind. He also fancied himself a ladies’ man. He had a slight crush on me – and, sure enough, Mark was right, we went dancing at the Mocambo. He mentioned me again on his broadcast and broke precedent later by devoting an entire column to me titled ‘Bacall of the Wild.’ I was flattered and it did me a lot of good – perfect fodder for Warner’s publicity department.
Bogie stayed away from home another ten days, then gave it one last try with Mayo over Christmas. He had given me my first gold watch, with a gold chain strap. He put it on my wrist himself. Then, after the holidays, he left Mayo for good. He said they had agreed on a settlement and had retained lawyers. It was walking a tightrope whether she would agree to go to Reno or not.
Bogie was back at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We hid at The Players for dinner – it was on Sunset Strip just opposite the Garden of Allah and was owned by Preston Sturges. We were there one night with Jack Diamond and Walter Winchell, I in gray trousers and a navy boat shirt of Bogie’s. Not a planned dinner. It made me very nervous to go out publicly, but Bogie felt it was okay if there were others present and we didn’t stay too long. I was slouched low in the booth, hoping not to be seen. Winchell said, ‘Wouldn’t you love to go to New York and be in a play?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, then realized what I’d said and followed it by a quick ‘No.’ Bogie pounded his fist on the table, furious that after all the trouble he was going through, I could even think of going away. ‘You goddamn actresses! If that’s your plan, go ahead and go – forget about me.’ I was filled with remorse – tried hard to put it right. Said I’d just been joking, which I had.
Bogie was hypersensitive during this period, the only time his sense of humor faltered. He was turning his life upside down, and I didn’t understand all the complications of that. To me it was very black-and-white simple. His anxieties about me were manifold – the age difference, which was never out of his thoughts – and the fact that I was just beginning my career. Would I want to give it up? Should I be asked to? But there was no way he was going to start a life with me if I had any doubt as to what came first with me – marriage or career. And the property settlement. He’d worked all his life for the little he had – he hadn’t accumulated much, but half would go automatically to Mayo. As I’d never had anything to divide up, how could that have meaning for me? I would pay lip-service to understanding – would think that I did – but I didn’t. Bogie knew damn well that if I stuck with my career, a marriage to him could not succeed. ‘If you want a career, don’t get married. You can’t have both.’ I was sure I wanted nothing but to be Mrs Humphrey Bogart. I said I was prepared to give up work, and I believed what I said.
Bogie made his final move – into the Garden of Allah, a famous group of old Spanish bungalows that housed Robert Benchley, Charlie Butterworth, Nunnally Johnson, Dorothy Parker, John O’Hara when in town, Arthur Sheekman, Thornton Delehanty, John McClain. Alla Nazimova, the mysterious Russian actress, lived there and I think owned it. It boasted a great bellman who delivered mail, provided booze when needed, and knew something of the life of everyone who resided there. He was slightly under the influence himself a good deal of the time, but no one seemed to care. Bogie took a bungalow facing the swimming pool – large living room, bedroom, small kitchen and dining area. Very comfortable.
At this time Mary Chase’s play Harvey, about an invisible rabbit, was a great success in New York. As I was supposed to be what is laughingly called invisible, I was tagged ‘Harvey’ by Bogie. A girl of many names in that year.
Life was more and more falling into place. Louis Bromfield, one of Bogie’s oldest and best friends, and Louis’ secretary, George Hawkins, a round, mustached, outrageously funny man, were to be in Los Angeles very briefly. Bogie had told me all about Louis’ Malabar Farm, with its thousand or more beautiful acres of Ohio farmland. Louis had started his literary career brilliantly with his tetralogy titled The Green Bay Tree, Possession, Early Autumn, and A Good Woman. Later he had written The Rains Came, which was a big hit and sold to films, had become a farmer, a working farmer, and fallen so in love with the soil that his writing thereafter took second place and suffered accordingly.
Bogie’s and Louis’ political philosophies were diametrically opposed, but that did not interfere with their friendship. Bogie felt that Louis worked his farm, cared about farmers, understood about them – and that his politics were the result of intelligent thought. Based on that, they must be respected. Louis was a very tall man of enormous charm and good humor. We got on well immediately. It was odd to see Bogie in the company of such a man – it made his past life much clearer to me. I could comprehend, in part at least, why Bogie always said the Twenties were the ‘good old days’ – much more fun than the Forties.
By this time many arrangements had been solidified. Bogie was going to Malabar with Louis and George for a couple of weeks, then to New York, where he would wait for me and where I would meet his New York newspaper friends and ‘21’ friends. I was going to the Racquet Club in Palm Springs with Mother for a rest before taking off on my personal-appearance tour. Bogie had ordered a ring for me from his friend John Gershgorn, the Beverly Hills jeweler. It would be ready before I left.
