Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  Brooks called later that evening to thank Bogie for his hospitality. She was mysterious about her whereabouts, refusing to tell him where she was, even when pressed. “An emergency came up, and I can’t explain.” He would never learn the reason for her sudden departure.

  “You should have stuck around,” he said. “I’m much better in the morning.”

  “I’m sure you are,” she told him. “I was tempted to pursue what we never finished in New York, but I decided against that.”

  “Why?” he asked. “I didn’t plow deep enough.”

  “It’s not that, Bogie boy,” she said. “I decided we are too much alike. Going to bed with you would be like fucking myself.”

  In the years to come, he was saddened to see the star of Pandora’s Box, where Brooks played Lulu, the nymphomaniac, reduced to appearing as a chorus girl in a 1937 Grace Moore musical, When You’re in Love.

  In 1974, Brooks would share her memory of Bogie in her published memoirs Lulu in Hollywood. The most controversial piece of her Bogie portrait involved remarks she made about his lips. She alleged that he referred to them as “nigger lips.” Instead of viewing his lips as a handicap, Brooks claimed that Bogie decided to take advantage of this “unusual feature,” his observations being based on how much publicity Clark Gable had garnered from his big ears.

  “Over the years, Bogie practiced all kinds of lip gymnastics, accompanied by nasal tones, snarls, lisps, and slurs,” she wrote. “His painful wince, his leer, his fiendish grin were the most accomplished ever seen on film. Only Erich von Stroheim was his superior in lip twitching.”

  ***

  From a successful stint in the 1920s on the stages of Broadway, Mayo Methot arrived at Union Station in Los Angeles in 1930, loudly describing her plans to “put the tinsel in Tinseltown.” Humphrey Bogart lay in her future, but she had no memory of ever meeting him during the 1920s in New York. That was odd, as she’d previously been introduced to him in the presence of “Mr. Broadway,” George M. Cohan, along with Bill Brady Jr.

  Years later, defending herself for not remembering her inaugural meeting with the man who eventually became her husband, she said, “With Cohan checking me out, perhaps for a future stage role, how in hell could I remember a two-bit actor with a lisp? The town was full of them in those days.”

  This Oregon-born actress became known as “The Portland Rosebud,” after she became famous for introducing the Broadway show tune, “More Than You Know,” which became a standard across the country. She’d introduced the song in the musical Great Day, produced by Billy Rose and Vincent Youmans. In Hollywood during the 30s, she would never achieve the celebrity she’d known in New York.

  When she arrived in Hollywood in 1930 and signed with Warner Brothers, Jack Warner didn’t know quite what to do with her and cast her within roles as either tough-talking dames or as unsympathetic second leads in crime melodramas such as Jimmy the Gent ( 1933).

  Directed by Michael Curtiz, who would later helm Bogie in Casablanca,& Jimmy the Gent starred Bette Davis and James Cagney. “Thanks to those two super-egos, I broke into Hollywood the hard way,” Methot ruefully claimed. “They didn’t make it easy for me.”

  In Los Angeles’ Biltmore Hotel in 1936, at the Screen Actors Guild annual dinner, Bogie arrived stag, without an escort. He kept looking at the familiar face of a blonde-haired woman in a scarlet red dress with plunging décolletage. She smiled back at him several times. Finally, he realized that he’d met her before. She was none other than Mayo Methot, the former Broadway star.

  Impulsively, Bogie rose from his chair. Plucking a small plaster nude from a nearby decoration, he made his way to her table. “Madam,” he said, “I hereby present this Oscar to you as the Most Beautiful Woman in the Room.”

  It was the beginning of Bogie’s most turbulent relationship with any woman. He invited her to dance. As Mayo later related to Bette Davis, “We danced the night away. By two o’clock that morning, I found myself drinking& a nightcap in his bedroom at the Garden of Allah.”

  Since Mary was in New York at the time, this tryst was easy for Bogie, but not necessarily for Methot: At the time, she had a husband, Percy T. Morgan, the owner of the popular Cock & Bull, a restaurant and bar on Sunset Boulevard much frequented by the movie crowd.

  Soonafter, Methot began spending many of her nights with Bogie, much to the annoyance of Mr. Morgan, who knew his wife was having an affair. But with whom?

