Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  In private with trusted friends, she changed the scenario. “I liked him more than a lot. Perhaps he should have married me instead of Mayo Methot. Of course, there was that problem I was having with Dick Powell. I loved him too.”

  In many scenes from Stand-In, Blondell stole the picture from Bogie and Howard, especially when she performed a savage travesty of Shirley Temple singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” She had snappy dialogue, as when she told Howard, cast as a visitor to the studio, that the star must never be “fatigued or mussed and above all she must never be so vulgar as to perspire. Her stand-in does her sweating for her.”

  After all his heavy emoting on the stage and screen, Howard was praised by some reviewers for his attempt at comedy. Bogie, to his fury, was completely left out of many reviews. “I might as well have landed on the cutting room floor,” he told Mayo Methot.

  “I’ll break a beer bottle over his head if I encounter Jack Warner,” Methot claimed.

  “I believe you would,” Bogie said, cautioning her. “But that might be taking it a bit far.”

  “Then I’ll break a beer bottle over your head for accepting such a dumb role,” she threatened.

  “It’s love,” Bogie shouted, jumping up from his table in the bar. “Let’s drink to true love.”

  ***

  When Stand-In opened, because of its all-star cast, it drew a moderate box office but did little to advance the careers of any of its stars. Bogie told director Tay Garnett, “Every day I go to the mirror and notice another line under my eye. When will that big break come for me?”

  “You have to remember that for much of the world there’s no such thing in life as the big break.”

  “Yeah, don’t remind me,” he said. “See you& on our next picture, if there’s ever going to be one for me.”

  “There is,” Garnett said, smiling.

  “Wipe that smile off your face.” Bogie said. “Don’t tell me. I know already. I’m not even sloppy seconds, but the fourth lead once again.”

  “No, you have the leading role this time,” Garnett said.

  “Now you’re talking my language,” Bogie said.

  “Not so fast,” Garnett said. “I hear it’s a hillbilly musical set in the Ozarks.”

  “Don’t kid a kidder like me,” Bogie said, walking away. He’d traversed less than a block on the studio lot before he came to a standstill and lit a cigarette. “Could it be true?”

  He put through a call to Joan Blondell. She had a friend in the script department who told her everything going on at Warners.

  But when he finally reached Blondell, he found her in the hospital where she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and also suffering from neuritis. She did indeed know about Bogie’s upcoming picture, Swing Your Lady, because she’d already been contracted for the role of the romantic female lead.

  “It’s crap,” she said. “Some hillbilly romp. You’re supposed to be some low-rent wrestling promoter in the Ozarks. I don’t think it’s a good idea to jeopardize my health for this cornpone hee-haw.”

  He agreed with her, remaining with her that afternoon. When she fell asleep, he read the script, detesting his role as the barnstorming promoter Ed Hatch interacting with a dim-witted wrestler, “Joe Skopapoulos,” to be played by Nat Pendleton.

  Bogie lied to Methot, claiming that he was escorting his mentally ill sister Frances on a boat trip to Catalina Island. Instead he invited Blondell for a short recuperative holiday. It was while staying in a hotel in Avalon, on Catalina Island, that she sent a telegram to Jack Warner, asserting that she was not willing to jeopardize her health by appearing in Swing& Your Lady.

  She also objected strenuously to working again with director Ray Enright, who’d helmed her in a string of pictures that began in 1933 with Blondie Johnson. More recently, Enright had directed her alongside Pat O’Brien in Back in Circulation. “I didn’t like the picture, and I didn’t like Enright,” she said. “I’m letting Jack Warner know that I’m tired of getting lousy parts in lousy pictures.”

  Although shortly after that, the studio placed Blondell on suspension without pay, Bogie showed up on the first day of shooting ready to take the lead. Nagging doubts hung over his head. Several people—not just Blondell— had already told him, “It’s a lousy picture—it shouldn’t even be made.”

  Like Blondell, Bogie wasn’t impressed with the picture’s director, Enright, who had once been a gag writer for Mack Sennett comedies. Three years older than Bogie, this Indiana-born director helmed 73 films between 1927 and 1953. “Fuck,” he told Blondell, “Enright first directed Rin-Tin-Tin. From the Wonder Dog to me.”

