Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  The first call was from Joan Blondell. Though still in tears at being dumped by Cagney who suddenly favored Mae Clarke, she was still upbeat and hopeful about the future. “He wouldn’t be the first man who’s dumped me.”

  Bogie immediately asked her out on a date for the following evening, and she readily accepted.

  As he put down the phone, another call came in, this one from Hobart Henley, a director at Universal. Henley told him that since Fox didn’t have any immediate roles for him, he’d been loaned out to Universal where Carl Laemmle Jr. had agreed to produce a remake of Booth Tarkington’s The Flirt. Henley informed Bogie that he himself had already directed a previous version of The Flirt— in this case as a silent film back in 1913.

  “What’s the name of the newest version?” Bogie asked. “Still The Flirt? I know you guys retitle everything in the remakes.”

  “ Gambling Daughters,” he said.

  “Which one of the daughters do I play?” Bogie asked. “Who’s going to design my gowns?”

  “An actor with a sense of humor,” Henley said. “Some directors like that. I don’t.”

  Joking aside, Bogie was hoping he’d been cast in the male lead but learned that part had gone to Conrad Nagel. He couldn’t help but notice that Henley was delaying telling him exactly what role he’d be playing.

  “We have a great cast. Sidney Fox, ZaSu Pitts, Slim Summerville. The second female lead hasn’t been cast yet but I expect to get notice from Carl tomorrow.”

  “And my part?” Bogie asked, fearing the answer.

  “You’ll play Valentine Curliss,” Henley said.

  “My character’s called Valentine?” It sounded very dubious to him. “And the billing?”

  “You get eighth billing,” Henley said, “but I assure you your role of Valentine is absolutely crucial to the film. You’ll walk away with the picture.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, feeling despondent. So much for a career in films. After only two pictures, one of them not yet released, he felt that Hollywood stardom was fast eluding him. After assuring Henley he’d show up for work, he put down the phone.

  “Valentine,” he said out loud, cursing the name of his new character without even reading the script. He wondered whom Fox would cast as the other female lead. “I’ll probably get to kiss Marie Dressler,” he said to the empty walls of the apartment.

  The phone rang again. He thought that in spite of his lack of stardom, he was getting more calls than any star.

  It was “Dawn Night” (Glenda Farrell). He’d been meaning to ring her up for a date but had temporarily put her on hold. “You may—just may, I can’t promise it—be getting the biggest break of your life.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said. “Right at this moment I could sure use one.”

  “Mr. Edward G. Robinson—I don’t know what the G stands for—has just walked out on Little Caesar and Mervyn LeRoy.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “I hear that’s the greatest role in town. What feather got stuck up Robinson’s ass?”

  “You won’t believe this, but Mervyn told me that Robinson had insisted on a scene in which he gets to display his legs.”

  “His fucking legs? Is this some kind of joke? Does Robinson think he’s Marlene Dietrich?”

  “The ugly mutt is proud of his legs. He’s got this picture of himself in the tights he wore when he played Ottaviano in The Firebrand. He hangs it in his dressing room and shows it off to anybody.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “After Mervyn balled me last night, and we indulged in some pillow talk, I suggested you for the role even though he thinks Cagney would be ideal if he can get him.”

  “Hell, I’d love to play a gangster,” he said. “A role like that would get me out of this aging juvenile crap.”

  “I’ll tell Mervyn you’re interested, and if he wants me to, I’ll set up a meeting,” Farrell said. “You’ve got to strike now before they offer the role to Paul Muni. A lot of other actors will be lining up for the part. I might as well tell you. Mervyn is also thinking about that New York hoofer, George Raft.”

  “Raft?” he said in astonishment. “The fucker is moving into my apartment. Maybe that’s okay. I could drown him in the bathtub.”

  “Mervyn thinks Raft might be even better in the role than Robinson. After all, Raft is a New York gangster.”

  “I won’t mention it to Raft tonight,” he said. “Get me in to see LeRoy as soon as we can. Of course, I’ve got this deal with Fox, but they might lend me out to First National. I’m getting eighth billing to appear in Gambling Daughters. A real comedown after my first two pictures.”

