Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  With regrets, Bogie read in the paper that Stephenson had died at the age of 53 in 1941. He’d suffered a heart attack, and death was sudden.

  He turned to Methot, “I fear I’m gonna die young too.”

  “Impossible,” Methot said. “You’re already too old to die young.”

  “I’m gonna get you for that, you broken down drunken hag,” he said, rising to chase after her.

  Methot later told Bette Davis, “Our epic battles always end in hot sex, so starting a good fight is usually worth it.”

  “How odd,” Davis said. “My battles with my husbands or lovers always begin after sex.”

  Months later after filming on King of the Underworld came to an end, Bogie encountered Francis at a party. She looked awful and had gained at least twenty-five pounds.

  Used to needling people, he resisted mocking her. Her last two years at Warners had been hellish enough.

  “I was right about my baron,” she said. “He left me without a note and returned to Germany. He wanted to be by Hitler’s side during the invasion of Poland.”

  Francis ended her career working on Poverty Row turning out undistinguished pictures for Monogram. “Poverty Row” was the name applied at the time to the low-rent, marginal studios that churned out cheapies.

  Bogie never saw her again but was saddened to hear that she’d attempted suicide while traveling in a road show, State of the Union, in Columbus, Ohio.

  She survived, and Bogie was relieved. “No one should choose Columbus, Ohio, as the place to die.”

  ***

  Heavy drinking destroyed many a career in Hollywood of both men and women. Regardless of how much Bogie drank the night before, he always showed up promptly for work the following day. He arrived at the studio in time to be made up, and he had always memorized his lines.

  Nathaniel Benchley, in his portrait of Bogie, tried to put his heavy drinking into the context of the day, noting that if a man didn’t drink “he was considered some sort of fairy. It was a sign of masculinity to get drunk—a sign of a free man who did as he pleased—and it also fitted the tough guy image that was his trademark.”

  Benchley later noted that Bogie “could be enchanting when sober, but savage when drunk. Since he didn’t show drunkenness in the usual manner, the only way to tell if he was sober was by what he was doing. He didn’t slur his words or stumble, but he did things that catalyzed an acute remorse the next day. The sober Bogart bled for what the non-sober Bogart had done.”

  One example of his outrageous behavior occurred one night at the Café La Maze when Bogie spotted John Garfield at another table with a very young and very beautiful blonde actress, who looked somewhat like Lana Turner did years later when Garfield would appear with her in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

  With a sense of despair, Bogie heard that Garfield would soon be replacing him in many of those bad boy roles at Warner Brothers. Bogie rose from his table with his glass of Scotch, approaching Garfield’s table. He tossed the liquor in the young actor’s face.

  Garfield handled the scene with such style and sophistication that he amazed the other patrons, who thought he would attack Bogie. “Tastes good, man,” Garfield said. “Let me call the bartender to order another one since your glass is empty.”

  Bogie had so embarrassed himself that he turned and walked out the door.

  On some nights he was seen out drinking with Clifton Webb. Ever since his early days on Broadway, he and Webb had been friends—Bogie called him “Webby.” Often they would be seen leaving bars together with their arms around each other.

  Since Webb was a notorious homosexual in Hollywood, rumors were spread about Bogie and the actor. But there is no evidence that the relationship ever became sexual.

  On weekends, Bogie and Methot sailed on a small powerboat he’d purchased. Their destination was always Catalina Island, twenty-one miles west of Los Angeles. He nicknamed the craft “Sluggy,” as he and Methot staged some of their epic sea battles aboard the aptly named boat. One night Bogie tried to drown her, and she fought him viciously, scratching and bloodying him. Fortunately, he was between pictures.

  Whenever she wasn’t beating the hell out of Bogie, Methot was a decent housekeeper at “Sluggy Hollow,” a nickname for 1210 North Horn, in Greater Los Angeles. Bogie was making enough money to hire a black woman, the& very overweight May Smith, as their “cook and bottle washer.”

  He didn’t like much variety in his diet, but the cook provided a lavish spread for guests.