  “Don’t make an enemy of him,” Blondell said. “If I know Jack Warner, Enright will be directing you again.” Bogie found that out for himself when he showed up to shoot The Wagons Roll at Night.

  When Jack Warner asked Enright how he thought Bogie was doing as the lead in Swing Your Lady, the director replied, “He shows up on time.”

  “Talk about damning with faint praise,” Warner said. “I’d give Bogie better parts, but what beautiful gal would want to end up with his ugly kisser in the final reel?”

  Bogie was shocked to learn that his leading lady was Louise Fazenda, whose husband, Hal B. Wallis, was the top producer at Warners. Behind his back, Wallace had become known as “The Prisoner of Fazenda.” He’d married Louise in 1927.

  Cast into a comic role in Swing Your Lady, Louise had worked with Mack Sennett and had been a rival of silent screen comedienne Mabel Normand. Fazenda created the archtypical country bumpkin, with multiple pigtails, spit curls, and calico dresses, later inspiring both Minnie Pearl and Judy Canova.

  Bogie met her near the end of her long and distinguished career. “I found her plain-looking, but a highly gifted performer,” he said. “Let’s face it: Wallis has his pick of the most beautiful women in America, but for some reason he chose Louise—you figure.”

  In Swing Your Lady, Louise was cast as “Sadie Horn,” a mountaineer Amazon who plies the blacksmithing trade.

  Based on the script, Bogie interpreted the film as a vehicle for the showcasing of Louise. In one hokey scene, she misunderstands him, thinking he’s asking her if she wants to wrestle him. As part of a deft physical assault, she throws him to the ground. Looking down at him, she says, “Now say Hootie Owl.”

  In the second lead, the always-reliable character actor, Frank McHugh, was cast as “Popeye Bronson.” Coming from a theatrical family, this Pennsylvania-born actor, only a year older than Bogie, could always be counted on to deliver a standard but competent performance.

  Often cast as a sidekick, providing comedy relief, he would eventually appear in some 150 films and TV productions and work with nearly every major star on the Warner lot. Bogie had worked with him previously in Bullets or Ballots, where he’d been billed right after Bogie.

  After Blondell turned down the role of Cookie Shannon, the part was shortened and assigned to perky Penny Singleton.

  Bogie told McHugh, “To judge from her pictures, she’s the only one who looks good enough to fuck on this stinker.”

  In a previous incarnation of her career, back when she’d been billed as “Penny McNulty,” Singleton sang and danced with Milton Berle and Gene Raymond.

  Bogie knew that Singleton had recently married. One day on the set, he took a bad fall and chipped his tooth. Singleton drove him over to meet her dentist husband, Dr. Laurence Scogga Singleton.

  The following week on the set Bogie doubted how strong her marriage was. He spotted her with a handsome young actor who had been cast as Jack Miller in a minor role in Swing Your Lady. Recognizing him, Bogie walked over to shake his hand.

  “Mr. Bogart, we meet again,” said the fresh-faced Ronald Reagan.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt you two love-birds,” Bogie said, “but I wanted to say hi and wish you well.”

  Reagan had been cast as a fast-talking sports reporter, which he’d been in real life. He told Bogie, “I don’t have
much to do but make dumb wisecracks.”

  “Don’t worry, kid,” Bogie said. “This is Hollywood. By 1940 you’ll be taking home your first Oscar. The good roles will come your way.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Bogart. Or do you want me to call you Bogie.”

  “Mr. Bogart will do,” he said. He turned to walk away. But he decided to make one final comment. His provocative remarks were already known on the Warner lot as “pulling a Bogie.”

  As Reagan seated himself, Bogie looked him over carefully and then checked out Singleton as if appraising a heifer on the block. “Look, Penny, if this young and inexperienced guy can’t satisfy you, I’ll write down my number. Sometimes, in certain matters, experience is better than looks unless you like to break in novices.”

  “I’m fully booked, Mr. Bogart, but thanks for the offer,” she said.