  Prior to Morgan, Methot had had an earlier husband. At the age of 19, she’d married Jack La Mond, a cameraman for Cosmopolitan Productions. Divorcing him in 1927, she migrated to Hollywood in 1930 and soonafter, she’d married Morgan.

  It quickly became obvious to Bogie that Methot was not a fragile and demure hothouse flower. At a bar in Santa Monica, she ordered a vodka and tonic. After the waiter served it, she tasted it and spat it out. This is gin and tonic, you fucker!” she shouted at him.

  “It’s vodka,” he said. “I poured it myself. I’m not taking it back. You can drink it since you’re paying for it.”

  “Drink this, faggot!” she shouted, throwing glass, ice cubes, and gin in his face before storming out of the bar.

  “I hate women who are spineless, brainless, clinging vines,” Bogie told Edward G. Robinson. “You know the type. They open their eyes wide and their mouths still wider and sigh, ‘Oh, you great big wonderful man.’”

  On the Warners lot, Methot became known for her heavy drinking. Alcohol had begun to tarnish her former beauty.

  “By the time she met Bogie, she was looking the worse for wear,” said Bette Davis.

  One day, during lunch on the Warners lot, Davis said, “Bogart, you’re out of your mind. Mayo is insane. She and her husband staged a knock-out, drag out fight at the Cock & Bull that brought out the police. She was about to kill him.”

  He smiled. “I adore take-charge women. Whenever I do something wrong, she tells me so. In case I don’t listen, she packs a good wallop. I’ve already nicknamed her Sluggy.”

  “You know what I’ve decided,” Davis said. “You’re as much of a lunatic as Methot is.”

  A few weeks later, at a Hollywood party, Louise Brooks sat in the corner, skeptically eyeing the drunken antics of Bogart and Methot. In her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, she wrote: “He found her at a time of lethargy and loneliness, when he might have gone on playing secondary gangster parts at Warner Brothers for years and then been out. But he met Mayo and she set fire to him.& Those passions—envy, hatred, and violence, which were essential to the Bogie character—which had been simmering beneath his failure for so many years—she brought to a boil, blowing the lid off all his inhibitions forever.”

  During the 1930s, Eric Hatch was a well-known writer of screwball comedies, including My Man Godfrey. Released in 1936, it starred Carole Lombard and William Powell. That same year, Eric and his wife, Gertrude Hatch, threw a party for Mayo and Bogie.

  “It was a wild night,” Bogie later said. “Mischa Auer, the Russian character actor, at one point got so drunk on vodka he was crawling nude under the tables. Mayo put on music for an Argentine tango. With a jaybird-naked Auer, they did a burlesque of Rudolph Valentino. Mischa threw Mayo up in the air. That night, the whole room discovered that she’d forgotten to wear her panties.”

  Suddenly, during one of the party’s particularly manic moments, the Hatch family’s maid came in to warn that Percy Morgan was at the front door, trying to retrieve his wife.

  In her stocking feet, Mayo ran out the back door with Bogie in hot pursuit. They made their getaway. There was a rumor that Morgan was carrying a gun.

  The next day, Bryan Foy heard the story and quizzed Bogie about it.

  “I want the word to get out,” Bogie said. “Tell ‘em Humphrey Bogart is in town, and that the only way a man can know that his wife is safe involves strapping a chastity belt on her and locking her in a dungeon.”

  During the days and weeks ahead, despite her status as a married woman, Bogie openly escort
ed Methot to private parties and frequently appeared in public with her.

  “The final straw came when I invited Bogie to have drinks with me in the bar of the Cock & Bull,” Methot told friends. “It was a deliberate attempt to let my husband know that I had moved on, and that Bogie was my new love. Percy sat at the far end of the bar staring at us, but he never came over. I think that signaled him that it was all over except for the actual filing for divorce.”

  ***

  On Broadway, fading screen star Richard Barthelmess and Mary Philips, cast into a role as a “gas station strumpet,” couldn’t generate& enough magic to sustain box office for The Postman Always Rings Twice. The show closed after its move in April of 1936 to a smaller theater, the Golden. Throughout the run of the play, however, reports filtered through to Mary about how her husband was having a torrid romance with Mayo Methot, whom Mary knew from her Broadway days.

