Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

Two men in their twenties passed by their table en route to the men’s room. In their tuxedos, each one looked like a twin of Rudolph Valentino. “Everybody’s trying to get in on the Valentino act,” Raft said contemptuously. “I’ve even read that about you.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to become another Valentino,” Hump said. “We’re too different. Besides, I don’t look that good in Arab drag.”

  Raft laughed. “There’s talk that I’ll be the screen’s next Valentino, although it seems like Ramon Novarro has beat me out. I know Rudy very well. We once shared a room together when we were going through rough days back in our taxi-dancing times, long before America knew what a Sheik was.”

  “I heard he was a gigolo,” Hump said.

  “You might call it that,” Raft said, downing a whiskey. “We were both gigolos, hiring ourselves out on the dance floor for a buck. Rudy’s first wife, Jean Acker, keeps writing me to go on the road with her in a dance act, imitating the act that Natacha Rambova and Rudy toured in. Acker wants the billing to read, ‘Mrs. Rudolph Valentino and George Raft.’ No way. I’m gonna be a star without any help from the Valentino name.”

  Raft told Hump that after work, and while still dressed in his tuxedo, he ran beer convoys. “I work not just for Fay but for Dutch Schultz and ‘Legs’ Diamond,” Raft said. “Mostly I work for a guy called Big Frenchy. Sometimes we make heists when we raid our competition’s booze being trucked into New York. You might think I’m a fantastic dancer, but I’m even better as a truck driver. I can cut corners on two wheels. Turn a truck on a dime and hold the fucker steady going eighty miles an hour, all the time ducking some trigger-happy fool.”

  He wasn’t making this up, although it sounded like a script for one of the films both men would later make at Warner Brothers. Raft also wasn’t lying about his driving skills. Because of his expertise learned on illegal booze heists in New York in the Twenties, he would one day save Bogie’s life when the brakes gave out on a truck Raft was driving on the set of a film.

  Texas returned to the table to warn Raft that she was about to introduce him for his second show of the evening. When Raft excused himself, Texas told Hump that since he had seen Raft dance, she had more entertainment planned for him. “But for the grand finale, you’re coming to bed with me,” Texas said, leaning over to kiss his lips.

  One of the waiters ushered Hump into one of the backrooms where the focused beam of a movie projector revealed a room filled with a blue haze from the heavy smoking of the other male patrons. When the film went on, Hump could understand why these were called blue movies. The star of tonight’s porn movie was a dancer who’d been a hit in stag movies and a star at private smokers before going on to Hollywood.

  As the actress on film danced the Charleston in the nude, the cameraman told Hump her name was Lucille LeSueur.

  Fast forward: It is 1954, and Hump, the “King of Hollywood,” is escorting the “Queen of Hollywood” to the Academy Awards ceremony.

  More than a decade after Louis B. Mayer had kicked Hump’s date for the evening off the MGM lot, she’d bounced back to regain her throne as queen, although not for long.

  With a mink stole draped across her shoulder and around her wrinkled neck, Bogie was taking out Joan Crawford, once known as Lucille LeSueur.

  ***

  The Broadway season was ripe for Bogie’s women-to-be in 1925, carrying through the spring of 1926. Wife-to-be number one, Helen Menken, was appearing in Makropoulos Secret. Wife number two, Mary Philips, was a star in The Wisdom Tooth, and wife number three, Mayo Methot, was appearing in Alias the Deacon. Wife number four? The one-year old Betty Bacall was in a Bronx nursery in her diapers.

  The actress, Mary Boland, had threatened to destroy Hump’s stage career because of his unprofessional conduct when he’d appeared with her in Meet the Wife. When no suitable young actor could be found for her new three-act comedy, she reluctantly said, “Okay, get Bogart.”

  Cradle Snatchers was written by Norma Mitchell and Russell Medcraft and directed by Sam Forrest. It was a raucous and bawdy farce about three society women who sneak away with three handsome college men hired as gigolos. The plot thickens when the husbands show up at the same hideaway, thinking that it’s a high-class bordello.

  It was well-cast, especially with the enormously comical actress Edna May Oliver in a co-starring role. Hump played a minor role, that of Jose Vallejo. Also appearing in a minor role was another actor, Raymond Guion, whom Hump befriended.