  Unknown to Singleton, who was a brunette at the time, she was about to dye her locks blonde and appear as the comic strip character “Blondie” in a popular series that would run from 1938 to 1950.

  Later, Bogie was surprised to learn that Singleton wasn’t the dumb bottle blonde he’d initially thought she was. She became the first woman president of an AFL-CIO union and led a strike by the Radio City Rockettes.

  “The fucking bitch is a rabble-rouser,” Bogie told Ann Sheridan. “But the question remains, did Reagan get to fuck her?”

  When Swing Your Lady opened, Bogie called Blondell. “You were right, babe. Across the country it was hissed off the screen.”

  Swing Your Lady took in less than $25,000 at the box office, but Jack Warner wasn’t willing to let Bogie go. “Taking one more chance on the ass-hole, I’m upping his salary to $1,100 per week.”

  In time Harry Medved and Randy Lowell would select Swing Your Lady to appear in their book, The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and How They Got That Way).

  Realizing too late that it had been a mistake to make it at all, Jack Warner pulled the plug on Swing Your Lady after it had run for only two nights across the country. He quickly replaced it with another Warner feature.

  Bogie told the press, “ Swing Your Lady is the worst film I’ve ever made.” Of course, he had expressed those exact sentiments about some of his other movies.

  ***

  Mary Philips had appeared as Nurse Ferguson in the 1932 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, but her screen appearances were very limited. However, in 1936 and into the early months of 1937, she decided to give a film career one more chance.

  For a few seasons, she worked on several films back to back, appearing in supporting roles but “never as a star,” she said. All her films were released in& 1937.

  Wings Over Honolulu starred Wendy Barrie and Ray Milland. Ironically, that same year Bogie appeared with Barrie in Dead End. Later, Mary told her husband that Milland had made a pass at her.

  As Good as Married starred John Boles, Doris Nolan, Walter Pidgeon, and Mary. On set Mary spent most of her time talking to a fellow co-star, Katharine Alexander, who had been one of Bogie’s first steady girlfriends— that is, until he introduced her to his best friend at the time, Bill Brady Jr., who moved in and stole Katharine’s heart. On the set together, Mary and Katharine shared many memories of their days in New York.

  That Certain Woman saw Mary and Katharine having yet another reunion when they were cast in a film starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda. Mary later told Bogie that “Bette and I spent many long hours discussing you, and I must tell you her impression of you isn’t exactly favorable.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Bogie said.

  On the set of The Bride Wore Red, Mary hardly got to meet her co-stars, Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone. “They were so into each other, and screwing so much between takes, that they didn’t have time for any of us,” Mary said.

  On the set of Mannequin, Mary was teamed against Joan Crawford who was co-starring with Spencer Tracy. Bogie felt nervous about Mary discussing him with his best pal, Tracy, and also with Crawford.

  Mary was very blunt. “You may think Spencer is your best pal, but he put his hand up my dress.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Bogie said, taking the revelation calmly. “I long ago told Spence that it was you who suggested that we ‘date’ other people when we worked on different coasts. He probably just wanted to check out what turned me on so long ago. Did you guys do it?”

  “That is for me to know and you never to find out. Not only did the male star of the movie come on to me, so did the female star.”

  “If it’s Joan Crawford, I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  During the final months of her marriage, Mary spent far more time in the bed of Kenneth MacKenna than she did with her husband. By the time a hearing was held as part of her divorce proceedings from Bogie, her marriage to him had ended long before.

  In the sweltering heat of an August day in Los Angeles, Judge Ruben S. Schmidt called his court to order.

  In one corner sat Bogie with his lawyer. On the other side sat Mary Philips in a demure gray dress that made her look far older than her years. She was accompanied by her lawyer, Harry E. Sokolove, and family friend and theatrical agent, Mrs. Mary Baker, who had made several attempts in the past to bring the estranged couple back together.

  In the courtroom, Mary Philip’s voice was almost inaudible, despite her status as a Broadway actress used to projecting to the balcony. She seemed on the verge of tears, and her testimony was emotional and brief.

  “My husband has told me that he doesn’t love me,” she said.