  Uncharacteristically jealous, Mary opted to take the difficult air route to Los Angeles instead of traveling by train. That involved several refueling stops across the vast American continent, but she was in a hurry to get to the West Coast.

  She notified Bogie that she was on her way, but her plane did not show up on schedule on April 26. He feared it had crashed somewhere. Finally, news reached him that the small aircraft had been grounded somewhere in Oklahoma because of a dust storm.

  On the afternoon of the following day, Mary finally landed on the ground in Los Angeles, where Bogie was waiting to meet her.

  Only the day before, out of respect for Mary’s upcoming arrival, he had gathered together Methot’s cosmetics and clothing from his studio, where they had been living together, and sent her packing.

  It was not sunny California that greeted Mary as the plane set down. It was one of those cold, windswept days in Los Angeles that sends locals desperately searching for a coat of some sorts.

  He embraced her on the runway and kissed her warmly. She would later tell her lover, Kenneth MacKenna, “The kiss was without passion, more like what a brother would give his sister.”

  Bogie moved Mary into his rented studio at the Garden of Allah, which Methot had vacated a day or two before. Even though Mary was temporarily back with Bogie, Methot began divorce proceeding against Percy Morgan. He’d been the ideal husband, yet she charged him with mental cruelty. The only cruelty she could cite in her petition involved his refusal to allow her to rearrange the furniture in their living room.

  During the first week of Mary’s return to Hollywood,& Benchley, now one of Bogie’s close friends, decided to give a welcome-to-Hollywood party for Mary. She wanted to seek work in films at Warner Brothers, and Bogie had set up an appointment for her with Brian Foy, chief of those B movies he’d been making.

  “I’m a big Broadway star from a big town hoping to get work in B-pictures in a small town,” she told Benchley. “But if I don’t stay in Hollywood this time, I know my marriage to Hump is over. Hell, I’m still going to call him Hump. I can’t get used to this Bogie shit. And, by the way, don’t tell my husband I ever used the word shit.”

  Mary was not accustomed to the casual style of Hollywood parties, especially on a hot day. Those overcast skies had faded. At three o’clock that afternoon at the Garden of Allah, she emerged from their bungalow on the arm of her husband. As Benchley later reported to Tallulah Bankhead, “Mary looked like she could have headed the Easter Parade along Fifth Avenue. A vision in pink.”

  At about four o’clock, the thirty-odd guests of the party turned to witness the sudden emergence of Methot, who had appeared suddenly and without warning, seemingly out of thin air. Her hair and clothing were in disarray, and she looked angry and distraught.

  Seeing her, Bogie moved to prevent her from entering the pool area, but she slugged him in the face, bloodying his nose. He struck her, knocking her onto the tiles surrounding the pool. She picked herself up and stood before him. Then, she kicked him in the balls. He doubled over in pain.

  While he was trying to recover from the agonizing assault, Methot headed toward Mary, who was standing near the edge of the pool.

  “We meet again, you little whore,” Methot shouted at Mary. Sensing a catfight, the guests moved back. Benchley, as the host, did not intervene. “I only engage in verbal assaults, nothing physical,” He later told Bogie. “I long ago learned not to come between two jealous women who are about to beat each other up.”

  “I am Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, and I plan to continue to be Mrs. Humphrey Bogart for many years to come,” Mary said defiantly.

  “He loves me—and not you,” Methot shouted. “He told me himself that you’re lousy in bed. I can satisfy a man. You can’t. Maybe Kenneth MacKenna. But he’s mostly faggot anyway.”

  “Get away from my husband,” Mary shouted at her. “I forbid you to see him ever again.”

  “Forbid me?” Methot said. “Am I hearing right? I can chew a bitch like you for breakfast and spit her out.” In an impulsive move, she moved toward Mary and pushed her into the deep end of the pool. In all her New York finery, Mary seemed to be drowning. One of the male guests stripped off his jacket and jumped in to rescue her.

  Methot stormed away toward the entrance. Bogie had recovered in time to kick her in the ass as she made a rapid retreat. He rushed over to comfort Mary, who was lying soaked and gasping for breath on the tiles.

  “You know how to pick ‘em, Hump,” she said before Bogie carried her back to his studio.

