Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  That evening Bergman broke from Cooper long enough to come over and pay her respects to Bogie. He was seated with Verita at a makeshift table while the orchestra hired by Warners took a break.

  “She came to our table and shook Bogie’s hand,” Verita said. “She pointedly ignored me, and Bogie didn’t bother to introduce us. He also didn’t rise to his feet. It was all very cold. She called him ‘Mr. Bogart’ and told him how much she’d enjoyed making Casablanca with him. It was total bullshit!”

  “Annie had told me that Bergman and Bogie had had an affair, and that the Swedish bitch had broken Bogie’s heart,” Verita said. “I really think that’s why he turned to me so suddenly. He didn’t want to show up at the wrap party stag, looking rejected with tears in his eyes. I don’t know where Methot was. Bogie almost wanted to show Bergman that he, too, had moved on with his life. In a matter of days, Bergman was in Cooper’s bed and I was in Bogie’s, or rather Bogie was in my bed. Of course, all of us in this quartet had spouses, even Bergman, but what the hell. This was Hollywood!”

  “It was one o’clock and we were still dancing,” Verita said. “In front of the whole cast and crew. Fortunately, Jack Warner had left. Bogie began kissing my neck. For the last thirty minutes, he hadn’t taken his hand off my ass.”

  “You’ve got a great ass on you, ol’ gal,” he told her. “I’m an ass man myself.”

  “That’s the most romantic thing a man has ever said to me,” she told him. “My brains must be in my ass, or otherwise I wouldn’t be dancing around the floor with you at this hour with everybody looking on.”

  “Bogie was pressing hard against me,” she said. “I really felt him and more or less knew how this night would end. He kept kissing my neck.”

  Finally, they left the studio’s wrap party. Bogie walking her to her car in the parking lot. “I thought he was gonna take me home and fuck me in the ass,” she recalled. “But he didn’t. At my car, he gave me a long, lingering French kiss and told me he’d call me tomorrow after I gave him my phone number. I never expected to hear from him again. Nor did I expect him to take advantage of that subtle invitation to sex I gave him—that is, if you call grabbing& his crotch subtle.”

  ***

  To her surprise, Bogie did call the next day, and they agreed to meet for lunch at the Smoke House, a popular actors’ hangout across from Warner Brothers. He was already into his second martini when she came in, sliding into a booth alongside him. They talked only briefly of the night before, as he placed an order for his typical ham and eggs.

  He got to the point quickly. “Where do you live and how do I get there?”

  She explained that she and her husband, Robert Peterson, lived on Roselli Street in Burbank, and that he was away until six o’clock in the evening.

  Within an hour of her return home, she spotted Bogie arriving at her house in his Jaguar XK-120.

  “He walked so briskly to my door that he looked like an eager schoolboy about to lose his virginity,” she said.

  Within fifteen minutes inside the house, he had ushered her into the bedroom. It was the beginning of an affair that, with some interruptions, would last until 1955.

  After that successful debut—“Bogie was a great lover”—he slipped off to see Verita whenever he could. “I feared the neighbors would spot him coming to see me and tell my husband about it,” she said. “After all, Casablanca had made him one of the most recognizable faces in the world.”

  Indeed her worst nightmare came true. “No, it wasn’t my worst nightmare. My greatest fear was that Mayo Methot would catch us. She was a stick of dynamite waiting to explode.”

  One afternoon after love-making, Verita feared that Bogie was too drunk to drive home. She put on a pot of coffee and led him into the shower. They both got into the booth together, and she turned on the cold water.

  “At that moment my husband Bob came home early and caught us,” she said. “He’d been tipped off by a nosey neighbor.”

  Still drunk under the cold shower, Bogie started attacking Bob for being “a son of bitch barging into a ladies’ toilet.”

  “Bob didn’t exactly see it that way,” Verita said. “After all, I was his naked wife showering with not just another man, but the Humphrey Bogart, world famous movie star.”

  “Fortunately Bob wasn’t a violent man,” she said. “After storming and yelling, he barged out of the house. My marriage was over at that point. Actually, it’d been over for a long time.”

  She later claimed that “Bob could have ruined Bogie’s divorce by getting us some unwanted front-page headlines, but he didn’t.”

  Before the Petersons could file for divorce, Bob was drafted into the Army. They would remain married in name only until the end of World War II, at which time he filed for divorce, never naming Bogie as the reason why.

  “My affair with Bogie continued,” she said.

  ***

  In the wake of Pearl Harbor, with Nazi U-boats taking a horrible toll on Allied shipping, especially on the run to Murmansk, Russia, Jack Warner had an idea. “Let’s make a movie about our Merchant Marines.”

  He called in producer Jerry Wald who assigned John Howard Lawson to write the script based on a novel by Guy Gilpatric.

  Bogie’s long-time director, Lloyd Bacon, was assigned to help the picture, to be called Action in the North Atlantic (1943).

