Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  ***

  It was late at night as Bogie wandered slightly drunk and alone on the hotel grounds in the aftermath of Kenneth’s wedding to Kay Francis. He looked up several times at the windows of their bridal suite. He could only envy Kenneth the wedding bliss he was enjoying with the woman known for some reason as “the trapeze artist” in bed. He wondered if Kenneth would ever fall in love with Francis as much as he loved Bogie’s own wife, Mary. Thoughts of her crossed his mind. He imagined that at this very late hour in New York his wife was in the arms of that “God Damn actor,” Roland Young.

  Bogie looked up one final time at the Francis/MacKenna wedding suite and headed off by himself into the night.

  He could not have imagined that within a year Young would be at Warner Brothers appearing opposite Francis in Street of Women, and that Young and Francis would be engaged in a torrid romance.

  ***

  In Joan Blondell’s dressing room at Warner Brothers, Bogie had just finished showering after he’d bedded her on the carpet in front of her vanity table. She was his kind of broad. He liked her tremendously, although he wasn’t in love with her. She was loyal, dependable, and always there for him when he needed a woman’s company. She was warm, loving, and forgiving, and he felt that he could confide anything to her and she’d protect his secrets or else overlook his weaknesses.

  He suspected that this former clerk at Macy’s Department Store would never make it as a big star, but as an actress she’d always show up for Warner Brothers, taking any part offered, never complaining, never going on suspension, even if they worked her into dizziness, even to the point of making four films at once.

  She brought the same vitality to sex that she did to the gold-diggers she played on screen. She was brazen and fun to be with, and she didn’t take herself too seriously. After bedding Blondell, he felt ten feet tall. He couldn’t understand why James Cagney had dumped her.

  After they’d dressed, he drove her over to the first screening of Night Nurse, the movie she’d recently made with Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable.

  On the way to the screening, he asked Blondell, “After we’ve each gone through two or three more spouses, do you think we’ll get married and settle down somewhere in Ohio, growing old and gray together sitting in our rockers on the front porch, watching people go to Sunday morning services?”

  “I can see it now,” she said. “Right before noon, I’ll rise from my chair if my rheumatism will allow it, and head back into our little kitchen with its wood-burning stove. Ham and eggs for you, and rutabagas mixed with mashed potatoes for me. Those will be the diets we’ll live on.”

  As Bogie sat in the theater holding Blondell’s hand, he’d seen only fifteen minutes of the 72-minute film when he realized that Night Nurse, in spite of its stellar cast, was not going to win Oscars for anybody. Playing a tough, scheming chauffeur, a character called Nick, Gable manhandles the cast, including Stanwyck, but the female members of the audience seemed to like his testosterone-driven violence. He wondered if most women secretly wanted a man to beat them up.

  Unlike her usual screen portraits, and in spite of Blondell’s appraisal, Stanwyck played her typical dancehall gal on one note throughout. Blondell had exaggerated. Stanwyck not only didn’t eat up the scenery, she seemed strangely subdued in her role of Lora Hart, a young woman hired by a rich, drunken widow to act as a private nurse to her children. Bogie felt that Blondell brought the only life and humanity to the film.

  There was only polite applause at the end of the film. As the manager of the theater slipped the stars of Night Nurse out of the rear door, Bogie felt that that was an unnecessary precaution. He thought that Stanwyck, Blondell, and Gable could easily have walked out the front door without being overpowered by screaming fans demanding autographs.

  ***

  Knowing it was going to be his last day on the Fox lot, Bogie arrived three hours before his scheduled meeting with Winfield Sheehan, head of production. He was going to miss his paycheck of $750 a week. Although he’d meant to save most of it, he never got around to doing that, seemingly thinking the money would last forever.

  He could only hope that his meager savings would tide him over in Depression-riddled New York until he found a job in the theater.

  Maybe once again the Brady family might come to his rescue, as they had when he returned from his term of duty in the Navy. Bill Brady Jr. had been his best friend for many years, and before he left for Hollywood, Bogart had sincerely intended to write to him frequently. But in Hollywood Bogie had turned to Kenneth as his confidant instead. Those letters to family and friends back in New York were meant to be written but never were.

