Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  Raft, however, kept putting off a decision about whether he’d become involved, and he went around town asking other actors, directors, and producers, “Should I take this role—or not?”

  When Goldwyn heard about this, he called Wyler. “Get Bogie on a loan-out from Warners. Jack wants Miriam Hopkins for a role at Warners. We want Bogie. Do a trade-off.”

  Raft’s indecision about whether to accept the starring role in Dead End would mark the beginning of a series of ill-advised decisions on his part. In every case, Bogie was ready, willing, and certainly able to fill in for his rival. “I took Raft’s rejects, and they turned me into a movie star, strictly A-list. Poor, stupid George Raft.”

  “Who’s there to fuck in this movie?” Bogie asked Ann Sheridan in a call to her. “You know everything’s that going on.”

  “I don’t know about Sylvia Sidney,” she said, but I do know there are two hot little numbers appearing—Wendy Barrie and Claire Trevor. Of course, you could always settle for Marjorie Main, but she’s lez.”

  Wyler, who was roughly the same age as Bogie age, was definitely an A-list director, and Bogie feared he’d be too demanding. He began his career working in the Silents, launching a career that would span nearly half a century and see a record twelve Oscar nominations as Best Director, of which he would win three.

  Firmly established as Goldwyn’s director of choice, Wyler tore into the script of Dead End, demanding dozens of changes. Bogie had been warned that he might be asked to shoot a take over and over again, as the director was known as “One More Wyler.”

  Bogie was expecting fireworks on the set with Wyler, but the director reserved his fury for epic battles with Goldwyn. They disagreed over several key scenes.

  Once, when Wyler saw Goldwyn coming onto the set, the director said, “Here he comes, clanking balls he doesn’t have.”

  Years later, Wyler recalled his experience of working with Bogie on Dead End. “I found him very professional, very easy to work with. His acting was never hammy. It was very simple. Unlike Bette Davis, he also underplayed a scene. I think that’s the reason why his films stand up so well today. As an actor he obviously was limited. His range wasn’t great, but if he stayed within a certain range he was the best actor around.”

  Bogie was less eloquent in recalling his work with Wyler. “He directed some of the best pictures ever made in Hollywood, especially if they starred Bette Davis. He did such films as Wuthering Heights, Roman Holiday, and The Best Years of Our Lives. He even directed Ben-Hur. When film fans gather to watch Wyler movies, Dead End is hardly the first must-see& on their list.”

  Although Joel McCrea became one of the great stars of American Westerns, Bogie remained unimpressed with him. But he did like McCrea’s self-appraisal of his own abilities—in fact, McCrea spoke of his modest talents with a certain soft contempt for himself.

  And although Bogie did not admire McCrea’s acting, he admired his thrift. He told Bogie that Will Rogers once told him, “Save half of what you make, and live on just the other half. I do that and more. I never carry around more than a buck in my pocket. I recommend you do the same. Buy property and more property. Go out into the unincorpo-rated areas. One day that land will be a city suburb of L.A.”

  That was good advice, although Bogie never took it. “McCrea became a multi-millionaire in the late 40s,” Bogie once said at Romanoff’s. “My God, didn’t he at one time own Thousand Oaks?”

  When Bogie met Sylvia Sidney, the female star of the picture, he remembered her for “having the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.” She was just recovering from a failed marriage to Bennett Cerf, the famous publisher of Random House. Bogie remembered her sitting on the set between takes working on her needlepoint. Her marriage to Cerf technically lasted only three months.

  “One should never legalize a hot romance,” Cerf later said.

  Referring to this Bronx-born actress, Bogie remembered that “her big, beautiful eyes looked like they were always on the verge of tears. In fact, she jokingly told me that Paramount paid her for every tear shed. Behind that small, vulnerable, long-suffering façade was a tough little number. She practically had ‘survival’ written on her forehead.”

  In later life, film critics have cited Sidney’s role in Dead End, as the best movie& role she ever played. She was cast as Drina, a shopgirl, striving to fight her way out of the slums and into a respectable life. She would work again with Bogie in the circus melodrama The Wagons Roll at Night.