  “How often did he tell you that?” the judge asked her.

  “Frequently,” she claimed.

  “My husband was rarely at home,” she continued. “When he came home, he never told me where he had been.” She was careful to omit her own infidelities with Kenneth MacKenna and Roland Young.

  Mary Baker was called as a witness, and her testimony was brief. “In my presence, as a close friend of the family, I often heard Mr. Bogart tell his wife that he no longer cared for her. I also heard him say that ‘married life is too monotonous and does not give me the freedom I crave.’”

  The court also heard testimony that the couple spent many months of their married life living apart on different coasts and that they had been separated since January 25, 1937.

  The judge granted the divorce. Mary did not ask for alimony. It had been determined that as a working actress on Broadway during most of the span of their relationship, she had earned more money than Bogie did, and that she had often functioned in the past as her husband’s sole means of support.

  At the end of the courtroom proceedings, Bogie said nothing but shook her gloved hand. Her eyes did not meet his. The first to leave the courtroom, he walked out alone.

  Waiting for him across the street in a coffee shop was a very impatient Mayo Methot.

  Her first words to Bogie provoked the beginning of what would become hundreds of fights. “Well,” she said, “did you finally divorce the whore?”

  ***

  Months before the formal debut of their marriage, Methot and Bogie became known as “The Battling Bogarts.” Many of their feuds were carried out at public watering holes. David Niven in his memoir, Bring on the Empty Horses, described one such encounter:

  He’d met Bogie when he had been loaned by Warner Brothers to Samuel Goldwyn to make Dead End.

  The two actors agreed to meet for lunch one day at the Formosa Café, since both were aware that the other was, on occasion, dating Ann Sheridan.

  “We did not like each other very much,” Niven claimed. “I found his aggressively tough and his needling manner rather tiresome. We parted with expressions of mutual respect and a determination from then on to avoid each other like the plague.”

  Niven, along with other observers, noted that Methot, with “conspicuous cleavage,” matched Bogie drink for drink whenever they went out in public. But unlike her escort, she was unable to handle her liquo
r. It was obvious to many observers that she was becoming deeply entrenched as an alcoholic.

  As part of a chance encounter one night at La Maze, a restaurant on Sunset Strip, Niven was seated six tables away from Bogie and Methot. His date for the night was Ann Sheridan. At that time, Methot was& unaware that Bogie was slipping off to see Sheridan on occasion, usually when they made a picture together. The two couples nodded politely to each other.

  Later in the evening from their position across the room, Niven and Sheridan became aware that a burly drunk in a tacky yellow-and-green plaid jacket was trying to pick a fight with Bogie. “You’re not so tough,” the drunk shouted at Bogie. “I could knock you out flat with one punch.”

  As a small man, Bogie usually tried not to engage in physical violence with drunks. But the bully kept stabbing his forefinger into Bogie’s modest chest.

  “Suddenly, all hell broke loose,” Niven said. “Bogie threw a full glass of Scotch into his aggressor’s eyes, and at the same moment Mayo hit the man on the head with a shoe. Cries of rage and alarm rose on all sides, and the air became thick with flying bottles, plates, glasses, left hooks, and food.”

  Niven with the Oomph Girl tried to duck under their table. The table was too small so they crawled to the nearest retreat. Within five minutes, Bogie on all fours crawled across the floor to them. Seeing them, he assured them, “Everything’s okay—Mayo’s handling it. I wish I’d brought a fork, though. I might be able to jab the bastard in the leg.”

  Sheridan later said, “For David and me, it was a moment of high drama. For Bogie and Methot, it was just another typical night. More fun was on the way. Slashed wrists. An arson attempt by her on their house. Stabbing him with a butcher knife.”

  ***

  Bogie told Claire Trevor, Ann Sheridan, Joan Blondell, Spencer Tracy, and any friend who would listen, that, “I hate Jack Warner. The fucker blames me for the failure of Swing Your Lady. I hate Warner Brothers; I hate the parts I’m assigned; I detest the studio system itself. Swing Your Lady causes a greenish pile to form in my gut.”