  Bogie turned around and surveyed the astonished guests. “Party’s over!” he shouted. “I want each of you to leave a dollar in the kitty. We Broadway actors sure know how to put on a show for you Hollywood types.”

  ***

  The next morning, the manager of the Garden of Allah rapped on the door of Bogie’s bungalow. Mary was still in bed when Bogie in his underwear answered the summons. “Yeah, what is it?”

  “Mr. Bogart, we want you to check out of our hotel as soon as possible,” he said. “We’re a happy family around here. If you aren’t gone by tomorrow morning, I’m summoning the police to have you and Mrs. Bogart evicted.”

  Thanks to a recent salary increase of fifty dollars a week, Bogie moved Mary into a small Mexican hacienda-style adobe house on 1210 North Horn Avenue, overlooking Sunset Boulevard. It was to be his first real home in Hollywood.

  Their marriage was rocky, but both Bogie and Mary seemed to want to give it one final chance. Both of them understood that if they failed this time, their relationship, except for a divorce, would be over.

  ***

  Enjoying a break before shooting on his next picture, Bogie was called to Warners for a script conference. When it was over, he retreated to his dressing room for a Scotch and soda. There was a knock on his door. He opened it to find Methot.

  Despite their recent and very public fistfight, Bogie let her in.

  “I don’t know what went on inside that dressing room that afternoon, but the bitch was in there for four hours,” Bryan Foy said. “A grip spilled the beans. They came out looking like lovebirds. We can call that a reconciliation. Where was Mary Philips while all this was going on? No doubt slipping away to fuck Kenneth MacKenna.”

  Foy revealed to associates that at Bogie’s request, he’d arranged a screen test of Mary. “She’s awful. She also photographs rather ugly, although she’s pretty enough in person. I’ll never understand why the camera favors some dames—and not others. My advice to her was to go back to Broadway.”

  ***

  With Mary’s career at a standstill, Bogie for the first time became the family’s only breadwinner. He was elated to learn that he’d been cast as the star of a new movie, a drama, Black Legion, to be released in 1937, with co-stars Dick Foran, Erin O’Brien-Moore, and the fast-emerging Ann Sheridan.

  Archie Mayo, who had directed Bogie in the film version of The Petrified Forest, was the director. This time he’d cast Bogie as Frank Taylor, an embittered factory worker who joins the Black Legion, a Ku Klux Klan-inspired terrorist organization.


  Black Legion was a grim picture, marking the first time Bogie played the lead in what eventually evolved into an A-list feature which showcased his talents. Erin was cast as his wife, Foran his best friend.

  The same year, Erin O’Brien-Moore, a fetching beauty from California, appeared opposite Paul Muni in The Life of Émile Zola.

  Two years later, tragedy struck when she was seriously burned in a restaurant fire. Her recuperation took years of surgery and rehabilitation. When she came back in 1948, she was assigned character roles, her chance for major stardom a forgotten dream.

  Ann Sheridan was cast in a small and rather thankless role as the fiancée of Dick Foran, Bogie’s co-star in the film. A New Jersey crooner, Foran was known around the lot as Warner Brothers’ answer to Gene Autry, the singing cowboy. But occasionally Foran was cast in mainstream dramatic parts, as he was in Black Legion.

  Bogie had worked with Foran before when he’d been cast as the athlete, Boze Hertzlinger, in the film version of The Petrified Forest. He had taken the role that Robert E. Sherwood had originally intended for Bogie (i.e., the role of the athlete, not the Duke Mantee part.)

  Meeting him again on the set, Bogie told Foran, “You’re much too good-looking and wholesome to have played Duke, although you could have livened that dismal drama by singing ‘Home on the Range.’” Foran knew when he’d been insulted.

  To complicate his life even more, Bogie, “torn between two lovers,” had yet another woman enter his life. She was Ann Sheridan, the so-called “Oomph Girl.”

  Down to earth and ever so friendly, she approached Bogie on the set of Black Legion and introduced herself with, “How in the fuck are you, Mr. Humphrey Bogart?”

  “You wanna feel it and find out?” he shot back.

  She laughed hilariously. Like Carole Lombard, Sheridan was known for her potty mouth. In fact, around the Warners lot she was called “the hash-house version of Carole Lombard.”