  Bogie was uncertain where he would even stay in New York. It seemed hardly likely that Mary, as she prepared to divorce him, would want him living with her and that actor, Roland Young.

  Bogie was sitting outside a sound stage on the edge of a curb, his face buried in his hands. He must have looked a pathetic sight when Herb Gallagher approached him. Bogie had seen the elderly man puttering about the studios, but had never spoken to him.

  “Everybody knows Winnie is going to fire you this morning,” Gallagher said. “But you’re a young man. You’ll find work at other studios. Maybe Warners. I’d have said Paramount but the smart money says that they’re about to go belly-up.”

  Bogie looked up at the man, squinting his eyes to blot out the morning sun. “You’re the janitor, right? I mean everybody here, even the janitor, is in on the details of my getting the boot?”

  “I don’t mean to get you riled up,” Gallagher said, “but your pictures have bombed. You’ve bombed. Frankly, you were lucky to get that $750 a week. I don’t know how you conned them into that.”

  “Hell, you even know what salary I was drawing,” Bogie said. “Are there no secrets in Hollywood?”

  “You know the answer to that,” Gallagher said, spitting out some tobacco juice only three feet from Bogie. “I was fired myself by Winnie.”

  “Then why are you still here?” Bogie asked, standing up in hope of avoiding getting hit with the next stream of tobacco juice.

  “I was the chief script reader back in 1924,” Gallagher said. “When I turned down three scripts that later became hits at other studios, I was canned.”

  “As I said, why are you still here?” Bogie asked.

  “I know too much about Winnie to get the final boot like you’re about to get this morning,” Gallagher said. “Winnie let me stay on. Instead of reading scripts, I get to sweep up the sound stages. It’s a living.”

  “I once thought Sheehan was going to be my big white hope,” Bogie said. “In spite of all the trouble he causes, Spencer Tracy still has a contract, and I don’t.”

  “Maybe Winnie’s judgment about you is all wrong,” Gallagher said. “From the looks of you, I don’t see it, but you could go on to become a big star in spite of your ugly mug, puny body, your lisp, and that scar on your mouth.”

  “You sure know how to make a guy feel good on the day he’s about to be kicked out in the midst of a Depression.”

  “What the hell!” Gallagher said. “That’s how the game is played out here. Look at Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson. The two biggest screen vamps of the Twenties. Now they can’t get arrested. Look at John Gilbert. The biggest screen idol of the Silents.”

  “I know, I know,” Bogie said impatiently. “I’ve read their biographies in the fan magazines.”

  “In two, maybe three years, Winnie himself will be out the door when a better, more aggressive, and more talented producer comes along. Winnie doesn’t know that much about film-making any way. William Fox gave him the job because Winnie blackmailed him.”

  “What sort of blackmail?” Bogie asked. “Sexual?”

  “Nothing like that,” Gallagher said. “At one time, Winnie was the secretary to the police commissioner in New York. Fox Studios routinely violated the bylaws of the Motion Picture Patents Company. Somehow, and I don’t know how he did it, Winnie cov
ered for them, keeping them two feet in front of the law during their time in New York. When Fox pulled up stakes and headed west, their boy Winnie came with them.”

  “So that’s how you became head of production at a major studio,” Bogie said.

  “Winnie didn’t know a fucking thing about movies when he got to Hollywood,” Gallagher said. “He was just a teenager when he joined the Army to fight in the Spanish-American War. After he came back to New York, he was a cub reporter and then a police reporter. He gave that up to work for the police commissioner. Now he’s making and breaking stars. In with Spencer Tracy, out with Humphrey Bogart.”

  Gallagher was called back to duty, and Bogie wandered alone into the Fox commissary where only three tables were occupied. He decided to drink a half-dozen cups of black coffee before facing Sheehan.

  In time, Bogie would realize that the janitor knew exactly what he was talking about. By 1935, when the Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures, Sheehan was out, having been replaced by a far more talented and brilliant producer, Darryl Zanuck, who had managed to get rid of Sheehan for $360,000 in severance pay.

  As he sat drinking those endless cups of coffee, Bogie came to realize that his whole attempt to become a movie star was a bit ridiculous. At that very moment, he felt that he was the least likely candidate in Hollywood to ever become a movie actor.