  “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow,” she said, blowing kisses into the phone.

  After he’d gone to the kitchen and had two beers, Raft still hadn’t shown up. There were many things he’d like to be doing tonight other than waiting around the apartment for Raft. The phone rang again. It was Kenneth wanting him to come over. Bogie explained that he was waiting for Raft who was going to be staying with him temporarily.

  “Sorry, I’d like to see you tonight,” Kenneth said. “Since you moved out, I don’t see much of you.”

  No sooner had he put down the phone than it rang again. Bogie welcomed the now familiar voice of Spencer Tracy. But he seemed despondent. Bogie soon learned that Lew Ayres had stopped putting out.

  “He still sees me almost every night, but he just wants to hold my hand and talk religion,” Tracy said. “I mean, I believe in the church as much as anyone, but I like to work Lew’s sweet cheeks when we’re not praying together.”

  “Can’t help you on that score, Spence,” Bogie said. “Not my scene. So what are you doing?”

  “I’m still going to keep seeing Lew,” Tracy said. “He’s got a changeable nature. He can’t last long with this religion shit. He’ll get real horny one night and he’ll be over begging for me to plug him.”

  “What you doing in the meantime?” Bogie asked.

  “I’ll be fucking every woman in town,” Tracy said. “The one I’m going after next is Loretta Young.”

  “I hear her tits are as cold as the Arctic.”

  “I’m the guy to warm them up.”

  Raft didn’t show up until after midnight. Staggering drunk to his doorway clad only in his underwear. Bogie showed Raft in and pointed him to the sofa. “There’s a fresh towel for you in the bathroom and…welcome.”

  “You look drunk, my friend,” Raft said. “I never touch the stuff.”

  Raft wanted to stay up and talk but Bogie had to get some sleep. He staggered back to bed. After Raft had unpacked the two suitcases he’d brought with him, Bogie was only dimly aware that Raft was making some phone calls. He hoped that they weren’t to his gangster friends back East, as he feared that Raft would skip out and leave him with a big phone bill.

  Bogie was of two minds about getting some beauty sleep. He knew the role of Rico was not meant for a pretty face. He wondered if when he met Mervyn LeRoy tomorrow he should show up looking a little rough around the edges. That way, he might stand a better chance of getting the part than if he appeared looking young, handsome, and well-groomed, ready for another one of those “Tennis, anyone?” parts.

  When Bogie awakened the next morning, he noticed Raft sprawled out nude on the sofa, his blacksnake in semi-erection. Bogie thought that his friend must be having a wet dream.

  The phone rang, and he picked it up on the first ring, not wanting to wake Raft. It was his director, Henley, calling again from Fox about his role in Gambling Daughters. “The co-star of the picture has been cast, and she wants to meet you. She’s seen you on the stage in New York and admires your work.”

  “That’s just great,” Bogie said, hung over, his head pounding from the effects of last night’s booze.

  “Be at the studio at nine,” Henley ordered.

  After hanging up, Bogie quickly called Glenda Farrell. LeRoy had left her house at six that morning, and had agree
d to meet with Bogie about the Little Caesar role that afternoon. “He’s not promising anything. I happen to know he’s testing Raft for the role at nine o’clock.”

  “Does our friend know that?” Bogie asked.

  “Of course, he does. Raft talked with Mervyn yesterday. Anyway, he’ll test you at two o’clock. I’m doing the test with Raft this morning. I’ll upstage him. Deliberately make him look bad so you’ll get the part.”

  “Thanks, babe,” he said. “I’ll owe you a big favor for that.”

  “See you at two, lover.”

  After he’d hung up the phone, Bogie decided to pull a dirty trick on his new roomie. There was no way he was going to wake up Raft and get him to the studio by nine o’clock to test for the role of Rico.

  “The part is mine,” Bogie whispered to himself in the shower. He was quiet as could be as he hurriedly dressed, having left the key and a note for Raft on the kitchen table.

  At Fox he was anxious to meet the female co-star of Gambling Daughters, even though he viewed it as a nothing part. He had his heart set on Little Caesar.