  Playing Bogie’s slum mother was Marjorie Main, the daughter of a minister. In the 1920s she had been a hoofer on Broadway. She was to achieve screen immortality in later years as Ma Kettle.

  In Hollywood she was repeating her stage role in Dead End. “You’re good,” he said after watching her work.

  “Too good,” she said, accurately predicting that Dead End would lead to a number of slum mother parts.

  Bogie had already been made aware of Main’s lesbianism as the long-time companion of actress Spring Byington.

  In spite of this, she had some deep emotional attachment to her late husband, Stanley LeFevre Krebs, who had died in 1935. The relationship struck Bogie as spiritual, not sexual. In the middle of a scene with him, she stopped and seemed to go into a sort of meditation.

  When she’d come out of it, she turned to director Wyler. “It’s okay, I can go on.” She whispered to Bogie, “I don’t want to piss off Wyler, but Stanley was telling me from heaven how to play this scene with you.”

  A British actress born in Hong Kong, Wendy Barrie was, in the words of Bogie, “a hot tamale, but she didn’t inspire lust in me. I held her off. She really wanted my body, though.”

  Spencer Tracy, still one of Bogie’s best friends, had told him to “keep it zipped up” when he starred with Barrie. Tracy had begun an affair with her when they appeared together in a romantic comedy, It’s a Small World (1935).

  “I’m still balling her,” Tracy told Bogie. “When I’ve had it, I’ll pass it on to you. Nothing wrong with sloppy seconds—nothing at all.”

  “You and Claire Trevor are my kind of dames,” Bogie told Ann Sheridan. “She doesn’t believe in locking up her pussy like some dames,” he said. He loved talking dirty to Sheridan, since she seemed to get off on that. “Trevor is also a solidly professional actress, not great, but way beyond competent.” In fact, in all the cast of Dead End, Trevor would be the only one who would receive an Oscar nomination.

  Cast as Bogie’s ex-girlfriend, Trevor had a scene-stealing encounter with him. It is clear to Bogie’s character that she has become a prostitute, and a& sickly one at that. Some film critics claimed that it was that scene alone that earned the Oscar for Trevor.

  He may have avoided Wendy Barrie, but “I scored a home run with Trevor,” Bogie later claimed. “It was in my dressing room. I made friends with some of the grips who promised to alert me if Mayo arrived on the set, especially if she was carrying a gun.”

  At the end of the shoot, Trevor said she wanted to throw him “one goodbye fuck.” She suspected they’d work together again one day. “Any time some director needs a floozy, call me. I play floozies in my sleep.”

  When she was eventually cast as Edward G. Robinson’s floozy in Key Largo (1948), Bogie and Trevor would meet again. But before that, Trevor, playing a “fence to a gang of safecrackers,” would team up with both Bogie and Robinson in The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938).

  Bogie would also get to know Huntz Hall, a dopey-looking fidgety teenager, during the shoot. He, along with fellow actors Leo Gorcey and Billy Halop, would become famous as the Dead End Kids (also known as The Bowery Boys), and would continue to work with Bogie in future pictures.

  When Bogie last encountered Samuel Goldwyn, he was preparing his acceptance speech for Dead End, almost certain that it would win an Oscar as Best Picture of the Year. He was terribly disappointed when the Oscar went instead to Warner Brothers’ The Life of Emile Zola.

  ***

  Mary Philips drove up to
their house late one night after he’d gone to bed. When he heard her turning on the lights, he got up. In his underwear, he confronted her in the living room.

  “I’ve come for my things,” she said. “I’m moving out for good.”

  “Who is the lucky man?” he asked. “Kenneth MacKenna or Roland Young? Perhaps someone else.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” she said, as she headed for the bedroom to start removing her clothing. In the bedroom, she turned to face him. “Don’t try to stop me. It’s over.”

  “Who’s stopping you?” he asked. “Move out if you want to. I don’t believe anybody should stay where they don’t want to.”

  “Let’s face it,” she said, throwing three dresses on the unmade bed. “Ours was not a real marriage. If we ever had a marriage at all, it was in the 20s in New York.”

  “We had some good times,” he said.

  “I remember a few, too, but we’ve spent most of the 30s in the arms of other people. So it’s time for me to move on. I’m very much in love.”

