Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  “Okay,” Bogie said, wondering why Sheehan was prolonging this firing. “I’m out the door. Who’s next on your list? After you kick out the pansies on their ass?”

  “I met with Joseph Breen yesterday,” Sheehan said. “As you well know, he works hand-in-glove with Will Hays to safeguard the industry from perversion. Breen is not only against sexual perverts on the screen but lousy Jews like Louis B. Mayer, too. Breen calls Jews the scum of the earth. A Jew will do anything for money. They’ll agree to any sexual taboo on the screen if they feel it’ll turn a fast buck. These money-grubbers will depict the vilest of scenes. Breen thinks the ultimate aim of the Hollywood Jew is to undermine Catholic morality.”

  Bogie stood up abruptly. I’ve heard enough. I’ll be off the Fox lot in fifteen minutes. Watch me go. I’m not going to sit here any longer listening to your shit.” He actually used the word “shit,” which he detested when other people said it. But no word other than shit seemed to describe the garbage pouring out of Sheehan’s mouth.

  “I’m one cocksucking pansy faggot queer lisping queen, one slimy sissy—a bumbling fluttery butterfly, lipstick-wearing, take-it-in-the-ass, dithery, unmasculine fruit.”

  “That’s how I’d describe you,” Sheehan said. “And let me congratulate you on the honesty of your self-portrait. The most accurate I’ve ever heard.”

  Bogie walked rapidly toward the door, opened it, then slammed it in Sheehan’s face as he headed down the corridor and off the Fox Studio lot.

  Amazingly, when Bogie appeared to accept the Oscar as best actor for his role of Charlie Allnut in 1951’s The African Queen, he singled out Winfield Sheehan specifically for a special thank you for launching him into motion pictures.

  ***

  Bogie walked out onto the rooftop of his apartment building, watching the dawn break across the Los Angeles skyline. As he smoked his tenth cigarette since coming up to the roof, he pondered the Hollywood madness that had driven him here, where he’d actually considered, however briefly, taking a jump off that roof.

  Kenneth was due back at his apartment that morning after a short honeymoon with Kay Francis. He too was moving out of the building to live with his new bride under whatever marital arrangements they’d worked out together.

  In lieu of Kenneth, he thought he’d call Spencer Tracy and expose himself as a failure, but decided against that. He didn’t want Tracy to know how vulnerable he was and preferred for his newly acquired actor friend to maintain the illusion that Humphrey Bogart was tough like Tracy himself.

  ***

  Back in his own apartment, and safe after his lonely walk on the roof, he received a phone call from Bette Davis, who was demanding to see him. She’d been fired from Universal. Her party for losers had been completely accurate as a harbinger of events to come.

  Although within the recent past, he had vowed never to see her again, he invited her over anyway, hoping that two actors, each of them kicked out of Hollywood, might be able to console each other.

  The pain associated with his having been fired from Fox was enormous.

  Opening the door, he took in the vision of a very distraught Davis, who had been crying. She immediately fell into his arms, sobbing more intensely and violently than she ever would on the screen.

  She sat on the sofa across from him, as both of them enjoyed booze and cigarettes, two narcotics that would become lifelong addictions for each of them. Since storming into his apartment, she had talked incessantly about her career, offering only minor condolences about his own dismissal from Fox.

  “When I came to Hollywood,” she said, “America was in a great depression. It still is. Garbo had learned to talk, and the first thing she said was ‘ Gimme a viskey.’” Her imitation of Garbo was right on the mark. “Garbo is still talking. Dietrich had arrived to appear in high heels and expensive gowns running around in the sands of Morocco. She’s still dressing up, still running around. Norma Shearer had won the Oscar. Norma Shearer is still getting Oscar-winning roles. Hollywood is virtually intact. And it certainly won’t miss Bette Davis.” She looked over at him. “I’m not movie star material. Like you, Bogie, our faces weren’t meant to grace the silver screen.”