  Henley greeted him and asked him to be seated. “She’ll be here in a minute.” An assistant called Henley to the phone. Carl Laemmle Jr. himself wanted to speak to Henley.

  Bogie was reading a newspaper but looked up when he heard footsteps walking across the sound stage. In a black and white polka dot dress, with wedge-heeled shoes, a blonde-haired young woman with a ridiculous hat was walking toward him. If he didn’t suspect that this was the star of the picture, he would have figured her to be a librarian from a small town in New England.

  As he was to recall in years to come, it was a meeting that would forever change his life, both professional and personal.

  She extended her hand to him. “I know who you are, Mr. Humphrey Bogart. Nice to meet a fellow actor from back East. I’m told you’re going to be one of my supporting players. I’m the star, of course. New England born and bred.” She extended her hand. “I’m Bette Davis.”

  ***

  He took an instant dislike to Miss Bette Davis. As he was to tell Kenneth and later everybody else he knew, “This high-strung Yankee bitch needs a good fucking. Someone needs to go in there with a stick of dynamite and blast open that squeezed-tight little pussy of hers, and I’m the man to do it.”

  “So each of us is going to be making our first film, Mr. Bogart,” Davis said.

  “I’ve already got three pictures under my belt,” he said, slightly angry that she’d obviously not seen any of them and hadn’t heard of them either.

  Despite his having re-educated Davis in the nuances of his film career, she persisted all her life in claiming that she and Bogie made a joint film debut. That bit of misinformation also appeared in her highly unreliable memoir, The Lonely Life.

  Before he’d finished his coffee with Davis, the first of many cups to come, Bogie sensed her fierce jealousy of other actresses. “Have you read the script yet?” she asked.

  “No one’s given me a copy.”

  “It’s about two sisters—one good, one bad,” she said. “A story about Midwestern provincialism. At first I thought I’d been cast in the role of the hellion. Imagine my disappointment when Hobart Henley informed me that Sidney Fox is playing the bad sister. I’m ending up in the role of the timid mouse.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be good in the part,” he said. “Sometimes you can take a role that’s not so flashy and run with it.” His first impression of her was that she did look a bit mousy.

  But even at that early stage of her career, she was hardly timid. “Do you know how that whore Sidney Fox got the part?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Miss Foxy is sleeping with the producer, Carl Laemmle Jr. That’s why. I’m quickly learning out here that it is who you sleep with that determines which role you get, not how talented you might be as an actress. The juicy parts go to sexual athletes like Joan Crawford. I heard from a very reliable source only the other day that any time Louis B. Mayer wants to be serviced, he calls in Crawford. Mayer sits in his chair, Crawford gets down on her knees and does her job. She’s said to be an expert. From what I’ve been told, she’s screwed every male animal in Hollywood except Rin-Tin-Tin, and I’m not so sure she hasn’t had that dog too. I wouldn’t& put it past her.”

  The only empathy Bogie felt for Davis on that long-ago morning evolved from their shared disillusionment with Hollywood. They both seemed to feel that they’d each made a serious career mistake in coming to Hollywood, and that they’d eventually fail out here and return to the legitimate theater in New York.

  “My first assignment was absolutely unbelievable,” she said. “It added a new meaning to the term, ‘a casting couch.’ In one day alone I had fifteen men lie on top of me, pretending to play a love scene with me. They arrived like wooden soldiers, one after the other, each whispering these lines, ‘You gorgeous, divine darling, I adore you. I worship you. I must possess you.’ Each actor’s weight would then rest on my bosom as he kissed me passionately. The director would yell, ‘Cut!’ The next actor would then descend on me. Only Gilbert Roland had the sensitivity to see how shocked I was. Before he lowered his 170 pounds onto me, he said, ‘Don’t be upset. This is Hollywood. All actresses have to go through it.’ He was the only actor that day who made me feel like a woman and not like some mannequin.”

  Davis was called away, but before the day ended, he’d meet each of the other actors starring in the film. From Tom Reed, one of the writers of the screenplay, he learned that the title had been changed from Gambling Daughters to Bad Sister.