  “You won’t tell me if it’s Ken or Roland Young?” he said. “You owe me that.”

  “I owe you nothing,” she said rather harshly. “With me out of the way, you’ll be free to marry Mayo Methot, although God knows why. She’s an old drunk. She’s completely lost her looks.”

  “She isn’t exactly a spring chick if that’s what you mean,” he said.

  “I’ve got a great idea,” she said. “While I finish packing, why don’t you go sit out on the patio, breathe the night air, smoke a cigarette, and think about what might have been but can never be.”

  “I wish you luck,” he said. “I know you haven’t made the greatest films of all time, but back on Broadway you’ll be the brightest star.”

  “That’s very comforting,” she said. “I guess I’ll return the favor. I know you’re getting a bit long in the tooth for a Hollywood matinee idol. As for looks, you’re not the romantic type like Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, or Robert Taylor. But keep at it. When the 1940s roll around, and you’re in your own 40s, I think you’ll become one of the biggest character actors in Hollywood. I really believe that. It’s not bullshit.”

  “Well,” he said awkwardly, “guess it’s time for that cigarette.”

  “When you come back in, I’ll be gone,” she said.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said, a forlorn quality to his voice. “You were—and are —a great gal.”

  “I’ll miss you, too. I’m sorry our marriage didn’t work out. Perhaps you’ll find someone some day. Ann Sheridan. Claire Trevor. Anybody but Mayo Methot. Please, Hump, reconsider. She’s psychotic. If you go on with her, I think she’ll kill you one day.”

  “If that’s my fate, so be it.” He smiled. It wasn’t quite a smile but not a frown either. His face reflected a sense of loss and yet an eagerness to move on into the next adventure. “Good night, sweet Mary.”

  “Good night, Hump.”

  He turned and walked toward the patio. The day had been hot, but a sudden chill had come over Los Angeles. The winds were blowing, and there seemed to be crystals of sand in the night air. Surely that’s what it was. It must be the sand tearing his eyes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Spencer Tracy called Bogie to relate details about the latest public opinion poll about the casting of the leading roles in Gone With the Wind, the upcoming film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Margaret Mitchell about America’s Civil War.

  “That big film role you’ve been dreaming about may actually come true,” Tracy said. “Read Lloyd Pantages column, I Cover Hollywood.”

  Over coffee, Bogie smoked a cigarette and read the following item:

  “An opinion poll about how Gone With the Wind should be cast focuses on the following movie stars: For the role of Scarlett O’Hara, the major contenders include Miriam Hopkins, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Margaret Sullavan, Claudette Colbert, and Jean Harlow. And for the role of Rhett Butler, Clark Gable is the top choice, and, after that, in rapid succession: Cary Grant, Warner Baxter, Ronald Colman, Edward Arnold, Alan Marshall, Humphrey Bogart, and Basil Rathbone. As for the part of Melanie Wilkes, the unanimous decision falls into the lap of Janet Gaynor.”

  After reading it, Bogie called Tracy back. “I don’t know what the debate is about. The choice is obvious: Jean Harlow for Scarlett O’Hara, Bogie for Rhett Butler.”

  “Have you actually read Gone With the Wind ?”

  “Not a page, but I hear Gable’s a shoe-in.”

  “Clark told me that he won’t accept the role,” Tracy said, “so you’d better start practicing a Southern accent. And don’t forget to lose the lisp.”

  A few weeks later, over drinks and dinner, Leslie Howard and Bogie had a Hollywood reunion, thanks to director Tay Garnett having cast them in a Walter Wanger Production, Stand-In (1937), a romantic comedy about Hollywood. Joan Blondell would play the female lead. Behind a pair of spectacles, Howard had been cast as a straight-arrow financial analyst who winds up running a movie studio. Bogie, as “Douglas Quintain,” plays a boozy producer trying to save a picture called Sex and Satan.

  Over drinks and dinner, when it came time for the actors to tally their score of conquests of their respective leading ladies, Howard won. Bogie protested that he would have won if some of his leading ladies hadn’t been lesbians.