  Beryl Evelyn Wood Methot, his mother-in-law, was a frequent visitor from Oregon. Bogie called her “Buffy,” and got on with her rather well considering that she was Methot’s mother. One of the leading newspaperwomen of her state, Buffy enjoyed the respect of her daughter. Methot became rather docile whenever Buffy was living with them. Unlike Methot, Buffy could handle her booze and finished off many a bottle with Bogie long after Methot had gone to bed.

  At one point, Bogie was heard at a party saying, “Buffy, old gal, I should have married you and not Mayo.”

  Ann Sheridan once visited the Bogarts when Bogie’s mother, Maud, was there. “It was amazing,” Sheridan said. “Bogie related to Buffy, but Mayo gravitated to Maud.”

  Disappointed at how her life had gone, Maud had moved to the West Coast where Bogie had secured a small apartment for her. That way, Maud could be not only with Bogie, but with her mentally ill daughter Frances. Maud earned a meager living by drawing sewing patterns for a company, her $50,000 annual salary a distant memory.

  Maud told her son, “Belmont and I used to have our arguments. An argument, not a fight to the death. I really believe you and Mayo will one day kill each other.” Maud was referring to a past evening when Bogie had taken a rope and chased Mayo into the garden, threatening to hang her from a tree.

  On Sunset Boulevard, Maud lived only two blocks from Schwab’s Drugstore, the center of social activity for Hollywood actors in those days. Bogie said his mother started hanging out there “and picking up all the gossip, which she later confided to me. This proper Victorian woman was treated like Lady Maud, because everyone knew she was my mother. One day I came to get her and caught her talking to Bob Hope. On another occasion she met Betty Grable.”

  In New York, Maud had been contemptuous of her son’s attempt to become an actor. But at Schwab’s Drugstore, she often approached gossip columnists like Sidney Skolsky, and introduced herself. “I’m Humphrey Bogart’s mother. Would you like to hear what ‘The Battling Bogarts’ did last night?” Suddenly, after decades, she came to understand that her role as Bogie’s mother was something to be flaunted.

  At some point during the final years of her life, Maud began to lose her mind. On many a night, the police brought her back from Sunset Strip to Bogie’s home after they came to know who she was. One night they found her chatting with about six prostitutes who worked the corner.

  During one of her more rational moments, she confessed to Methot, “I think I’m going crazy like Frances Bogart Rose.”

  At times, Maud would say something to Bogie that made him fear that she was losing her mental stability. One example among countless others included:

  Whenever Frances recovered from one of her straight-jacketed seizures, she was allowed to go free again. But insanity would soon after seem to overtake her.

  Like her mother, Frances too would get arrested in public places. One night she went out into the city topless, wearing only her panties. The headline the next morning read: BOGART’S SISTER ARRESTED ON SUNSET STRIP.

  The Hollywood columnist and writer, Joe Hyams, who knew both Bogie and Frances, later claimed that Bogie loved his sister “who was tall and slender and had a short waist and long legs like Betty. In fact, they looked very much alike. And I think that was one of the reasons he fell in love with Betty.”

  The columnist, of course, was referring to Lauren Bacall, whose name at the time of her birth on September 16, 1924, in New York was Betty Joan Perske.

  The
re were many dangers inherent whenever Maud wanted to sit out in the garden at the Bogart home. California was filled with butterflies, and whenever she saw one, she would scream and become hysterical. It would take hours for Methot to calm her down.

  ***

  A familiar voice came over the phone. It was director Lloyd Bacon. “I’m teaming James Cagney and you in a Western called The Oklahoma Kid.”

  “Am I the Oklahoma Kid?” Bogie asked.

  “No, Cagney is. You play a black-clad guy named Whip McCord who is a gang leader. You guys hold up the stagecoach carrying government money to the Indians for their land. You’ll also be working with Ward Bond.”

  “I don’t have to kiss Ward, do I? Who’s the pretty one?”

  “Rosemary Lane,” Bacon said.

  “I have had the other two Lane sisters,” Bogie said. “Might as well spread my goodies around to the third.”

  “You may not get so lucky this time.”

  “By the way, I assume I get killed in the final reel,” Bogie said.

  “You got that right.”

