Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  Described as a “British-born Wallace Beery,” McLaglen was a two-fisted man of action. Under Raoul Walsh’s direction, McLaglen’s appearance in the antiwar film was a smash hit at the box office. Audiences delighted in the ribald, gregarious interplay between Flagg and his sergeant, Quirt, as played by Edmund Lowe. Little did Hump know on that first meeting with McLaglen that Raoul Walsh, in about a year, would team McLaglen as Flagg and Edmund Lowe as Sergeant Quirt in a derivative flicker loosely inspired by What Price Glory?, Women of All Nations.

  Hump himself would appear in that movie. No longer viewed as a candidate for a costarring role opposite McLaglen, Hump suffered ninth billing in the screen credits.

  In A Devil With Women, McLaglen was cast in the role of Jerry Maxton, a soldier-of-fortune at large in a banana republic in Central America. He played a womanizer, romancing “anything in skirts,” especially the fair señorita, Rosita Fernandez, as interpreted by Mona Maris.

  In contrast, Hump played a supporting role of the clean-cut but wastrelly rich nephew of the country’s wealthiest man.

  In the film, McLaglen’s job involves ending the reign of terror of the notorious bandito, Morloff, who is terrorizing the countryside. McLaglen falls for a woman gun smuggler. Alone with Hump’s character, he’s lured into the enemy camp, where the two men narrowly escape a firing squad. Maris’s character of Rosita provides a refuge for them. The bandits are enticed inside Maris’s hacienda where one by one McLaglen, the former prizefighter, knocks them out in a series of one-punch fights.

  At the end of the film, McLaglen is ready to claim Rosita as his girl, but she tells him that her heart belongs to Tom Standish, the role played by Bogart. Hump in his first major film gets the girl in the final reel.

  Today it appears amazing that Hump was ever cast in another movie after the release of A Devil with Women. A financial and artistic failure, with a stupid plot and mismatched actors, it should have ended his career. Fox executives wisely decided not to continue pairing McLaglen with Bogart, abandoning forever the notion of continuing their original idea about the ongoing series of adventure films. Later in life Bogie threatened to buy up all copies of the film and have them destroyed.

  The director, Irving Cummings, was particularly brutal to the neophyte film actor. “McLaglen is biting off your balls and chewing them up on screen. You come off like some rich little twerp repeating one of your Broadway ‘Tennis, anyone?’ parts.”

  “God damn it, that’s what the role calls for,” Hump protested.

  “We’ve got to come up with some business to make your character real,” Cummings said.

  The director probably gave Hump the worst advice he could. A stage actor unaware of how the camera picked up the tiniest facial nuance, Hump set out to match the almost constant ear-to-ear grin of the burly looking, battered, and brutish British actor.

  The writer, Robert Sklar, in reviewing the film, said it best: “Bogart plays a coltish fool, tossing his head, slapping his knees, and laughing with his mouth open so wide you can almost see his tonsils. He looks like an actor who is uncomfortable not only with his part, but also with his body. He employs a few stock gestures that he repeats again and again: arms awkwardly held in front of his body; then pushing back his jacket; then fists at the belt; then into his pockets; then back to the belt, arms akimbo. Smiles, arch delivery of lines, more smiles.”

  ***

  Mona Maris with her superb deep-throat technique was taking such good care of Hump on the set that he hardly had enough left for Joan Blondell in the evening. Joan wasn’t free every night, only when Cagney could escape from the clutches of his “Willie.”

  Stuart Rose had left Kenneth MacKenna’s apartment to return to the Fox New York office and his unhappy bed with Frances. Hump sensed that Kenneth wanted him out of the apartment so he could conduct his private life with greater secrecy.

  When the apartment next door became available, Hump eagerly signed a lease and set out to buy some secondhand furniture. He didn’t want to purchase anything too expensive, because he feared that his days as a Fox movie star were about to come to an end.

  Kenneth was supportive, but Hump sensed that his host was relieved to see him go. When a phone was finally installed in his own name, he called Joan, only to learn that she was seeing Cagney that night.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I ran into an old friend of yours from New York. I gave her your number. You definitely won’t be lonely tonight.”

  “Who is it?”

