Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  “Oh, God,” Bogie told Ann Sheridan who came to visit him. “In the future I’ll have a rule. No more mustaches. I’m dressed in black to let the audience know I’m a villain. I play this half-breed outlaw with a Spik accent.”

  “At least it’s not that Irish brogue from Dark Victory,” she said.

  “Curtiz is always the same directing Flynn,” Bogie said. “His fists are clenched, his face red with rage, and his voice constantly shouts ‘You bum, you bum’ to Flynn. Some of the hostility between the two is because they’d both married Lili Damita.”

  Bogie told Sheridan that she should be playing the saloon girl and Confederate spy, not Hopkins. “You could give it a sexy, comic touch,” he said. “Hopkins is playing it like a grande dame.”

  On November 13, 1939, Sidney Skolsky revealed to the public what was happening on the set of Virginia City. “There are plenty of feuds in the Virginia City company. Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart are feuding, Errol Flynn and Miriam Hopkins are feuding, and Mike Curtiz and Miriam Hopkins are feuding.”

  When Bogie encountered Ronald Reagan on the studio lot, the two actors agreed to break for a cup of coffee, with Bogie smoking a cigarette, of course. “I was set to play the Randolph Scott role, but another project kept me from it,” Reagan said.

  “Sorry we didn’t get to work together,” Bogie said. “But you might not have had time to learn your lines. That Jane Wyman is one hot little cutie.”

  “No, it’s not like that,” Reagan said. “She’s not a nympho like Betty Grable. Jane and I believe in moderation.”

  “Good to hear that, pal,” Bogie said. “I wish another project had come up for me instead of my playing a bandito mexicano. Talk about type-casting. Now I understand why you were cast as a latent homosexual in Dark Victory. You look like a latent homosexual.”

  “I could get insulted by that, but I know you’re a ribber,” Reagan said. “Actually I heard that Olivia de Havilland was set to take over the Hopkins role. Something went wrong.”

  “Maybe Flynn got tired of fucking her in all those pictures and wanted a change of vaginas,” Bogie said.

  “You’re something else, Bogie,” Reagan said, slightly embarrassed. “I don’t think you’re housebroken. If you don’t improve your manners, how can Jane and I invite you over for dinner?”

  Bogie told him, “I was raised with politeness and manners. That’s the way I was brought up. But in the goldfish bowl of Hollywood, it’s impossible to use them. Do you think politeness and manners would work on Michael Curtiz, much less Jack Warner? Dream on.”

  Flynn was mostly involved with his gang that included Alan Hale, Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, Bruce Cabot, William Lundigan, and Patric Knowles. Curtiz called them “raisers from hell.”

  “Don’t you mean hell-raisers?” Bogie said.

  “Whatever,” the director said. “The key word is hell.”

  One night when the Flynn’s entourage didn’t show up, Flynn invited Bogie for a night of boozing, not womanizing. He later told Cabot, “I am amazed at the whiskey Bogie can drink and still stay on his feet. He drank me under the table.”

  If any revelation emerged that night, it came from Flynn, who drunken-ingly informed Bogie that Mayo Methot, a wife Bogie hated but couldn’t live without, had been “royally screwed” [Flynn’s words] not only by himself, but by his pals Bruce Cabot and Knowles. All this had occurred when Methot was cast in a bit part in The Sisters (1938), a film that had starred Bette Davis, Flynn, and Knowles.

  Bogie’s reaction to this revelation is not known. Perhaps it led to another fight between “The Battling Bogarts,” or perhaps he never brought it up. Considering his own record, he could hardly attack her for infidelity.

  Far from seeming angry at Methot, he gave her a $15,000 diamond necklace for Christmas, the most expensive gift he’d ever presented to anyone. That piece of jewelry could be split up into various combinations of brooches, clips, and bracelets.

  Jack Warner more or less ordered Bogie to attend the world premiere of Virginia City in Nevada. He told Methot, “I found myself drowning in a sea of rhinestone-studded cowboy suits, ten-gallon hats, and six-shooters.”

  ***

  With his fake mustache removed, Bogie rushed from the set of Virginia City to take the third lead in It All Came True.