We could be together all the time now – or almost – but still had to be careful not to flaunt our relationship in Mayo’s face. Bogie had to make sure that she would agree to stay in Reno for six weeks without once coming to L.A. One twenty-four-hour period away would negate even five weeks in Reno and she’d have to start all over again. But the wheels had begun to turn – it was only a question of time now. So the cynics were wrong. My mother made her truce with Bogie – an armed truce, but she accepted it. How could she not? She saw how happy and how much in love I was. Bogie, Louis, and George left on the Super Chief in mid-January 1945. I had bought Bogie a small bronze rabbit to signify Harvey’s presence at all times. We signed and exchanged several photographs – he took his to Ohio, mine rested on display in Reeves Drive.
The separation was bitte
rsweet – to be apart for a minute was painful, but the knowledge that we’d be united in two weeks made it bearable. As I read Bogie’s letters, which were frequent and long, I realized how much he had shaken up his life. Now that he had left wife number three, he was free at last to look forward to something again. He hadn’t believed anything good would ever happen in his life again – that he would have children – or love – or want anything as much as he wanted us to have a life together. He wrote to his business manager, Morgan Maree, about his settlement with Mayo, and he sent me a copy of the letter. He was careful that I should know every step, understand that I could go to Morgan for help at any time. I saw that he had completely exposed himself emotionally, that he was as vulnerable as a child – as prone to jealousy and anxiety as any kid in love for the first time would be.
I was a kid in love for the first time. It was easy for me – I knew nothing about pitfalls. I was giving nothing but myself and I could do that without a qualm. Never in my life had or has a man cared so much for me, wanted so much to protect me, surround me with life’s joys, share everything. It made me want to return the care – to show him it was possible to be really happy with a woman, to give him children. I was determined to do that.
There were things in the press during those two weeks – that Mayo wanted him back, that she had no intention of divorcing him. I was upset by all of them. I’d cut out the clippings and send them to him. He’d reassure me – more of the Hollywood crap from the gossip leeches whom he despised, who couldn’t exist except for us and didn’t give a damn what they wrote or whom they hurt as long as it was a story.
Cole Porter’s song ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ was on the Hit Parade and Bogie’s first wire to me said, ‘Please fence me in Baby – the world’s too big out here and I don’t like it without you.’ No one has ever written a romance better than we lived it.
I counted the seconds we were apart. Palm Springs was two weeks further away. I must have driven Mother crazy – I could not think or talk of anything but Bogie. When I appeared on the cover of Life, I was excited – and by all the other covers – but at the center and all around me was Bogie, and everything else disappeared far into the background. My breath depended on his. I could not have believed such completion. Nor could he – if he’d been in love before, he was obsessed now. He even forgot the twenty-five years between us and I never remembered them. When he’d been so concerned about the age disparity, he’d said to Peter Lorre, ‘It can’t last – she’s much too young.’ Peter said, ‘You’ll have maybe five years. Isn’t five years better than none?’ Bogie agreed that it was, and that helped him to decide. God, how lucky I was – Bogie might have been toying with me, just out for a love affair, or I might have been with someone who wanted to use me. But here I was, twenty years old, and I really had it all. And it was more or less handed to me. I hadn’t had years of struggle and deprivation – my struggle seemed a lot to me at the time, but it was nothing, if not overdramatized. I hadn’t starved, I hadn’t really supported myself before California. I’d had to be careful with money – I knew about work – there were no luxuries – but I’d never really suffered for my art. I was to learn something about that much later.
On February 2, 1945, Mother, Droopy, and I boarded the Chief to Chicago. I was wearing Bogie’s ring, which John Gershgorn had delivered the day before I left. When we arrived in New York, all hell had broken loose. Bogie, drunk the night before, had told Earl Wilson about his Baby – ‘I love my Baby – I miss my Baby.’ Baby (‘The Look’) Bacall was splashed prominently in the New York newspapers and all around the country. It must have made a big hit with Mayo. As I disembarked from the train in Grand Central Station, I was surrounded by about twenty reporters and photographers and police. ‘Give us the “Down Under Look,” Baby.’ ‘What have you got to say about marrying Bogart?’ ‘Are you going to see Bogart?’ ‘How does it feel to be back in New York?’ Me: ‘I just got here – I don’t know anything about Mr Bogart – I haven’t seen him for three weeks – I’m not planning to marry anybody.’ I didn’t know what the hell I was saying. They sat me on suitcases – had my head on a swivel going from photographer to photographer – the rat-a-tat barrage of questions. And we were supposed to be subtle, keep a low profile. Fat chance!
I couldn’t believe the mob. All of Grand Central was people – on every stairway, all screaming and pushing. I had a cordon of police around me – there was someone to take Mother and Droopy to a waiting limousine. It was mayhem – it was Einfeld.