  When he’d made Up the River with Tracy, Bogie had had high hopes of stardom, but it had been a downward spiral ever since. He believed that he was better looking than Tracy, but his friend could act, and Bogie wondered if he even knew what acting was all about. Bogie could snarl and hiss, or even look vapid, but he couldn’t be as natural or as convincing on screen as Tracy was. As the director, Raoul Walsh, had once barked at Bogie on the set of Women of All Nations, “Footage of actors like you end up on the cutting-room floor.”

  At eleven o’clock that morning, Bogie, jittery from too much coffee, was ushered into the office of Winnie Sheehan. The studio chief was known for his gregarious style and for some degree of charm, but Bogie found his dapper boss with his “black Irish features” and his legendary “ol’ baby blues” rather dour today. At that time, Sheehan was known for chasing skirts and throwing the best parties more than he was celebrated for making great movies. Without looking up at Bogie, he sat at his desk going over some papers, not bothering to greet the actor or shake his hand. Sheehan routinely fired stars, directors, and studio executives every day.

  “Bogart,” he said in a sharp voice, looking up at him for the first time as he signaled for him to take a stiff armchair in front of his desk. “You’re not only untalented, but you’re in violation of your contract’s morals clause.”

  “I’ve bedded a few dames since coming out to the West Coast,” Bogie said. “Any law against that?”

  “Not against that,” Sheehan said. “If there was, I’d be locked away in the dankest cell. No one fucks higher on the list than Winnie Sheehan. Only A-list pussy. When I want a piece of ass, I go only for stars: Jean Harlow, Sally Eilers, Joan Crawford, Elissa Landi, Joan Bennett, Ann Dvorak, Myrna Loy, Sidney Fox. Even Helen Twelvetrees.”

  “ Even her ?” Bogie said, rather mockingly.

  If Sheehan knew he was being ridiculed, he gave no indication of it. “It’s this panz stuff I’m concerned about.” He reached into his top drawer and removed a candid eight-by-ten snapshot which he handed to Bogie.

  Bogie studied the picture carefully. He was drunk at the time, and hardly remembered the photograph being taken. It was either at The Fat Black Pussycat or Jimmy’s Backyard. In the picture Bogie sat between Edmund Lowe and Lilyan Tashman, with his arm around each of them. Also in the picture was Billy Haines, with his arm around Anderson Lawler. At the far left of the picture Charles Farrell was paying more romantic attention to Kenneth MacKenna than he was to the actor’s new bride, Kay Francis.

  “You not only go to panz clubs,” Sheehan charged, “but I heard you attended an all-male lingerie party Richard Arlen threw for Kenneth MacKenna.”

  “That’s true,” Bogie said with candor. “I was seen there running around in my Skivvies.” He handed the glossy photograph back to Sheehan. “For your bathroom wall,” he said, a bite of sarcasm in his voice.

  “That overseer of Hollywood morals, Will Hays, has been warning me about using dual-sex boys and lesbos in Fox films,” Sheehan said. “If directors like George Cukor had their way, all men in film would be effeminate, flaunting their perversions on screen. I’ve had a study made of all Fox pictures by my assistant, Sidney Kent. His conclusion is that the sooner we get away from fairies and degenerates in our scripts, and the more family-oriented we become, the bigger the profits for Fox.” He picked up a letter on his desk. “Here’s what Kent wrote. ‘The fairies must be sent packing back to New York where they belong.’”

  “Unless I misread the scripts, I wasn’t aware that I’d been playing flaming pansies on the screen,” Bogie said.

  “It’s implied in your performances,” Sheehan said. “Up against real hemen on the screen, guys like Victor McLaglen or Spencer Tracy, you come across like a lisping queen. I know you played all those faggot juvenile roles on Broadway, coming out in fancy sports dress with a tennis racket and cruising all the handsome men on stage, inviting them for a game of tennis. What the smart people in the audience realized was that you really wanted one of them to join you in the showers after the game.”

  Bogie chuckled at that preposterous summation of his stage career. “Hey, let’s don’t get carried away here. I never played any such part. Ask the directors like John Cromwell. And playwrights like Maxwell Anderson.”

