Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  On the second day of the shoot, Bogie approached Curtiz and complained about the character he was playing. He felt that as the part was written, it was one dimensional. “Who gives a fuck?” Curtiz said. “I make this film go so fast nobody will notice character.”

  Later, over coffee with Robinson, Bogie said, “I’ve got to learn to shoot better.”

  “Exactly what do you mean?” Robinson asked.

  “You see, it’s like this,” Bogie said. “We kill each other off in another shootout. I die right away, and they put a blanket over me. But my bullet didn’t go right into your heart, and you survive for a curtain speech in the arms of Bette Davis. You get to deliver this big Pietà-like death scene, while I’m covered up with a flea-infested blanket.”

  “That’s show business,” Robinson said. “I didn’t write the script.”

  “Thank God for that,” Bogart quipped, getting up. “If you had, I’m sure your fade-out would have been a fifteen-minute monologue.”

  Later, as he met Davis going into her dressing room, she said, “I make it a point never to agree with you. But I’ve read the script. You are right. Warners has recycled the usual clichés of its boxing movies. Except for a few scenes in the ring, we can expect yawns—not excitement, except for what I’m able to generate.”

  He noted that Davis would at least have cozy company on the set. She’d managed to secure a role for Jane Bryan, her pet. Tired of Davis’ barbs, he decided to get even with her.

  During a conference with Curtiz, Bogie made a revelation. “You know, of course, that Davis is having a lesbian relationship with Jane Bryan.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Curtiz said. “Don’t get me excited, Bogart. I’ve got a goddamn picture to direct. My secret passion is to watch two lesbians go at it.”

  “Whatever gets to you, man” Bogie said. “Whatever.”

  “You look like a smart ass,” Curtiz said. “You think you know fuck everything. You think I know fuck nothing. Listen to this: I know fuck all!”

  “I’m sure you know how to fuck,” Bogie assured him.

  “Just ask Lili Damita,” Curtiz continued. He was referring to the actress wife of Errol Flynn. Curtiz had married her in 1925, the union lasting only a few months. “She told me I was best in the fuck, best than Flynn.”

  “An impressive credential,” Bogie said. “Top of the morning to you.”

  In Kid Galahad, super hunk Morris was being groomed on the Warner lot to become “the next Errol Flynn.” Morris welcomed the chance to appear with big stars in his role as a young bellhop transformed into a boxing champ. Many of the women working on the picture, especially extras, made themselves sexually and emotionally available to this blonde Adonis. He didn’t seem to want any of them, as he seemed fully booked up when he left the studio to wherever he was going that night.

  Morris was the kind of California-born stud that Bogie generally detested. Standing 6’2”, he towered over Bogie. Morris was remarkably handsome by the standards of the day and had gone through the usual macho roles—football player, forest ranger.

  After their initial handshake, Bogie had little to say to him. “Kid, how’s it hanging?” Morris looked shocked.

  “It’s hanging just fine,” Morris responded, “but not for Bette Davis. Here she comes.”

  Davis came up to Bogie and looked disappointed that Morris had fled so quickly. Although she almost constantly attacked Bogie, she became solicitious of him whenever she needed an ally. For now, at least, their shared Enemy No. 1 was their director, Curtiz himself. Over drinks in her dressing room, she related to Bogie the real reason Curtiz hated her so much.

  During the early 1930s, Curtiz had tried to seduce her. “I was going through with it,” she said, “until he pulled off his pants. I mocked him like Mildred in Of Human Bondage. ‘A little piece of okra,’ I told him. He’s hated me ever since.”

  “Bette, men do not like you to attack their manhood,” he warned her. “Fortunately, I never had any complaints from you.”

  She just couldn’t resist delivering another dig. “I was very inexperienced when I first met you. But after I was worked over by Franchot Tone, I know what a real man feels like. There are so few of them around Hollywood. At night, most of you guys are out screwing each other.”

  Before he could get into a full-fledged bitchfest with Davis, Jane Bryan arrived at the door with tea. “Don’t touch the stuff,” Bogie said, walking out.