  Like Rod La Rocque, Raymond wasn’t pleased with his name. After several drunken talks in speakeasies, he won Hump’s approval for his new stage name. As Gene Raymond, Broadway’s so-called “nearly perfect juvenile” would go on to be a successful film career as a handsome, blond-haired actor with a well-toned body.

  His greatest fame came on June 16, 1937 when he married MGM’s golden singing sensation, Jeanette MacDonald.

  Back in 1925, both Raymond and Hump thought they’d found steady employment in Cradle Snatchers. Woollcott found Hump’s performance “competent,” but a visiting theater critic from Chicago, Amy Leslie, was more enthusiastic. She claimed Bogart was “as handsome as Valentino and as graceful as any of our best romantic actors.” Opening on September 7, 1925, at the Music Box, Cradle Snatchers would run for 332 performances, the hit of the season.

  For Hump, the highlight of the play’s run was the night Louise Brooks showed up with her new boy friend, Charlie Chaplin. Hump’s only regret was that no one in the audience actually watched the play that night, as all eyes were focused on Chaplin. He was, after all, the most famous man on earth. As one stagehand claimed, “I don’t know who the president of the United States is, but I sure know who The Little Tramp is.”

  Louise had taken Charlie to see Helen perform that previous evening, and had even gone with the film star backstage to meet Helen. Louise later claimed that Charlie and she were bitterly disappointed in Helen’s performance both on and off the stage. “It’s the same show whether the curtain is up or whether she’s in her dressing room taking off her makeup,” Louise said. “She’s so histrionic, so t-h-e-a-t-e-r. Her white, thin face is always ecstatically lifted up to her vision of The Drama. I never heard her talk about anything except the art of the theater. She ignored me and was trying to impress Charlie. It didn’t work. He couldn’t wait to escape from her clutches.”

  Like an awestruck fan, Hump was delighted to meet Charlie after his performance and even more pleased when Louise invited him to join Charlie, her sometimes girl friend, Peggy Fears, and herself for a tour of some East Side speakeasies. The Little Tramp had developed a fondness for gypsy musicians newly arrived from Budapest. At the final speakeasy visit of the night, Charlie sat enraptured listening to a wild Hungarian violinist, Bela Varga, with an Albert Einstein coiffure, playing nostalgic music left over from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  Invited back to Charlie’s suite, the entertainment continued as Charlie did his impressions, the most brilliant being that of John Barrymore reciting the most famous soliloquy of Hamlet as he picked his nose. He then rushed into his bedroom and emerged in quick drag, impersonating Isadora Duncan dancing barefoot in a storm of toilet paper. His most comedic impression was left for last—that of how Lillian Gish would achieve orgasm if she ever went to bed with anyone but her sister, Dorothy.

  Tired of performing, Charlie offered Louise and Peggy Fears five-hundred dollars if they would strip naked and perform lesbian love on the sofa in front of his eager eyes. Without hesitation, both women stripped down and got on the sofa, where Charlie, only twelve inches from the scene, played director. The performance must have excited him, as he disappeared inside the bedroom and emerged later totally nude.

  Hump was shocked to see that Charlie had coated his monstrous erection with iodine. He proceeded to chase both Peggy and Louise around the living room, finally capturing Louise. As he disappeared inside his bedroom with her, shutting the door behind him, he invited Hump to enjoy Peggy Fears
for the night.

  After they’d gone, Peggy plopped down on the sofa. “Okay, big boy, show time! Strip down for action. Louise has already told me about you. For a change, I’m gonna lay you for free.”

  ***

  Four years after taking out the marriage license—it was still valid—Humphrey Bogart wed Helen Menken on May 20, 1926. The wedding took place at Helen’s apartment at 52 Gramercy Place.

  Hump selected his brother-in-law, Stuart Rose, as his best man. He’d wed Hump’s sister Frances two years before. Many of Helen’s friends, a regular Who’s Who in the Theater, showed up. Some one-hundred and thirty guests crammed into the apartment.

  Hump invited the Bradys, including Jr. and Sr., Grace George, and Alice Brady. His fellow pussy posse member, Kenneth MacKenna, was also a guest, as was Maud Bogart. Hump’s father was at sea at the time.