  “If only we’d gotten the right parts,” he said defensively. He didn’t like admitting failure.

  “As far as I’m concerned, both Carl Laemmles, Senior and Junior, can take their so-called 230-acre film factory and give it back to the mustard farmers from whom they took the land in 1915.”

  “Considering the films those two creeps turn out,” he said, “maybe mustard greens would be easier to swallow.”

  She seemed not to have heard his remark. “‘Bette from Boston,’ they called me. All the good parts went to that whoring bitch, Sidney Fox. She spent more time fucking Laemmle Jr. than she did on camera. Frumpy they called me. Odd-looking. Sexless. Somewhat ugly. Christ. Somewhat!” She virtually spat out the word.

  “Look at all the guys who’ve fallen for you,” he said. “You’re hardly sexless. Why, all the losers at your party had the hots for you. Even me.”

  She smiled at the remark. “If only that were true.”

  As he got up to pour her another drink, she too rose to her feet and pranced around the apartment, with the same kind of stalking movement she’d demonstrate in several films. She was a woman with a violent temper and filled with turbulent emotions. “I’ve failed miserably in films. I can’t even stand to see myself on the screen. I’m that bad.”

  “You came close to getting roles here or there that could have launched you,” he said, reminding her.

  “Close,” she said with a certain contempt. “But miles from the goal. My one hope was that William Wyler would cast me in A House Divided. It was my last chance for success at Universal. Even though the women in wardrobe objected, I found this dark plaid cotton dress. The bodice fit real low, and I definitely showed cleavage. After all, let’s face it: My breasts are my most alluring physical asset. I’m sure you’ll discover that for yourself later.”

  This was his first indication that he was going to get lucky.

  “When I came onto the set showing my major assets pre-packaged in that dress,” Davis said, “Wyler took one look at me and dismissed me. I heard him tell his assistant, ‘Who in hell do these ingénues think they are? They think that if they show off a big pair of tits, they’ve got the part. Fuck! Hollywood is just one big tit.” She sighed before taking a deep drag on her cigarette. “I was so upset by him that I was tongue-tied during the screen test.”

  Ironically, Wyler would become not only “the love of my life” for Bette, but her best and most favored director, guiding her through her classics, such as Jezebel, her consolation prize for not getting cast as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, and in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, a role that had been created on the stage for her arch rival, Tallulah Bankhead.

  “Laemmle Jr. called me into his office to fire me in person,” she said. “I think he enjoyed humiliating me, telling me that I had no future in films. After seeing us together in Bad Sister, he predicted the same fate for you.”

  “I know that,” he snapped at her. “We’ve been over all that before.”

  “I don’t know about you,” Davis said, “but I’m going to return to Broadway and become the next Lynn Fontanne.”

  “Can I be your Alfred Lunt?” he asked. Although he’d meant his remark to be facetious, by the time he came to the question mark, it had become serious.

  She looked over at him as if sizing him up. “You’re not homosexual enough to replace Lunt.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be the next Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, but we’ll be more virile. Not as fey.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” she said, her pop eyes widening as if the revelation just might be possible. “I could see the names of Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart in lights.”

  “We could become the new king and queen of Broadway,” he said, darin
g to hope that such a dream might actually happen.

  “You and I are not film people,” she said. “We belong on the stage. The theater is in our blood. We’ll get the right properties. Get Maxwell Anderson to write a play tailor-made for us. Maybe even Ben Hecht. He’d be great. We’ll become the next legendary acting team in Broadway history.”

  He held his glass up to hers, and she toasted him back, saying, “Of course, your talent will never be as great as mine. But I think you can develop a real stage presence. Sometimes having a distinct personality is more important than acting talent. In my case, I was blessed with both talent and a personality.”

  He listened patiently, though rather disdainful of her proclamations of her own greatness.

  By ten o’clock that night, she’d agreed to go onto the roof with him for his final look at Los Angeles at night.