  “It was a subtle thing, and you were able to get away with it on the New York stage,” Sheehan said. “But the camera picks up the slightest nuance. For example, Variety a few months ago ran an article about all the pansy dancers and chorus boys used in musicals. It demanded that from now on, every studio cast real he-men as chorus boys. During the casting of musicals in the 30s, if a boy is too dainty and pretty, he’s going to be out on his ass. And fussy, over-marcelled hair is out too. Film-goers, especially male film-goers, resent seeing effeminate men on the screen. I’ve seen all the footage you’ve shot for Fox at the ridiculously overinflated salary of $750 a week. There must have been a typo in your contract. It should have read $75 a week, and even then you would have been overpaid. Let’s face the truth: You’ve got some effeminate mannerisms, and they’re even more intolerable because of your lisp.”

  “So, you’re saying that I’m getting kicked out on my ass because I act like a pansy on the screen?” Bogie asked, not concealing his anger, which had flared suddenly.

  “You amaze me with your perception,” Sheehan said sarcastically. “I think my point is obvious. My recommendation is that you give up acting. You and that co-star of yours in Bad Sister, Bette Davis, have no talent. Neither of you have presence on the screen. She looks like a little lost wren, and you look like a sneaky rat. You’re not ugly enough to play a villain like Edward G. Robinson, nor handsome enough to be a leading man like Joel McCrea. You’ve made your last picture for Fox.”

  “I think I figured that out even before I came into your office today,” Bogie said.

  “The camera, my boy, is an amazing thing,” Sheehan said in worshipful tones. “It creates an illusion of reality so great that it can surpass reality. All studios, not just Fox, have got to show a greater respect for the camera and not parade freaks of nature before it. Guys like John Gilbert, Billy Haines, Ramon Novarro.”

  “And you’re adding the name of Humphrey Bogart to that list of queens?” Bogie asked in astonishment.

  “If the shoe fits, wear it,” Sheehan said harshly. “Tomorrow’s screen belongs to the Clark Gables and the Gary Coopers. You won’t find those two out sucking dick or taking it up the ass any more. We’ve also got to have real he-men directors like Raoul Walsh, not fancy-pantsy George Cukor, directing real men like my latest discovery, Marion Morrison. For Th
e Big Trail, I had him get rid of that pansy name and call himself John Wayne. Back in the Twenties, just as a means of getting ahead, Wayne occasionally let one or two of the male stars of his films suck his dick, hoping for a big break. And Clark Gable did the same thing. So did Gary Cooper. Wayne confided to me the names of guys who had gone down on him: Billy Haines in Brown of Harvard, John Gilbert in Bardelays the Magnificent, Richard Barthelmess in The Drop Kick, George O’Brien in Salute and again in A Rough Romance, and your faggot buddy, Kenneth MacKenna in Men Without Women. And now, like Cooper and Gable, Wayne is a star. He won’t have to drop his pants ever again for a Hollywood cocksucker.”

  “When history books are written years from now, I’m sure they’ll credit Winfield Sheehan with bringing masculinity to the movies,” Bogie said bitterly.

  Sheehan took him seriously. “And they’ll be right. I did pretty well with George O’Brien in The Iron Horse. George is one he-man. I nicknamed him ‘The Chest.’ In fact, I did all the publicity for The Iron Horse in 1924. I came up with the line, ‘George O’Brien is not a sheik or a caveman or a lounge lizard. He’s a man’s man and the idol of women.’ Not bad, huh?”

  “That sure would have lured me into a movie house,” Bogie said, still amazed that Sheehan was taking his sarcastic remarks seriously.

  “Just between you and me, Fox is on the verge of bankruptcy, and I’ve got to save the studio,” Sheehan said. “Lisping fairies on the screen won’t do the job for us.”

  “You’re telling me that in the new Hollywood big-dicked studs will direct only big-dicked studs. Balls will be clanking so loudly technicians will have to tone down the sound track. John Wayne will come across like a giant phallus spewing semen into the audience.”

  “Don’t disgrace yourself in front of me by getting carried away with too many of your sexual fantasies,” Sheehan cautioned.