  “And spoil the surprise?” she said. “Have fun, duckie.” She put down the receiver.

  About an hour later, the phone rang. With some reluctance, he picked up the receiver.

  “This is Barbara Stanwyck,” the voice said. “Could this be the one and only Humphrey Bogart?”

  “Miss Stanwyck,” he stammered, fearing at first someone was pulling a trick on him. “I’m honored that you’d call me.”

  “Joan gave me your number,” Stanwyck said.

  “She said you were an old friend of mine,” he said. “We’ve never met. Of course, I’d be honored to take you out.”

  “Never met!” Stanwyck said, mocking him. “In Brooklyn where I come from, when a man fucks a woman, he’s met her.”

  “You and I…” Hump was totally confused.

  “I’m Ruby Stevens,” Stanwyck said. “That hot Jazz Baby from the chorus line. You told me I was the greatest fuck of your life.”

  No longer the tough-talking little chorus girl from Brooklyn, Ruby Stevens—a.k.a. Barbara Stanwyck—was now a take-charge movie star. Within two hours of her call, Hump found himself dressing in his best suit.

  Stanwyck had shown up at the apartment house as the driver of her own sleek new car. “I know you struggling actors drive around in junk-heaps, and I have my image to think of,” she’d said on the phone.

  When he opened the door and a stunningly beautiful and elegantly dressed Stanwyck was standing there, he searched for some telltale clue in her face that this ravishing beauty, who was aspiring to become the new queen of Hollywood, was the same chorus girl he’d allegedly bedded. He found none but enjoyed it when she hugged him and kissed him succulently on the lips. He was certain that if he’d ever gone to bed with a dame like this, he would never forget her.

  In his apartment, he went into the kitchen to make a drink for both of them. Coming back into the living room, she gulped it down. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  On the way downstairs, she claimed she’d met him one night when he’d stumbled drunk from Texas Guinan’s place. “I was working the honky-tonk next door.”

  Something jolted in his brain, but he wasn’t certain. He vaguely recalled picking up some thin girl. Unlike the other ladies in the chorus line, she had few curves and her legs were less well-developed than the others. In years to come, no one could accuse Barbara Stanwyck of competing with the gams of Marlene Dietrich or Betty Grable. With her pretty auburn hair and her blue eyes, he had been attracted to her but he still didn’t remember bedding her. Fortunately, there was no motorcycle patrolman on duty that night. She made it to the Cock & Bull for dinner in record time.

  Before the first course arrived, she announced,& “I’m the biggest star in this whole fucking room.”

  “You’re sure as hell a bigger star than me,” he said. “I’m not even a starlet.”

  They ordered steaks from a handsome blond-haired waiter, who was more beautiful than either of them. With his eyes, he made it clear to each of them that, if asked, he would easily be their bed partner for the night.

  Stanwyck gave the most “manly” order. “Just sweep it over the brush fire lightly,” she told the waiter.

  It was one o’clock before they staggered out of the tavern. Although technically, she was too drunk to drive, Stanwyck took control of the wheels of her car anyway. Without anybody saying anything, it was just assumed that she was heading back to his apartment building.

  Hump fumbled drunkenly with the key at his own apa
rtment door. “Once again I’m going to get to fuck Ruby Stevens, and I’m drunk as a skunk for the second time.”

  “When aren’t you drunk?” she said with a touch of hostility in her voice. She took the key from him and opened the door right away, entering the apartment before he did.

  When he staggered inside, she slammed the door and locked it. “Let’s get one thing straight, Bogart. I’ve got to warn you. When I take you to bed, I run the fuck.”

  ***

  In Hump’s apartment, it was three o’clock in the morning. Stanwyck was right: she ran the fuck. Twice she’d mounted him. Both times he’d lain on his back as she did her gymnastics over him. He wanted more of that kind of loving, although he didn’t plan to abandon his missionary position with Joan Blondell.

  Stanwyck stood at his soot-streaked window clad only in a brassière, not bloomers, and looked out into the night, although his view opened onto a brick wall. The room was dark. Propped up in bed, he could only make out the glow of her fiery hot cigarette. She smoked like she acted in movies—with gusto.