  A wind was blowing in from the ocean, and the night had turned suddenly cold. Wearing only a thin cotton dress, she was shivering. “Hold me!” she commanded. There was desperation in her voice. Without her bravado, she appeared strangely weak and vulnerable, in need of a man’s protection.

  “I’m here for you,” he said, moving toward her. He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, feeling her quivering response. So great was her need for him that she was moaning softly. She knew that he knew that she was his for the taking, at least for the night.

  “I need to feel like a woman again,” she whispered seductively in his ear. “Take me downstairs and make me feel like that woman I long to be, but never was.”

  “You’ve got yourself a date, lady,” he said, kissing her once more. With one arm around her waist, he guided her toward the lone door on the roof, leading down the iron steps to his apartment.

  Once inside the apartment, she appeared talked out. There would be no more need for words.

  By four o’clock that morning, he’d made more passionate love to her than he had any other woman in his life. He’d made Bette Davis his woman. She hugged him with the kind of desperation a couple faces when they stagger blindly but bravely into a new but uncertain future. Throughout the night they’d clung to each other like two people& who, when dawn came, would face the gallows together.

  Both of them had convinced the other that their future careers were entwined. Together they could make it as a team, or so they’d told themselves.

  Before the night ended, she had begged him to marry her as soon as his divorce from Mary came through. “I didn’t know what love-making was until I went to bed with you. I thought sex was something that men did to please themselves with women. Hop on, hop off. You taught me what a thrill it can be for a woman. You’ve taken me to another dimension, a place I didn’t think I could find with any man. You’ve awakened a desire in parts of my body that I thought& were incapable of a sexual response.”

  She had obviously regained her articulation. He buried the sound of her voice when he’d moved over her again, giving her a deep, impassioned kiss. Even though he thought his entire body had been fulfilled as never before, he found himself hardening again.

  After he’d finished both of them off for the last call of the evening, he urgently pleaded with her, “Get on the train in the morning with me,” he said. “Let’s go back to New York.” Kenneth had agreed to drive him to the depot for his final good-bye to Hollywood.

  Like a good New England housewife, Davis rose from his bed and began packing his luggage. But she turned down his invitation to leave with him that morning because, “It’s impossible—that’s why.”

  She did commit to him, though, claiming that when, “Ruthie and I shut down our house in the Hollywood Hills, I’ll be on the next train east. It’ll take about six weeks, but you can count on me to be there. In the meantime, you’ve got to search for a suitable apartment for us. In New York, we’ll pound those sidewalks of Broadway together.”

  “I’ll be in New York keeping the sheets warm,” he said, “until your train pulls into Grand Central station.” He kissed her on her nose as he headed for the bathroom.

  Over breakfast, which included ham and eggs, Davis proved herself to be a capable cook. “You’ve liberated me as a woman,” she claimed to him, her wide eyes popping with a new kind of joy and a dawning reality. “I’ll be a better actress because of this night we spent together.”

  “The first of many such nights,” he assured her.

  She stood up to pour him some more coffee. “Miss Bette Davis, formerly of Universal Studios and now a Broadway star, will become the third Mrs. Humphrey Bogart. It is her first marriage. For Bogart, it is his third. He was previously married to Broadway actresses Helen Menken and Mary Philips.”

  “This past night in bed with you will have to last me for several weeks until we’re together again in New York,” she said. “There can be no other man for me but Humphrey Bogart.”

  He kissed her one final time, holding her long and close. He made a parting remark before rushing down those stairs where an impatient Kenneth was waiting to drive him to the station.

  He turned back and looked with a nostalgic regret at the apartment house where he’d lived during his brief, ill-fated Hollywood career. All he could think about was Davis up there in his bathroom, applying lipstick to her face before she too left the building forever to return to her own home.

  Each day for him would be a long one until she was with him in New York and cuddling him in that ample bosom that William Wyler had rejected.