  “It’s my first Western,” Cagney said, greeting Bogie on the set. “And we’re going to make it a good one. I just knew you’d be my evil adversary, since that’s about all you know how to play.”

  “Compliments from such a big-time box office attraction like you are always appreciated,” Bogie said. He noted that Cagney looked like a midget standing alongside his horse. “I hear you own a lot of horses. I bet you’re an expert rider.”

  “Well, not really,” Cagney said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

  Cagney was assigned a horse who’d made dozens of Westerns. After the star straddled the animal and was taking in the sun the following day, the horse heard the assistant director’s clapper and apparently thought it was a call to action. Taking off at break-neck speed, the horse raced toward the distant camera.

  “I grabbed his neck and held on,” Cagney said. “He came to a ditch and jumped it—about six to seven feet. I don’t know how the hell I stayed on, but I did. We worked well together after that, once the horse found out I could hang on.”

  “Lola Lane, Priscilla Lane, and now Rosemary Lane,” Bogie said, coming up to the female co-star of the movie.

  “I hear you’re telling everybody in town you seduced Lola and Priscilla, which I find hard to believe,” Rosemary said. “Priscilla might have flirted with you, but she’s a deeply religious woman. So is my older sister Lola.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I can be had for the price of a drink.”

  Bacon was aware of Bogie’s claim to have& seduced all three of the Lane sisters, “but I don’t think he made it with either one of them. Maybe he seduced them in his mind.”

  Years later Cagney recalled working with Bogie. “He and I never became friends, and we never saw each other after work, maybe only one time. We didn’t hate each other. We just didn’t care for each other that much. I don’t think he had any real friends—maybe Spencer Tracy. Nobody at Warners really liked him. Bogie said, ‘I beat ‘em to it. I don’t like them first.’ He hated just about everybody, but that was his aim—to hate them first. When it came to fighting, he was about as tough as Shirley Temple.”

  As a hobby, Cagney liked to write poems. As he was driving along Coldwater Canyon Drive, he stopped for a traffic light, spotting Bogie in a sleek red sports car in the lane next to him. He was busy picking his nose, waiting for the light to turn green. “He wasn’t just picking, but really going for the big ones.”

  The next day, Cagney left a poem tacked to the door of Bogie’s dressing room.

  In this silly town of ours,

  One sees odd primps and poses;

  But movie stars in fancy cars,

  Shouldn’t pick their fancy noses.

  At the end of the shoot, Bogie as Whip and his gang try to kill Cagney, who was playing the Robin Hood desperado. With Bacon directing, Cagney walks into the ambush set by Bogie and his men.

  When Bacon called a wrap, Bogie sauntered over to him. “That scene should give audiences a laugh. Up to now in the picture my gang and I—all supposed to be dead shots—have fired 172 times at Cagney and haven’t hit him yet.”

  “It’s called movie-making,” Bacon snapped back.

  Viewed today, The Oklahoma Kid is pure camp, especially when Cagney sings “I Don’t Want to Play In Your Yard,” a number interrupted by gunfire. In another scene, he croons “Rockabye Baby” in Spanish to an actual baby.

  The film is often remembered for a scene of Cagney rubbing the thumb and forefinger of his hand together and exulting, “Feel that air!”

  When he saw the final print, Jack Warner said, “What were we thinking? Cagney is a street kid from Hell’s Kitchen. He’s no Hopalong Cassidy. Don’t put him in a Western ever again. As for Bogie, let’s cast him in ‘The Lisping Cowboy.’”

  When Bogie sat through the final cut, he said to Bacon, “In that ten-gallon hat, Cagney looks like a mushroom.”

  ***

  Dark Victory, starring Tallulah Bankhead, had been a rather unsuccessful Broadway play during the 1934-35 season. David O. Selznick had once optioned it, hoping to cast Greta Garbo in the role of socialite Judith Traherne, who is dying of a brain tumor. She turned him down, as she was occupied making Anna Karenina at MGM.

  When Warners took over the property, the studio briefly considered it as a role for fast-fading Kay Francis.