  Until he would meet Joan Crawford, Stanwyck was the most ambitious actress he’d ever known. It made stars he’d appeared with on Broadway, including Mary Boland and Shirley Booth, look like gentle ladies-in-waiting at the court of some dowager queen.

  As Bogie would say later in life, “Ruby Stevens was one tough, sassy broad, but she had class. She was hard-boiled yet soft and vulnerable, a free-spirited woman who took no crap from any man. She was also one of the sexiest women I’ve ever known.”

  Yet, even though she’d seduce many men in her life, including William Holden, Robert Wagner, Glenn Ford, and Gary Cooper, Hump suspected that in her heart she was a lesbian. It didn’t appear that passion drove her to men. Stanwyck once told him, “I save my real loving, my gentle side, for women.& With men, things immediately revolve around power games.”

  He bolted up in bed, “My God, I must be sobering up. It’s come back to me. I remember you when you were dancing at the Strand.”

  “Great!” she said in a harsh voice. “So, you aren’t a retard. That proves that even as a teenager I can make a lasting impression on a drunk.”

  “You were one of the Keep Kool Cuties,” he said. “You did that number with Johnny Dooley. ‘A Room Adjoining a Boudoir,’ if memory serves.”

  “Finally, you know who I am,” she said, “even though I had to fuck you twice to jar that pickled brain of yours.”

  “I miss the Twenties back in New York,” he said when she crushed out her cigarette and returned to bed for some pillow talk. “Speakeasies, dirty dances, bootleg hooch, plunging necklines, red hot jazz, flapper clothes.”

  “And big-dicked New York men,” she chimed in. “Don’t forget those.”

  “I didn’t know too many of those,” he said. “None at all, as a matter of fact.”

  Since she couldn’t sleep, she decided to keep him up too. “It was Mae Clarke who taught me the joy of lesbian love. But, as you also know from tonight, I’m not completely weaned from men either. I don’t want to deny myself any pleasure. Too much was denied me as a girl. As a woman, I’ll go after what I want. If I want to get fucked by a man, you know I can go for that the way I bagged you tonight. If I want a woman, I’ll chase her down and get her. I’ve already set my sights on that blonde German bitch, Dietrich. Who knows? Marlene, and me might become a thing.”

  “Invite me over,” Hump said. “From what I’ve seen of Dietrich I’d go for her in a minute. I saw Mae Clarke in Nix on Dames. I’d go for her too. You’ve got good taste. You and Mae still an item?”

  “We still are,” Stanwyck said. “Me and Mae saw you on Broadway in It’s a Wise Child. She thought you were kinda cute.”

  “I’ll take you up on that invitation for a three-way,” he said.

  “You’ve got a date,” she said. “Now let’s get some God damn sleep. You’ll talk my head off and keep me up all night. I’ve got to look gorgeous on camera tomorrow.”

  ***

  “I heard you taught Farrell how to talk. How about teaching me how to shit? I’m constipated.”

  Those unlikely remarks launched a friendship that would last to the grave between Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy.

  Hump reached to shake the actor’s hand on the Fox set of Up the River. “Call me Hump.”

  “What kind of nickname is that?” Tracy asked. “From now on and henceforth forever more you’ll be known as Bogie.”

  Stocky, round-faced and not particularly handsome, Tracy was hardly a Hollywood hunk like Farrell. A former Jesuit prep-school student who once wanted to be a priest, the Milwaukee-born actor was Bogie’s age and, like Bogie, had joined the Navy in the final days of World War I.

  Tracy had captured director John Ford’s attention on Broadway playing Killer Mears, a convicted murderer in an all-male cast. Tracy was waiting on Death Row in the play The Last Mile. Ford thought that he’d be ideal in the role of a character called “St. Louis” in the 1930 prison drama, Up the River, opposite the Ziegfeld beauty, Claire Luce.

  Bogie was cast as the fourth lead, playing Steve. He’d never met Ford but the director had seen him in a matinee performance of The Skyrocket and had decided Hump would be suitable for a role in Up the River. Ford later told Bogie in Hollywood that, “I know your wife was the star of that play. But you have the talent. Mary Philips is no actress.” Hump decided to use Ford’s assessment of her talent in his next big fight with his wife.