  Having just made It’s Love I’m After, a zany comedy with Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland, Howard amused Bogie with the details of his campaign to woo both ladies into his much-used bed.

  In 1982, when Davis was asked to comment on Howard’s pursuit of her, she said, “Leslie Howard was definitely a great ladies’ man. His wife used to say that the only leading lady he hadn’t gone to bed with was Bette Davis.”

  “Don’t see It’s Love I’m After,” cautioned Howard. “I only made that picture because I wanted to show Warners and its director, Archie Mayo, that I had a flair for comedy. And they paid me $70,000 to make it. I hope to get the same for Stand-In.”

  “Don’t ask me what I’m taking home,” Bogie said. “Small potatoes.”

  Howard amused Bogie with the details of his seduction of Merle Oberon, his co-star in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935). “We were in my dressing room having sex, and my wife walked in on us. Seeing us in white heat, she indignantly asked me what I was doing. I blithely replied, ‘Rehearsing.’”

  Not wanting to be outdone, Bogie related escapades associated with his long-time girlfriend, Joan Blondell.

  “I plan to seduce her,” Howard said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “We don’t have any exclusive rights to each other’s panties,” Bogie said.

  Later, during the second week of the shoot, Blondell told Bogie that she found Howard adorable. “He’s just a little devil and just wants his hands on every woman around. He would hold your hand while looking into your eyes and rubbing his leg on somebody else’s leg at the same time, while having the gateman phone him before his wife arrived on the lot.”

  As always, Bogie worked smoothly with Howard, as he had in both the stage and screen versions of The Petrified Forest. “We both shacked up with Joan,” Bogie said. “She’s got such a good heart about men and their desires.”

  “I bet she does,” Ann Sheridan said. “I don’t know how the poor thing faces the camera. No energy left.”

  In recalling his late 30s films, Bogie said, “Tay Garnett put Joan, Leslie, and me through our paces more or less well. He’d been an aviator in World War I and a gagwriter for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. He’d been directing films since 1928. The list of his credits would stretch around the block, yet he’s a name almost no one remembers, except when he directed Lana Turner and John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Garnett did on film what my dear wife, Mary Philips, failed to do on Broadway in the stage version. But, then, Lana Turner’s a tough act for any woman to follow.”

  During the production of Stand-In, Howard seemed primarily obsessed with the formation of his own theatrical troupe. U
sing it as a vehicle, he was planning a new film production of Pygmalion, a 1938 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play.

  Howard was bursting with ideas and creativity, making Bogie slightly jealous, even though he was devoted to the actor. Throughout the shoot, Howard kept urging him to get better roles before he turned forty. “You’re a marvelous actor, but they’re putting you in crap.”

  During the course of the shoot, Howard invited Bogie to join him for a screening of a Swedish film, Intermezzo, the story of a romantic melodrama about the affair between a famous but married violinist and a student of the classical piano.

  “It stars a young actress named Ingrid Bergman,” Howard said. “She’s the next Garbo. Exquisitely beautiful, soft spoken, intelligent, and sexy in a way that show-gal types like our dear brassy friend Joan Blondell can never duplicate. She brings to the screen a raw emotional power that’s hard to find. I’m campaigning to have Intermezzo made into an English-language film, with me playing the violinist, Ingrid repeating her role as the pianist. What did you think of her?”

  “I’m in awe,” Bogie said. “But more than that, I’m in love. Get her to Hollywood as soon as possible. When you finish seducing her, give her to me. Instead of Mayo Methot, I want Ingrid Bergman as my next wife.”

  “Back in the 1930s and 40s, or even today, it was not unusual for a man to fall in love with a screen image,” said Claire Trevor. “Bogie talked about this Swede so much I think he was hopelessly smitten. He knew nothing about her. Maybe she was a lesbian for all he knew. I just knew that Leslie Howard, who screws every woman he meets, would get into& Bergman’s panties first. Bogie was waiting in& the wings, his tongue hanging out like a panting dog. That poor Swedish girl just wouldn’t have a chance when faced with those two.”

  In later years, perhaps to cover her infidelity, Blondell claimed that, “I did not warm to Mr. Bogart. He wasn’t a man one ever felt close to—nobody did. But I liked him.”