  Bogie had accepted the assignment before filming Casablanca. Like so many of his pre- Casablanca assignments, he was a second choice.

  Bogie went into a rage when he picked up a copy of the Hollywood Reporter and read that Edward G. Robinson and George Raft were to star in the picture. When both stars pulled out, the role went to Bogie—“sloppy seconds again”—and Raymond Massey.

  Bogie was very avant-garde in casting, telling The Pittsburgh Courier on September 26, 1942 that he felt an African American should play the ship’s captain. Most WWII films rarely gave lead roles to blacks. “In the world of the theater or any other phase of American life,” Bogie said, “the color of a man’s skin should have nothing to do with his rights in a land built on the self-evident fact that all men are created equal.”

  Bacon directed Massey as Captain Steve Jarvis, with Bogie as his chief executive officer, Joe Rossi. For Bogie’s love interest, Julie Bishop was assigned.

  Bogie was surprised that Warners didn’t assign him a bigger name. Colorado-born Jacqueline Wells acted under her real name until 1941 when she changed it to Julie Bishop. She’d been a child actress in silent movies, appearing with Mary Pickford and Clara Bow.

  Reasonably attractive, though not stunning in any way, she intrigued Bogie at first. “I made a pass at her but she didn’t receive it,” Bogie told director Lloyd Bacon.

  Perhaps the reason for that was that she’d met her second husband, Clarence Shoop, a pilot, while filming the 1943 Princess O’Rourke with Olivia de Havilland.

  “I thought while hubbie was up there in those blue skies, wifie would want a little male companionship down here on the ground,” Bogie said. “Where have gals like Ann Sheridan and Claire Trevor gone? Some of these actresses today at Warners are too tightly wound.”

  Ruth Gordon, Bogie’s friend from “way back when,” was cast as Massey’s wife. Seeing her after a long time, Bogie came up to her, “Ruthie,” he said, “you look younger than the day I meet you. But I’ve always wanted to ask you something. Did we ever have sex back in the 1920s?”

  “I’ll never tell,” she said, kissing him on the mouth.

  Those future stars of tomorrow that Bogie feared as he neared fifty were popping up. He met Bernard Zanville who had the seventh lead.

  Bogie liked Zanville even though at one point the lowly actor shouted at him, “You son of a bitch! You just don’t know your lines!”

  Bogie not only forgave him for his outburst but suggested that he change his name to Dane Clark, and not “Brick Bernard,” as Warners had wanted. As Dane Clark, future movie star, the actor became known as “the poor man’s Bo
gart.”

  Robert Mitchum, a future superstar, had one line of dialogue in the movie. Since he couldn’t support himself, he was hustling Clifton Webb on the side. Webb kept his private homosexual life from Bogie.

  “Webby and I never spoke of such things,” Bogie told Verita Peterson.

  Warners built a replica of a ten-thousand ton tanker on its sound stages. Wartime security restrictions would not allow movies to be filmed on vessels on the open seas.

  Bacon had been the head of the U.S. Navy’s photo unit during World War

  I. In Action in the North Atlantic, he used real live war combat footage.

  At one point Bogie and Massey were drinking and watching stunt men& rehearse their escape from a burning vessel after it was torpedoed by the& Germans.

  As Massey later related, “Bogie, after his fourth martini, faced me with that ‘Play it again, Sam’ look and said, “come to think of it, I guess I’m braver than you.’”

  “Maybe so,” Massey said. “Are we going to let two men risk their lives to make us look good?”

  “Are we men or mice?” Bogie asked. Bacon warned them, “If either of you idiots gets fried, it’ll be your fault and I’ll rewrite the script.”

  The shot was potentially dangerous to its stars. As Massey later recalled, “The burning tanker was really terrifying, to actors as well as audiences. The effect was achieved by dozens of gas jets controlled through a set of valves which looked like an organ console. This was operated by the so-called “smokebun,” who could play his valves with such skill that the actors seemed to walk through the flames. And that’s what Bogie and I did. I got through the flames, but Bogie got his pants caught on fire, and we had to rip them off him. The director got what he wanted, even though Bogie was almost turned into a human torch.”

  Midway through the filming, Bacon’s contract expired, and Jack Warner didn’t renew it. Bacon walked off the job, and Jerry Wald hastily hired Byron Haskin to finish the shoot.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the movie in a prologue, declaring “DAMN THE TORPEDOES, FULL SPEED AHEAD.”

  Massey would make one more picture with Bogie, Chain Lightning in 1950, co-starring Eleanor Parker. In that one, Bogie was cast as a WWII bomber pilot, with Massey playing a jet manufacturer loosely based on Howard Hughes.

  ***

  In a 1943 release, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Bogie appeared as himself in a “Calvacade of Stars” benefit. It reunited him with many Warner stars with whom he’d worked before—Bette Davis,& Errol Flynn, Joan Leslie, Ida Lupino, Dennis& Morgan, and even S.Z. Sakall from& Casablanca.