  After Bette Davis turned down the role, Ann Sheridan was cast as the star of the picture, playing a sexy nightclub entertainer described as “teasing, tempting, and a manhandler.” It was a good showcase for her, as she also got to sing “Angel in Disguise” and “The Gaucho Serenade.”

  The ardor between Sheridan and Bogie had cooled, but they remained close friends and confidants. Playing Sheridan’s boyfriend was Jeffrey Lynn, who had second billing. Bogie, who had appeared in titles above him in The Roaring Twenties, was sorry to see himself demoted. “I think Jack Warner is gradually shoving me out the door,” he told Sheridan.

  The director, Lewis Seiler, was not a temperamental Michael Curtiz, but a working professional who had helmed Bogie in You Can’t Get Away With Murder. Bogie expected to encounter no problems with him.

  During the first day of the shoot, Seiler told him that James Stewart had originally been set to star in the film. Stewart had a one-picture commitment to Warner Brothers.

  When that didn’t work out, Jack Warner conceived a new screen duo of George Raft teamed with John Garfield. “Garfield can do all those gangster roles that I used to give Bogie in the 1930s,” Warner said.

  But both Garfield and Raft pulled out at the last minute. With an undisguised contempt, Raft dismissed the role of the gangster in the film, Chips Maguire. “It’s a Humphrey Bogart part,” he told Jack Warner.

  Bogie’s close friend, the writer Louis Bromfield, came onto the set to bond with Bogie. He’d sold his story, “Better Than Life,” for $50,000, which is the exact amount that David Selznick had paid Margaret Mitchell for her rights to Gone With the Wind.

  Bromfield attacked screenwriters Michael Fessier and Lawrence Kimble. “They couldn’t decide if Bogie was a villain or a good guy.” When he saw the final cut, Bromfield praised Bogie’s excursion into comedy. He played a mobster who was a sort of guardian angel to some aging vaudevillians, including ZaSu Pitts, in a rundown boarding house.”

  In fact, Bromfield was so pleased with Bogie’s work that when the time came for Bogie to wed Lauren Bacall, he invited him to conduct the ceremony at his Malabar Farm in Ohio.

  ***

  Mark Hellinger, Bogie’s pal and the associate producer, brought him the script for the next Edward G. Robinson film, Brother Orchid. Robinson had contracted to play Little John Sarto, with Bogie in the third lead as Jack Buck.

  The female star of the picture, Ann Sothern, had been cast as Robinson’s ever-faithful girlfriend. In this far-fetched yarn, Robinson goes from racket chieftain to a monastery.

  James Cagney was originally set to play the Robinson role, but bolted at the last minute. Producer Hal Wallis had wanted Bogie’s long-time friend, Lee Patrick, to play the& female lead as Flo, and Bogie was looking forward to working with her. At the last minute& Hellinger, against Bogie’s wishes, appealed to Jack Warner to cast Sothern, and he agreed.

  When Bogie read the script, he told Hellinger, “Of all the films I’ve made with that runt, Robinson, this is the only one in which neither of us is killed.”

  Once again Bogie found himself working with director Lloyd Bacon, who had last helmed him in Invisible Stripes.

  Bacon was anticipating tension between Bogie and his rival, Robinson. But Robinson said, “Everybody thought we’d be at each other’s throat. Not at all. He was a pro in the best meaning of the word. Between takes we talked ominously about America’s entry into the war. We saw it coming.”

  In the fifth lead was dependable Ralph Bellamy, best known for playing second leads who invariably lose the girl in the final reel.

  “When you need an actor to play anything, get Ralph Bellamy,” Robinson said. “His range
is limitless; his abilities unparalleled; his ego barely ever ruffled. He is the kind of star that made it possible to make pictures. Never getting the girl is a difficult role; it enables an actor to grow old gracefully. I cherish Ralph. I could not say the same about Brother Orchid.”

  Bogie had a lot of respect for the British film actor, Donald Crisp, who would go on to win an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1942 How Green Was My Valley. Bogie had worked with him before on such pictures as The Great O’Malley and The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse.

  When Bogie met him again, he’d just appeared with Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1939).

  “We’re 19th century men,” Bogie said to Crisp, welcoming him to the set. “Tell me what it was like fighting the Boer War the year I was born?”