  All the way to the station, he wasn’t really in the car with Kenneth, but remained still back in that apartment with Davis. His good-bye to her would stab at his memory forever.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was a dismal New York that greeted Bogie upon his arrival in 1931. Unemployment was at an all-time high, and the gaiety of Broadway in the Roaring Twenties had roared out. For every acting job, there were more than 3,000 hopefuls who showed up, trying out for a meager part to keep them out of the breadlines.

  The great theatrical entrepreneurs, the Schuberts, had gone into receiver-ship. In 1929, two years before, some 250 theatrical productions had been launched for the then-prosperous audiences of Broadway. But in 1931, with America in the throes of a Depression, many of these legitimate theaters had been converted into movie house showcases for hastily produced Talkies being churned out by Hollywood.

  The first person he called upon was Mary Philips. Unlike the woman who had written the “Dear John” letter she’d sent him in California, she now seemed to want to save their marriage. At least some of her change in heart derived from the fact that she’d caught Roland Young, her lover, involved in not one, but two affairs with other actresses and had left him.

  “I’m just as much to blame for the failure of our marriage as you are,” he confessed to her.

  “I think we owe it to each other to give it one more try,” she told him.

  Against his better judgment, he agreed. That night he wrote Bette Davis in Hollywood, telling that he had reconciled with Mary.

  Furious at his rejection, she did not respond. “I will never speak to Humphrey Bogart again as long as I live. He treated me like a Saturday night whore.” She relayed her feelings to Kenneth MacKenna, hoping he would convey her fury to Bogie back in New York.

  Her mother, Ruthie, praised Bette Davis’ decision to have no further contact with Bogie. “The man gives me the creeps. He always looks dirty.” It would be at the urging of Ruthie that her daughter, with some reluctance, eventually married Harmon Nelson Jr., a no-talent musician, in Yuma, Arizona, on August 18, 1932.

  Even though he’d been separated from his family for sixteen months,& Bogie did not want to confront them again, yet nevertheless felt that he had to. He called first on Belmont, whose life had continued down a stairway to some dark gulf. Belmont was paralyzed and had been bedridden for the past four months in a dingy apartment at Tudor City in Manhattan.

  His father told him that Maud was living upstairs, within the same compound but in another apartment.
The ill-fated couple had not divorced. Instead of functioning as a wife, she’d become a caretaker, providing a hot cooked breakfast for him every morning. Each night at seven, she brought down a nutritious dinner.

  After his visit with his father, Bogie called on Maud upstairs. She was living in greatly reduced circumstances, paying her own bills and Belmont’s too with the meager earnings from her art work.

  During the time Bogie had been away, she seemingly had aged ten years. Her face was drawn and bitter. She was chilly with him, not even extending her hand when she allowed him into her apartment. She didn’t want to hear about any of his adventures in Hollywood, and had seen none of his movies. After about forty-five minutes, she asked him to leave because she had developed a migraine headache.

  Before he left, she mentioned his sister, Kay (Catherine), whom she claimed had become “a hopeless alcoholic and the town whore.”

  Kay’s drinking led to a rapid deterioration of her health. She died in 1937 of peritonitis after being rushed to the hospital when her appendix ruptured. Before an ambulance arrived, she was screaming in pain.

  Frances Rose, his other sister, was in equally bad shape. Ever since she’d suffered through a painful childbirth, the delivery lasting almost 30 hours, she’d become a manic-depressive. She’d been in and out of asylums, and regularly subjected to electric shock treatments.

  When Frances was left penniless after her divorce from Stuart Rose, with a young child to care for, she had no one to turn to but her brother. Throughout the rest of her life, Bogie would support her “emotionally and financially.”

  “The Bogarts are in great shape,” he told Mary upon his return to their flat that night. “Each one, in very separate ways, is on the way to hell. Maybe I’m next. It’s a family curse.”

  “We’ll make it,” she said. “Just you see. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

  “Stop it!” he shouted at her. “I told you to quit going through life spouting clichés.”