I had to see Bogie right away. The Warners man told me he was waiting for me in his suite, but I’d have to see the press first. Oh God – Bogie would be in a rage. I was taken to my suite – my first suite – in a New York hotel. The Gotham – Bette Davis’ hotel! There were flowers everywhere – I’d never seen anything like it. And the press – questions and more questions, and me trying to field them. I absolutely denied a forthcoming marriage – Bogie and I had agreed to that. He always said if they asked personal questions, don’t answer – ‘Fuck ’em if they don’t like it.’ All well and good in theory, but impossible in practice. And the women of the press: ‘What a lovely ring – is it on your engagement finger?’ It’s on my Finger finger! ‘Have you spoken to Bogie? When will you see him? How does it feel to be a star overnight?’ And on and on. Bogie was calling. I’d gone into the bedroom, saying I was going to the ladies’ room. He wanted me up there right now – I couldn’t, room full of press, please be patient. ‘Fucking Warner Brothers are running your life!’ It was the worst Marx Brothers comedy imaginable – press agents dashing in and out of the bedroom. I couldn’t remember anyone’s name, I didn’t know what questions I was answering half the time, I wanted to go upstairs – and, as usual, I was shaking with nerves. I hadn’t expected anything like this – I’d thought it would be neat and tidy, one reporter at a time. I didn’t know then how Charlie Einfeld planned things. There was a reason he was considered the best.
Bogie called every ten minutes. After almost an hour I was finally able to get away – I said I needed a bath. I rushed upstairs, leaving Mother to unpack and call the family, who were all coming to the hotel for a drink. I got to Bogie’s door, turned the knob – he was sitting on the sofa with tears streaming down his cheeks. We threw our arms around each other. He’d thought I might have changed my mind – that, after thinking about it, I’d decided against marrying him. Even he, who was so sure of what he was, could be insecure. I was undone by the sight of him. Suddenly I had to reassure him – suddenly I was in control – he was so moving, simple, sweet. He took the ring off my finger and put it on slowly and surely to stay. He knew he’d gone too far with Earl Wilson, but he couldn’t change that now. And Inez Robb, a top newswoman from International News Service, had interviewed him that morning. Bogie refused to lie, so, having said what he’d said to Earl, he said a bit more to Mrs Robb. He knew Warners had many interviews planned, but it had been agreed upon beforehand that I would have all my nights free. Bogie was taking me to ‘21’ for dinner – our first in New York, alone, in front of everyone. But he promised to come up and meet my family, though he was less than enthusiastic, resenting anyone that took me away from him for five minutes.
Charlie and Rosalie, Jack and Vera, Bill and Renee, even Albert and Min from Connecticut – only no Granny. I hugged them all – it was so good to see them again. Oh, I loved them. They couldn’t wait to meet Bogie, of course – they were impressed, and Rosalie had always had a crush on him.
He finally walked in – introductions all around – Bogie very much on the defensive. He was older than Charlie and Jack – he was older than all of them except Bill. My cousin Marvin was at West Point, and Albert walked up to me pointing his finger at my chest, telling me I had to go up to see Marvin. Bogie just loved that – he said, ‘She does what I do and that doesn’t include West Point. She doesn’t have to do anything.’ That was not the best of meetings. He did like Jack, who was reserved but worldly – Charlie, who wa
s funny and whose personality connected more with Bogie’s than anyone else’s – and Bill, whose voice he loved. Bill should have been a rabbi, Bogie always said. Rosalie and Charlie wanted us to spend one evening in their apartment, which we agreed to. It would be private, at least. Bogie said, ‘Christ, you’ve got more goddamned relatives than I’ve ever seen.’
So the New York trip was on its way. At ‘21,’ I met John O’Hara, and Quentin Reynolds and his wife, Ginny, whom I adored immediately. It was also at ‘21’ that I was introduced to Moss Hart, who said, ‘Congratulations on your success – you realize, of course, from here on you have nowhere to go but down.’ He turned out to be a prophet.
Bogie took me to Bleeck’s – the Artists’ and Writers’ Club, just under the New York Herald Tribune, hangout for newsmen. It was there the Saturday Club met – lunch for three hours – drinks, of course – and there I learned the match game. It was played very seriously by all, and I was only allowed to be a spectator at first. It was based on one outguessing and tricking the other. Each player had three matches in hand – would keep anywhere from none to three – and the next player had to guess the total. Wrong guessers were eliminated one by one, losers bought rounds of drinks, and it was important. I was finally allowed to play – the only woman thus honored – and, lucky for me, I played well. I loved going there – the atmosphere was a combination of bar and country cottage, everyone knew everyone else, they were very, very bright men and they allowed me in. So I was part of something new and something that was Bogie’s.
Of course, I called George Kaufman. He had written me at the end of 1944:
Dear Peggy [he still didn’t know my name],
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