  Crisp’s answer startled Bogie as it was so earthy. “All I remember was crossing pathways with the Prime Minister of Britain. A very young Winston Churchill and I took a horse piss together. I can assure you that if the PM had whipped out his dick in front of him, Hitler would have declared the war lost.”

  Over a drink later that night, Crisp confided, “I’m not English, really Scottish. We Scots know the value of a pound.”

  He did, indeed, becoming at one time in later life chairman of the Bank of America.

  Bogie was introduced to Ann Sothern. From the cold winds of North Dakota, this sexy, good-looking, wisecracking blonde had originally appeared on the screen as Harriet Lake, her real name. She had wanted to be a singer, but movie producers had other plans for her, viewing her mainly as a comedienne.

  When Bogie met her, she had just finished filming Maisie in 1939. The film proved so popular she would be appearing as Maisie in sequels up to 1947. She’d also been teamed with Gene Raymond in a series of films which, among many others, included The Smartest Girl in Town (1936).

  “How is it working in picture after picture with the same guy?” Bogie asked.

  “Gene Raymond is a jerk.”

  “Thank you for confirming what I already know,” he said. Since you’re a married lady, and because I’m a New York gentleman who respects marriage vows, I won’t be pursuing you on this picture.”

  “Are you talking about that jerk I’m married to, Richard Pryor?” she asked. “Me and him will be heading for the divorce courts one of these days. No doubt I’ll meet you and Mayo Methot there too.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I’d leave her, but I’m afraid she’d hunt me down and kill me.”

  “At any rate, drop by my dressing room late this afternoon,” she said, “and I’ll see if you’re man enough to handle me.”

  The next day, Bogie told Hellinger, “I don’t think Sothern enjoyed me so much in the sack. As a consolation prize, she told me I’d be just the right fit for her old MGM cohort, Lucille Ball. It seems that Ball is alone for weeks at a time whenever Desi Arnaz is on the road.”

  ***

  It was once again Mark Hellinger, its associate producer, who brought Bogie his next film script, They Drive by Night. Based on A.I. Bezzerides’ novel Long Haul, it was a drama about the rough-and-tough trucking industry.

  “Who am I playing second lead to this time?” Bogie asked. “It has to be either George Raft or Edward G. Robinson.”

  “You’re right on the mark,” Hellinger said. “It’s Raft. He plays your brother. You’re only the fourth lead. Ann Sheridan, your old gal pal, is the second lead, and Ida Lupino is in third position.”

  “That Lupino is one hot dame,” Bogie said. “It gives me an incentive to work on this stinker.”

  “You’re judging the script before you even read it?” Hellinger asked.

  “Hell, I could play the role without& even reading the script.”

  Raoul Walsh, the testy director with the eyepatch, was called in to helm the stars. He’d last worked with Bogie in You Can’t Get Away With Murder.

  Arguably, Walsh was the one who nicknamed Bogie as “Bogie the Beefer,” because he was always complaining about roles he received. “His acting experience resembled that of John Barrymore,” Walsh said. “Both hated, or appeared to hate, every part of the motion-picture industry. John damned it because of the long hours and Bogie echoed him: ‘They get you up before daybreak and work your ass off all day until sundown. In the theater I went to work at eight in the evening and was through by eleven; all the rest of the night and next day to play and catch up with my drinking. Working in pictures is for the birds.’ Bogie could go on like this indefinitely, and his invective never faltered.”

  Tiring of his gripes, Walsh confronted him. “You like that fat paycheck at the end of the week, don’t you?”

  With a scowl, Bogie said, “That’s the only kick I get out of this lousy business.”

  The film version of They Drive By Night, at least in terms of some aspects of the plot, is derivative of Bordertown (1935), that had starred Bette Davis as the predatory wife alongside Paul Muni and Margaret Lindsay. In They Drive by Night, Ida Lupino took over the Bette Davis role, Raft was cast in the Paul Muni part, and Sheridan won the role previously played by Margaret Lindsay.

  The plot was recycled once again in 1953 in a film, Blowing Wild, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Anthony Quinn, and Gary Cooper.

  Ironically, during the casting discussions for Blowing Wild, Lauren Bacall had been the first choice to play the tempestuous wife of an oil baron, the role that eventually went to Stanwyck, but Bacall turned down the offer.