  Bogie did not come into conflict with Curtiz during the shoot, because all of the director’s ire was directed at Davis. He’d directed many of her pictures and still considered her “a dumb bitch, ugly as shit.” He’d even objected to her being cast in Cabin in the& Cotton.

  Davis’ animosity against Curtiz was so pronounced that she turned down Mildred Pierce (1945), the role and the Academy Award eventually going to Joan Crawford. At the time, Davis had said, “I absolutely refuse to do another film with Curtiz.” But on Oscar night, watching Crawford,& Davis’ curses and screams went on until morning, and could be heard down the block from her home.

  During the peak of Bogie’s lesbian rumors about Davis, she fell big for the muscular Morris, who would later go on to become a naval hero in World War II.

  Davis kept inviting Morris to her dressing room, and he kept declining. At one point, he asked Bogie, “How can I get this hot-to-trot mama off my back? I’m not into mothers this year.”

  Morris was only 23 at the time, Davis 29.

  “Why don’t you throw her a mercy fuck?” Bogie asked. “After all, she’s the star of the picture.”

  “I get it up only for teenage gals,” he said. “Once I get going, I can go all night. Also, I like my gals weak and submissive. That hardly describes Bette Davis.”

  “You got a point, kid,” Bogie said.

  In her effort to get to Morris, Davis even went to Curtiz and asked him to write in a love scene between them, which he refused to do.

  When Davis called in sick on February 18, Curtiz told Bogie, “She’s no good actress. Not really needed on this picture. Maybe with the big hen not protecting the chick, I will get to fuck the chick.” He no doubt was referring to Jane Bryan.

  Curtiz and Davis weren’t the only members of the crew who did not like each other during the period when Kid Galahad was being shot. Both Davis and Edward G. Robinson held each other in contempt. She referred to Robinson as “mush mouth” and asserted, loudly and frequently, “pity the poor girls at Warners who have to kiss his ugly purple lips.”

  Robinson was equally disdainful of Davis, complaining to Curtiz. “This hysterical broad is hopeless. She doesn’t belong in the picture.” Even though she’d been an Oscar winner, Robinson called her “an amateur.”

  “I’m this torch singer, the mistress of Robinson,” Davis said. “Could any of my fans believe that I’d go to bed with Robinson? It’s another cardboard character. I told Jack Warner this morning that he’d better come up with a better script—or else!”

  Robinson particularly objected to Davis’ hysterics during his death scene. He called a halt to shooting and asked Curtis, “Don’t you think Bette is crying too much?”

  Robinson saved his final evaluation of Davis for his autobiography. “Miss Davis was and is every inch a lady—polite, mannerly, gracious, even self-effacing. But by today’s standards she could never have gotten a job in a high school production of East Lynn. I know it’s goatish of me to say it, but Miss Davis was, when I played with her, not a very gifted amateur and employed any number of jarring mannerisms that she used to form an image. In her early period Miss Davis played the image, and not herself, and certainly not the character provided by the author.”

  In contrast, Robinson had a begrudging respect for Bogie and more than a touch of jealousy. “Bogie had a manner, a personality—yes, an immense talent—that has made him almost immortal. Working with him, I think I understood it better than his fans. For all his outward toughness, insolence, brag-gadocio, and contempt (and those wer
e always part of the characters he played, though they were not entirely within Bogie), there came through a kind of sadness, loneliness, and heartbreak (all of which were very much part of Bogie the man). I always felt sorry for him—sorry that he imposed upon himself the façade of the character with which he had become identified.”

  When the film opened to generally respectful reviews, many critics got it wrong. They predicted major stardom for Wayne Morris.

  If Bogie ever wished to forget about his appearance in Kid Galahad, he would not be so lucky. In 1941, he’d be handed another script entitled The Wagons Roll at Night. After reading only ten pages of it, he said, “My God, this is a remake of Kid Galahad. The only joy that the remake brought Bogie was that this time, he’d be cast as the lead, playing the role formerly played by Robinson instead of his former supporting part.