  Davis told Bogie that she had “begged, cajoled, and pleaded for months to get Jack Warner to buy the property. His answer, ‘Who wants to see a picture about a gal who dies?’ But he finally gave in to my demands.”

  After Garbo bowed out, Gloria Swanson tried but failed to get the movie role.

  Bogie even heard from Barbara Stanwyck, who was calling everybody she knew to get the role for herself. “I really hated missing out on the part,” Stanwyck told Bogie. “I was encouraged when I heard Selznick had optioned it, and I told my agents to do anything go get it for me. Then I learned that Selznick, the fucker, was preparing it for Merle Oberon. When I played Judith on Lux Radio Theater, I thought I had it wrapped up. Then in stepped Miss Bette Davis.”

  Bogie played the third lead under George Brent. “I’ve been demoted,” Bogie said to Brent. “When we made Racket Busters, you were my second stringer.”

  “The vagaries of casting at Warners,” Brent said.

  Bogie’s old pal, Spencer Tracy, had turned down the role that eventually went to Brent.

  Bogie couldn’t help but notice that even though Davis’ marriage to Harmon Nelson was crumbling, that didn’t prevent Brent from visiting her dressing room for an hour in the afternoon between takes.

  Edmund Goulding, directing Bogie and Davis, was “Hollywood’s genius bad boy.” The reputation of this London-born director had already preceded him. He was known for his heavy drinking, homosexual liaisons, and orgies. In fact, he was the most notorious director in Hollywood.

  Goulding wisely cast the Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald in her American debut in a role where her character was “to act as a sort of one-person Greek chorus, so that the central doomed figure would not have to cry for herself.”

  Bogie never bonded with Fitzgerald, but met her at the peak of her career. This fine, passionate actress would go from Dark Victory to a star role in& Wuthering Heights, where, as Isabella, she is the best thing in the film. Laurence& Olivier, as Heathcliff, marries her on the& rebound.

  Bogie was so impressed with both of Fitzgerald’s stellar performances that he called her and seriously urged her to reconsider starring with him in The Maltese Falcon, which she’d turned down. “I’d rather face suspension,” which is what happened to her. The part, of course, went to Mary Astor.

  Cast in the movie was the inexperienced Ronald Reagan as Alex. He clearly did not like his role, preferring the part of Michael O’Leary, the stable hand, that was slated for Bogie. Someone on the set told Reagan that he was actually playing a homosexual, although such
“perverted” characters could not actually be depicted on the screen at that time.

  The gay producer, David Lewis, said Reagan “could not distinguish between playing a homosexual and being implicated as one. He clashed several times with Goulding. It was not only the role but personal. The director had come on to him.”

  Later, recalling making Dark Victory, Reagan said, “It wasn’t the rewarding experience it should have been. I was playing the kind of young man who could dearly love Bette but at the same time the& kind of fellow who could sit in the girls’ dressing room dishing the dirt while they went on dressing in front of me. For myself, I want to think if I stroll through where the girls are short of clothes, there will be a great scurrying about and taking cover.”

  Even as shooting began, Reagan was still pleading with Goulding to give him Bogie’s role. “He’s already got the lisp,” Reagan said.

  When Bogie heard what Reagan had said, he decided to play one of his many practical jokes. The following day before lunch, he saw Reagan heading for the men’s toilet on the Warner lot.

  Although there were eight urinals lined up in a row, Bogie stood immediately next to Reagan, who was already urinating.

  “To get even with the fucker and to frighten the hell out of him, I stared down at his dick,” Bogie said to Goulding. “I leaned over close to him and whispered in his ear, ‘I can take care of that thing for you.’ Reagan didn’t even finish pissing before he was zipping up and out of that toilet.”

  Throughout the remainder of his life, and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Reagan always insisted in private that Bogie was a bona fide homosexual.

  However, when it came time for Reagan to write his memoirs, Where’s the Rest of Me?, he had only kind words for Bogie. “I’ve always been glad that some of my pictures teamed me with Humphrey Bogart. Here was a pro, an affable, easy person, fond of gentle ribbing. At this time he was yet to reach his ultimate potential, which came about during the war years in Casablanca —a part he was given after George Raft turned it down.”