  On the set, Tracy put his arm around Bogie and led him toward his dressing room. “Ford’s in the front office this morning. So in the meantime, let’s you and me go have some whiskey. You are a drinking man, aren’t you?”

  He smiled at Tracy. “I’ve been known to put away a few.”

  After the first drink, Tracy delivered the bad news. “There may be no picture. Ford is meeting right now with Winfield Sheehan. In case you’re that green around here, Sheehan runs this joint.”

  “What’s the matter?” Bogie protested. “We have contracts. They brought us out from New York.”

  “That doesn’t matter to those fuckers,” Tracy said. “Sheehan’s been looking at the gross over at MGM on the The Big House.”

  “I saw it,” Bogie said. “Great picture. Bob Montgomery and Wallace Beery did a fine job.”

  “Don’t forget my old pal, Chester Morris,” Tracy said. “He was in it too. Trouble is, they did too fine a job. Sheehan knows our script isn’t half as good. Reviewers would unfavorably compare our picture with The Big House. Also, Sheehan has seen screen tests of both of us. And he doesn’t want us in the picture, even if he decides to go ahead with it.”

  “Fuck this!” Bogie said. “I should go back to New York. I’m spinning my wheels out here in this palm pasture.”

  “Have another drink,” Tracy said.

  In spite of the bad news he reported, Bogie relaxed in Tracy’s presence. The actor had a soothing effect on him. To Bogie, he seemed like a sports loving man’s man, with a big head and a boar neck. It was Tracy’s well-modulated voice that drew Bogie to him.

  As the morning wore on and Ford still hadn’t shown up, Tracy and Bogie used the opportunity to drink more whiskey and to get to know each other. Each actor seemed fascinated by the other. There was a restlessness—even a self-destructiveness—about Tracy that intrigued Bogie. He would later claim, “Spence carried around a lot of that Catholic guilt crap.”

  At that stage in their friendship, Bogie didn’t have a clue as to what Tracy had to feel guilt about, but he was determined to find out. Surely it wasn’t something as simple as cheating on your wife. All men in Hollywood did that. With all the temptation out here, how could they resist?

  Earlier he’d learned that Tracy had been married to a minor Broadway actress, Louise Treadwell, for seven years. “It was love at first sight,” Tracy said. Bogie also learned that she’d given birth to a deaf son named John. “His deafness makes me suffer a lot,” Tracy said. “Somehow I blame myself. Good, health
y, Irish boy sperm isn’t supposed to create a child with birth defects.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Bogie assured him as he accepted another whiskey. He feared that if they kept drinking like this, and Ford did show up, having saved the picture from Sheehan, neither of them would be sober enough to appear on camera.

  “I was the terror of Milwaukee,” Tracy said. “A tough Irish kid. I got into at least three fistfights a day, taking on the Sauerkrauts, the Pollack sausages, and the Dago pizza pies. I was in and out of fifteen—make that eighteen—different schools before I finished the eighth grade.”

  “You got me beat on that count,” Bogie said. “But I was kicked out of Andover. My father wanted me to be a doctor.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Tracy said. “My old man wanted me to be a priest. I still think about it. I used to dream of myself as Monsignor Tracy, Cardinal Tracy, Bishop Tracy. Get this: Archbishop Tracy. Every time I think of what I might have been, I get goose bumps. Of course, I could never have been celibate. Not me. If there’s a whorehouse in town, I quickly become the best customer.”

  Ironically, although Tracy obviously never became a priest, he ended up playing one in four memorable performances— San Francisco in 1936 with Clark Gable; Boy’s Town in 1938, Men of Boy’s& Town in 1941, and a final appearance, The Devil at Four O’Clock in 1961.

  “Before I agreed to do this picture with you, I saw a rough cut of A Devil With Women,” Tracy said. “I know you used to do some stupid juvenile roles on Broadway. But I never caught your ‘Tennis, anyone?’ act. Of course, that fascist, McLaglen, steals the picture from you and that cocksucker, Mona Maris. You bullshit your way through the film. One hammy disguise after another. Some clowns call that acting. I don’t. If our damn flick ever gets made, watch how I do it. Don’t let the camera see you running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Underplay. That’s the way to do it.”