  As if these rehashes and reprises weren’t enough, Elvis Presley starred in a musical remake of Kid Galahad in 1962.

  Robinson later commented on his shoot-outs with Bogie. “Almost inevitably both of us would get killed at the end of the films in which we worked together. Because we were both rotten, we had to get our just desserts. Will Hays and his successors said so in the motion picture code. The charade followed a precise pattern. When I was the reigning star, Bogie would be slain first, and I’d live another reel before I got it. As the years passed and Bogie became the reigning star and I was demoted to character roles, I’d get the bullet first and Bogie would live out another reel before he was struck down for his sins.”

  ***

  “Bogie,” came the distinctive voice of Ann Sheridan over the phone. “I’ve just met with Lloyd Bacon. He’s cast us in another movie together. It’s called San Quentin. ”

  “I bet it’s a pip,” Bogie said. He got quickly to the point. “What is it for me? Fourth billing?”

  “No, the second lead,” she said. “Pat O’Brien is the star, and I’m the love interest.”

  “That you are, kid,” he said. “Don’t tell me: I’m a convict and I get shot and killed at the end.”

  “You’ve already read the script,” she said.

  “I didn’t have to. What’s the name of my character?”

  “Joe Kennedy.”

  “How original,” he said. “I think that name has already been used. Any nude love-making scenes between us?”

  “Hell, no!” she said. “It’s not that kind of picture. You’re my kid brother in this flicker.”

  “Then we’ll have to confine our love-making to the dressing room.”

  “Fine with me,” she said. “You know I’m a gal who never turns down a deep dicking. I might as well warn you, though, I’m seeing another actor on the side.”

  “Don’t make me guess.”

  “David Niven.”

  “The limey import.” Bogie said. “Frankly, I think all British actors should be banned in Hollywood. There aren’t enough jobs for home-grown actors.”

  “Don’t send him back home to London yet,” she said. “I haven’t worn him out yet. There’s still life in the old boy.”

  “He strikes me as a prissy Englishman,” he said. “Not my type.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “But all Englishmen sound like faggots. In bed, it’s another story. His gals have nicknamed him ‘beer can.’”

  “Don’t make me jealous,” he said. “See you on the set.”

  “Incidentally, Barton MacLane has the fourth lead,” she said.

  “That’s the first good news I’ve had all day,” he said. “The last time we appeared together, he was billed over me, and I’m the pretty one. What woman would want to go to bed with MacLane?”

  “Actually there are some,” she said. “Regardless of what you look like, there’s always someone out there salivating over you.”

  He hadn’t seen Bacon since he’d helmed Bogie in Marked Woman. On the first day on the set, Bogie came up to greet him, noticing how depressed he looked.

  “This is not going to be the film that Marked Woman was,” Bacon warned his star.

  “Let’s go for it,” Bogie said. “As long as they keep those paychecks coming in, you’ll continue to direct, and I’ll get by on what is called acting.”

  Upon the film’s release, it was MacLane, in his role as a tough prison guard, who attracted the most attention, some critics calling his performance memorable. One reviewer wrote, “Humphrey Bogart gives a lackluster performance as a con in a lackluster Warner release, another one of the studio’s formula prison movies.”

  Bogie took Sheridan to see the film. At the end and on the way out, she said, “there’s one real problem with this stinker other than the obvious. You’re playing my kid brother. Don’t forget that in real life you’re eleven years older than this cutie walking beside you.”

  ***

  Long after his intimacy had ended with Bette Davis, she still retained a surface friendship with Bogie, no doubt fearing they’d be cast in another movie together at Warners. Even so, he was surprised when she called him and invited him for lunch on the Warner lot.

  She was already at table when he came rushing in. Sitting down beside her, he asked, “To what do I owe this honor, Miss Davis? I assume you don’t want to take up where you left off?”