  On the set of They Drive by Night, Bogie once again came into contact with Gale Page, with whom he’d previously starred in Crime School.

  “My parts are getting smaller with each picture,” Page said. “I’m still hanging in there, but just barely. Jack Warner told me I look like an ordinary 1940s housewife. So any time a script calls for a drab but dependable housewife, I can do it.”

  “Not all women were made to be the Oomph gal,” Bogie said. “Since not all women in the audience look like Lana Turner, the public will identify with you. You’re the type of gal a man brings back to meet his family before he marries her.”

  “Thanks, Bogie,” she said. “I think I was just insulted but in the nicest way.”

  Veteran actor John Litel, was also upset by his role with an eighth billing. “You know I’ve starred in movies. The star, carrying the whole fucking picture. You know that’s true.”

  “Not really,” Bogie said. “The only pictures of yours I’ve ever seen were those you did with me.”

  Although he was attracted to her, Bogie had only a passing relationship with the British/American actress Ida Lupino. The young star was too busy trying to get her role of Lana right, since this was her first picture for Warners. She announced to Bogie that “Bette Davis is a tough act to follow.”

  “Even Bette Davis finds Bette Davis a tough act to follow,” he said.

  Sheridan and Lupino clashed. It wasn’t a feud to equal Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, but it was nonetheless lethal. “That two-bit British whore is stealing my thunder,” Sheridan complained to Bogie in his dressing room over drinks. “I could pull out every hair in the bitch’s head. Howard Hughes should have fucked me when I was fifteen years old—not that tight little pussy.”

  Sheridan’s rivalry with the British import dated back to a 1934 Paramount film, Ready for Love. Ida Lupino had been the star of that movie, and Clara Lou Sheridan—Ann’s original name—had a walk-on.

  “When the camera is on you, no one can steal the scene from you,” Bogie said, gallantly.

  “Thanks for being so reassuring,” she said.

  Sheridan was correct, however, in her belief that she was being upstaged. In a July 9, 1940 review in the Hollywood Reporter, a critic observed: “Ann Sheridan is in a tough spot because of little Ida Lupino. Annie looks great, and before Miss Lupino comes on the screen with so much the better of the parts, the redheaded Sheridan stands out. But after Ida gets working, she steals all the attention. But Miss Oomph is okay.”

  The highlight of They Drive
by Night involved Lupino’s scene in the courtroom where she went berserk, confessing to the murder of her husband, who had been portrayed by the veteran actor Alan Hale. The way she played it made her a star, landing her a seven-year contract at Warner Brothers.

  In the 1920s, George Raft had driven a truck along Third Avenue in Manhattan, delivering bootleg liquor for the notorious gangster and bootlegger, Owney Madden. During his portrayal of a gangster on the set of They Drive By Night, Raft’s real-life experience paid off.

  In one scene he was called upon to drive a truck down a steep California mountain road, with Bogie and Sheridan as his passengers.

  Halfway down the hill, as the cameras were rolling, the truck went out of control, the brakes not working. Sheridan screamed and covered her eyes. Bogie shouted, “You’re gonna kill us!”

  The speedometer reached eighty miles per hour. Spotting an embankment which was being dug out for another road, Raft swerved the truck up that embankment. Halfway up the embankment, the truck skidded to a stop.

  Jumping out of the truck, Sheridan kissed him on the mouth. “I owe you the fuck of your life for that.”

  Bogie merely said, “Thanks, pal,” perhaps embarrassed at all his screaming and cursing.

  “Don’t thank me,” a shaken Raft said. “Write a letter to Owney Madden.”

  They Drive By Night was completed in thirty-three working days for a budget of $500,000. According to the preview audiences at theaters on Hollywood Boulevard, it seemed unanimous that Lupino had stolen the picture from Bogie, Raft, and Sheridan. One writer asserted Lupino projected a “fascinating blend of beauty, danger, and deceit.”

  ***

  On March 13, 1940 Warner Brothers bought the screen rights to W.R. Burnett’s crime novel High Sierra, with a plan to star Paul Muni as its male lead. In 1936 Muni had won the Oscar for The Story of Louis Pasteur, and since then, he had reigned as Warner’s number one male star, even at age 45.