  Stuart was later to recall that the ceremony “was macabre, almost obscene.” John Kent, a pastor at St. Ann’s Church for Deaf Mutes, conducted the ceremony. He was deaf himself and had been asked to perform the marriage because both of Helen’s parents, who were attending the wedding, were also deaf.

  Unlike Helen’s parents, the reverend had learned to read the service in a kind of warped guttural speech, a sing-song way of talking evocative of Helen Keller. Kent both spoke the words of the ceremony and performed in sign language.

  The pastor couldn’t hear Hump’s “I do,” although Helen delivered her “I do” in sign language. After the ceremony, Helen rushed over to Mary Boland where she gushed, “I’ve been so frightfully busy on Broadway and other stages, I just haven’t found time to marry in all these four years, even though Humphrey urged me to do so every day.”

  When newsmen showed up with photographers, Helen became unstrung. She burst into hysterics. As Louise Brooks would later satirically observe, “For Helen, that wasn’t hard to do. She did that every night on stage whether the part called for it or not.”

  Maud Bogart, Frances, and Helen’s mother helped the just-married actress to her bedroom. One of the guests, Dr. Nathan Blomenthal, was summoned to sedate her. Hump did not bother to go into the bedroom to check on the condition of his new bride.

  When they’d gone, he turned to Bill Jr. and Stuart. “I think I’ve made a dreadful mistake.”

  ***

  The marriage with Helen Menken began with violence. There was no honeymoon, other than a dinner at Luchow’s and a night alone in the apartment. Helen had a fat Cocker Spaniel named “Sam.” She insisted on feeding the dog caviar, claiming, “It’s his favorite food.”

  Hump countered that the mutt ate only caviar because there was nothing else in his bowl. Awakening early after their first night as a married couple, Hump went and got the dog a bowl of chopped meat. The animal was in the act of gobbling down the red meat when Helen came into the kitchen. She screamed at her new husband for feeding the dog hamburger and claimed it would give him worms. The fight accelerated until she slapped him severely.

  Enraged, he punched her in the face and sent her sprawling on the floor. She couldn’t appear on the street for two weeks, and Hump spent the time as a houseguest of Bill Jr. and Katharine Alexander.

  When Hump and Helen finally spoke, it was by telephone, when she called to tell him that she was going to appear in a play called The Captive.

  “What’s the plot?” he asked sarcastically. “Do you get kidnapped by African cannibals?”

  “Nothing like that,” she said. “It’s a play about lesbianism.”

  “Type casting,” he kidded her.

  “If that God damn drag queen, Mae West, can play a nymphomaniac in some shitty play called Sex, then I can play a lesbian in The Captive —and if you and the public don’t like it, you can all go fuck yourselves.” She slammed down the phone.

  True to her word, Helen began rehearsals for what would be one of the most controversial plays in the history of Broadway of the 1920s. Deciding to make up with Helen, Hump attended rehearsals.

  At the theater, he met the actor, Basil Rathbone, who was seven years older than him. Rathbone had been cast as the male lead in The Captive. Rathbone had been born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his family had to flee to escape the Boers because Rathbone’s father, Edgar Philip Rathbone, a mining engineer, had been accused of being a British spy.

  He had married Ouida Bergère in April of 1926. His union with this scriptwriter would last until Rathbone’s death in 1967, although he told Hump that, “You are and I are destined to love many different women.” When he said that, he, of course, was perfectly aware of Hump’s marriage to Helen. He also told Hump that, “Helen has told me that she has had many real experiences as a lesbian, so she feels perfectly qualified in the role. When we open, though, I fear the revenge of the bluenoses, who are perfectly capable of tarring us, feathering us, and riding us out of town on a rail.”

  ***

  When The Captive, starring Helen Menken, opened on September 29, 1926, it shocked and disgusted Broadway audiences. Only Mae West, in her play Sex, was generating more newspaper publicity. Unlike Helen, Miss West was enjoying the publicity and notoriety surrounding Sex. She was virtually rewriting the script every night, coming up with new and different double entendres. Eighty percent of her audience was male, and many of them were returning for a second, third, or even fourth viewing. Because West played it with different nuances and with different scripts and different ad libs every night, it was as if the audience was seeing a different play every time.