  Standing before him and measuring four feet, eleven inches tall, Sidney Fox, the film’s other female star, might have captured the heart of the producer, Laemmle Jr., but she was way down the list on Bogie’s chart of Hollywood femme fatales. Certainly she was no Stanwyck, Crawford, or Dietrich, although she looked mighty sexy when stacked up against the rather dull Bette Davis, whose cigarette smoke still lingered as he shook Fox’s delicate hand. He’d call her “cute” instead of beautiful.

  Ever the needler, he asked her, “Why do you have a man’s name?”

  “Sure beats Humphrey,” she said.

  “ Touché.”

  She invited him to join her for lunch, and he accepted but told her he had a very important appointment in two hours. “It’ll have to be a short one.”

  “Most men I’ve met out here promise me a long one but only deliver short.”

  Over the lunch table, he looked startled. “You’re good.”

  He liked her brassy way of talking and quickly learned that she was not your typical ingénue. She’d studied law at Columbia University before deciding to become an actress.

  “So tell me about this guy, Laemmle,” Bogie& said. “Junior, that is. Is he going to make a big star out of you?”

  “Carl’s okay but not all that great in the sack. The trouble with Carl is he can’t decide if he likes pussy or boy-ass. During the filming of All Quiet on the Western Front, he was pounding that cute little butt of Lew Ayres. I took Carl away from Ayres. Now I hear cute-stuff is getting it from your buddy, Spencer Tracy.”

  “You’re a regular Louella Parsons,” Bogie said. “If this acting thing does-n’t work out for you, you can replace her with a column of your own. Does Carl have big things in store for you?”

  “Not really, I fear, in spite of his promises,” she said. “Right now he believes that monster movies are going to take over Hollywood. He’s all into this Dracula and Frankenstein crap. Mama didn’t raise no monster.”

  He laughed, but as he did he noticed the ominous approach of a messenger boy. Bogie was wanted on the phone. Excusing himself , he went to take the call.

  It was Glenda Farrell. “Edward G. Robinson is back in the picture,” she said. “He’s made up with Mervyn. So you and Raft don’t have a chance. I’m sorry. I tried.”

  He thanked her profusely, concealing his bitter disappointment. As he came back into the Universal commissary, he noticed that Laemml
e Jr. had taken his place at Bogie’s table and had one arm wrapped around Sidney Fox. Bogie decided to let them eat in peace. He was outranked.

  ***

  With his hope of playing Rico in Little Caesar now a distant dream, Bogie walked up the steps to his apartment house. He’d read the script, and focused on his minor part in Bad Sister. In it, he’d play the role of Valentine Corliss, a city slicker who comes to a small town to swindle local businessmen.

  At first, he was tempted to knock on Kenneth’s door, but figured he’d better check in with his new roommate, Raft, instead. The prospect didn’t thrill him. After the debacle of the Little Caesar casting this morning, Bogie wondered if he’d be competing against Raft in future film roles. Maybe he would-n’t have to worry about that dismal prospect. After the release of Bad Sister, he doubted whether Sidney Fox would ever recommend him for another role.

  By giving him eighth billing, movie executives had already spoken. Even the prospect of having a hot affair with one of his leading ladies appeared remote. Ms. Fox was already taken by the studio’s big brass; and Davis had locked up her pussy and thrown away the key.

  He wasn’t going anywhere as a Hollywood film actor, but he was scoring with women and that was some compensation for a married man away from his New York wife. He wondered how Mary’s own love life was doing. She was a good-looking woman with a charming personality, so he figured she was attracting a string of beaux, all of them actors no doubt.

  As he came into his apartment, a man his own age was emerging from his bedroom. He looked startled to see Bogie but extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Rowland Brown.”

  “The director?” Bogie asked. “Well, tell me, old boy, did Raft get the part.”

  “He did indeed,” Brown said, smiling. “Now I know why they call that handsome devil Blacksnake.”

  Disgusted with the way business was conducted in Hollywood—Davis had nailed it—Bogie impulsively took Brown’s hand and pressed it into his own crotch, where the director took expert measurements. “What part do you have for me?” He pushed Brown’s hand away and went to get himself a drink.