  “Count yourself lucky that you were so rewarded,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll rank as one of your all-time peak experiences.”

  “My, aren’t you self-confident today,” he said.

  “Today and every day, but that’s not why I’m here. I want to talk to you about a script. It’s a story set in Africa by C.S. Forester. Jack Warner has acquired it as a vehicle for me. My role is that of a prim, repressed missionary spinster. The male role is that of a Cockney River Rat. Henry Blanke is talking about giving the role to David Niven. When I heard the role called for a River Rat, one who hasn’t shaved in days, one who always looks unkempt and maybe a bit dirty, I thought of you.”

  “I always like to be in the thoughts of a beautiful woman,” he said.

  “Let’s get serious here. I could walk away with an Oscar for this role. The River Rat isn’t bad either—in fact, it’s perfect for you. Niven is too much of an English gentleman to handle the role. He belongs in a Victorian parlor, not on an old piece of junk sailing along a river in Africa battling the Germans. Let’s face it, Bogart. You need a meaty part. So do I, of course. We might eat up the screen with these roles. Will you allow me to advance you as a candidate for the male lead?”

  “I’ve always wanted to play the captain of my own boat,” he said, “if that’s what the part calls for.”

  “Of course, your boat is nothing but a piece of shit, hardly able to stay afloat.”

  “That makes the story all the more intriguing,” he said. “I’ll keep the old tug floating with spit and guts.”

  “That’s it exactly. If we play this right, I can begin preparing another speech to give on the night of the Academy Awards.”

  “What about me?” he asked. “Don’t I deserve something?”

  “That you do. If the competition isn’t too rough that year, river rats might be in.”

  In the weeks ahead, the Warner producer, Blanke, and Bette did not agree on the film. Her major objection was to being photographed outdoors. “But, Bette,” he protested, “much of the action takes place outdoors.”

  In the spring of 1947, Blanke, forgetting their past differences, once again presented her with the script for The African Queen. At this point her star was falling, and she had no objections to being photographed outdoors.

  “I love the script,” she said, “and I want to do it. Do you still have David Niven in mind?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m pitching James Mason.”

  “Mason is a fine actor, of course, but what about Bogart? He gets rattier and rattier-looking every day.”

  “No, he’s totally wrong for the part.”

  Mason may have gone before the cameras in 1947 opposite Bette had she not given birth to a baby girl
, Barbara Davis Sherry, and felt in a weakened condition. She also feared location work in a remote corner of Africa, and the actual physical dexterity needed to pull off this role.

  The film had not gone into production by the time Davis was kicked out of Warners, a reaction to the dismal box-office receipts generated by her disastrous Beyond the Forest.

  ***

  That summer, Bogie learned that he was one of twenty-one members of the Screen Actors Guild listed by the FBI as having “strong Communist Party leanings.” He became worried that such a listing would harm his career, as there was no basis for that charge. Although he viewed himself as an outspoken liberal, He had never been a member of the Communist Party and had no leanings in that direction. His appearance on that FBI list did not seem to affect his career.

  In summer of 1937, for a change of pace, he agreed to perform a work by Shakespeare, but only on the radio, for the CBS Shakespeare Theater. Along with veteran actor Walter Huston and Brian Aherne, he appeared in Henry IV, Part One.

  From New York, Mary Philips no longer wrote any letters. He inquired of actors returning to California from Broadway, but no one seemed to have any knowledge of her private life.

  He told Ann Sheridan, “My marriage to Mary just needs a divorce.”

  He continued to see Mayo Methot three and sometimes four nights a week, but he complained to Sheridan that “she’s too jealous, too possessive. I’ll never marry her in spite of my promises to her.”

  On Broadway, Samuel Goldwyn had seen Bogie perform as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. But when he acquired the rights to Dead End, the film adaptation of Sidney Kingsley’s Broadway hit play, he told his director, William Wyler, that George Raft would be perfect as the gangster, Baby Face Martin. The romantic leads and the star parts would go to Sylvia Sidney and Joel McCrea.