  As West tried to lure more women into her audiences, Helen wanted more males to attend The Captive. Her audiences were nearly eighty percent female. Lesbians from as far away as London and San Francisco flocked to see The Captive, the first play on Broadway to deal with the subject of female homosexuality.

  New York’s district attorney, Joab Banton, was coming under increasing pressure from John Sumner’s Society for the Prevention of Vice. Banton made frequent statements to the press, claiming that Broadway wasn’t going to become as scandal-ridden as Hollywood. He cited the murder in Hollywood of the director, William Desmond Taylor, and the scandal involving the trial of screen comedian, Fatty Arbuckle, accused of raping the minor actress Virginia Rappé, causing her death.

  Banton found no support from New York’s playboy mayor, Jimmy Walker. Walker had attended both plays and claimed he liked them very much. “They’re not family entertainment,” Walker said, “but there’s nothing wrong with having plays for mature audiences.” Involved in a torrid affair with his mistress, Betty Compton, Walker was hardly a champion of morality.

  When Walker departed for Havana in February of 1927 for a vacation, the acting mayor, Joseph B. McKee—known as “Holy Joe”—seized his opportunity to punish Broadway. He ordered Banton to “banish nudity and obscenity” from the Broadway stage.

  An order went out on February 5 to have plainclothesmen from the vice squad monitor the productions of both The Captive and Sex. On February 9, Holy Joe had his evidence, and he issued orders to have the casts of both plays arrested and charged with offending public morals.

  Basil Rathbone and Helen were in the middle of their play’s second act when armed policemen stormed directly onto the stage and arrested both of them, along with the rest of the cast. The entire troupe was herded into a Black Maria (an armored paddy wagon used at the time for rounding up, among others, drunks and vagrants) waiting outside the theater. To her shock and surprise, Helen encountered West and some of the cast members of Sex within the same Black Maria.

  Members of both casts were boiling mad. Each production had been jealous of the other play for the publicity and audiences it was generating. Suddenly, being herded together like cattle and thrown into the smelly, hot Black Maria for a bouncy ride to the police station had the effect of lighting a fuse.

  Arguments broke out between the two casts. West felt that she had to defend “my boys,” and Helen took it upon herself to champion the cause of the cast of The Captive. “We’re at least no
rmal,” West announced to Helen. “I’m not the one who’s up on stage appearing nightly as a sexual deviate.”

  Unable to withstand such verbal assault, the already infuriated Helen moved toward West, grabbing her by her blonde hair. It was a wig. As the hairpiece fell to the floor, Helen stomped on it. West’s own hair was matted down with a protective veil. Fearing she’d have to face newspaper photographers at the jail, West shoved Helen, sending her sprawling down onto the floor of the Black Maria, as West picked up her wig and began to make emergency repairs to it.

  Rathbone graciously lifted Helen from the floor and dusted her off. Helen at this point was furious enough with West to attack her again, but Rathbone restrained her. “I hear you’re not a real woman at all,” Helen shouted at West. “I hear you’re a female impersonator.”

  “You ugly bitch,” West screamed. “If I could get to you, I’d tear every dyed hair out of your ugly head.”

  At the Jefferson Market Women’s Prison, both Helen and West were booked. Hump arrived and rushed to Helen, taking her in his arms. With him were two attorneys from Charles Frohman Productions, Inc.

  Before the night was out, the attorneys for The Captive had worked out an agreement with the district attorney’s office. Helen and the rest of the cast and the producers would accept a proposal of “implied immunity” if they would withdraw The Captive from the Broadway stage.

  West chose to go the opposite route, preferring to continue with her play Sex. Her attorneys would get an injunction from the Supreme Court, barring police shutdown until a trial was held.

  The trial itself became a fashion parade for West, who appeared in a different, outrageous, and gorgeous gown for every court appearance. She often wore black satin, some outfits with bugle beads, others with georgette tops. West eventually was convicted for producing Sex and sentenced to a ten-day jail term and a fine of $500. She would serve only eight days of her sentence at Welfare Island, getting off for good behavior.