  Bogie’s friend, Mark Hellinger, produced this WWII distraction, which included appearances by John Garfield and Olivia de Havilland, both of them playing themselves.

  In a patriotic skit, “tough guy” Bogie is intimidated by roly-poly “Cuddles” Sakall.

  ***

  At long last Bogie was able to fulfill his commitment to Columbia when he starred in Sahara (1943), a World War II action picture supposedly depicting the battlefields of the Sahara in North Africa. Actually, it was filmed in the desert of California. Originally Sahara had been cast with Melvyn Douglas and Glenn Ford in the lead roles.

  Saying good-bye to Verita in Burbank, Bogie headed for what he called “a God forsaken hell-hole,” a reference to Brawley, California, which lies in the harsh Borego Desert of the Imperial Valley north of the Mexican border. The temperatures and the terrain evoked conditions in the Sahara desert, the setting for this war-time drama.

  The script was based on a 1937 Russian film, The Thirteen, and it evoked another film, John Ford’s The Lost Patrol (1934). That film had starred Victor McLaglen and Boris Karloff.

  Bogie’s action picture showed a British-American unit stranded in the Sahara in the path of the oncoming Nazi infantry. Bogie, cast in the lead, played Sergeant Joe Gunn. The picture was directed by Zoltan Korda, who was the middle brother of filmmakers Alexander and Vincent Korda, all born in Hungary.

  A former cavalry officer, Korda specialized in military action and adventure films, many of which were filmed in Africa or India. His greatest cinematic triumph was the 1939 The Four Feathers, starring Sir Ralph Richardson. He both directed and wrote the screenplay for Sahara, which was produced by Bogie’s pal, Mark Hellinger.

  Bogie bonded with most of the cast, whom he invited to his suite at night at the seedy Planter’s Hotel for some heavy drinking.

  Bogie found his co-star, Bruce Bennett, fascinating. “He was my kind of guy,” Bogie later recalled.

  Growing up in the rugged lumber camps of Washington State, Bennett built up his physique. After playing football in the 1926 Rose Bowl, Herman Brix (his original name) won six national titles in the 1928 Olympics in the shot put category, eventually earning a Silver Medal.

  He had been a screen Tarzan in the 1930s but had changed his name to Bruce Bennett when he wanted to escape the serials and become a legitimate actor.

  In Gabe Essoe’s book, Tarzan of the Movies, he wrote: “Brix’s portrayal was the only time between the silents and the 1960s that Tarzan was accurately depicted in films. He was mannered, cultured, soft spoken, a well-educated English lord who spoke several languages—and didn’t grunt.”

  Although she hated the blistering desert heat, Mayo Methot showed up on the set with a thermos of chilled martinis for her husband. Bennett and his wife, Jeannette, spent many nights with the Bogarts, even driving down to Mexicali with them for a picnic.

  In later years, Bennett said, “We had a room next to Bogie’s suite. Sometimes they’d fight all night. Many a night we heard the sounds of broken glass. Mayo was very unhappy. I think she knew she was losing her man but didn’t know how to keep him. She would literally drink all day and night. Bogie did tell me that Mayo wasn’t anything like the woman he’d married. ‘She was very witty, very intelligent, and possessed a remarkable charm when I fell in love& with her,’ he said. ‘Now she’s turned into a possessive, overbearing harridan.’”

  “She interrupted many a shoot,” Bennett claimed. “She fought on the set with Bogie and even used her fists. She’d throw bottles at him. She gave him a big black eye and inflicted cuts on him. Korda often had to shoot around these damages that makeup couldn’t hide. It became obvious to me that Mayo was mentally ill. Bogie confided to me that he thought his wife was ‘a schizo’—his words—and I agreed.”

  “Finally, when we were alone, I asked Bogie: ‘why in hell do you stay married to someone like Mayo?’”

  “I leave her for a week or so at a time,” Bogie told Bennett. “But I go back to her. On several occasions, she’s attempted suicide, and I don’t want to be responsible for her death.”

  Bennett and Bogie became pals, and Bogie was instrumental in getting John Huston to cast Bennett in The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948).

  “Bogie was king of the hill at this time in his career,” said Bennett. “For the most part, he was very cooperative and friendly to the workers. But he just loved to drink. Every morning when the director came on the set, Bogie wanted to argue. Sometimes he would argue about something for an hour. It was really frustrating Korda. Finally I said to Korda, ‘Don’t you know what’s going on? Bogie drinks every night, and he needs to buy some time in the morning to get his head clear and learn his lines.’”

  Born on the Mississippi River, the son of a steamer fireman on the river-boat Robert E. Lee, Rex Ingram was an African-American actor. When he met Bogie he’d finished his best known film appearance as the genie in The Thief of Baghdad (1940). He is also remembered for playing Jim, the fugitive slave, opposite Mickey Rooney in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939).

  To Bogie’s surprise, he found that Ingram was a licensed physician, like Bogie’s late father.

  In 1949 Ingram pleaded guilty to a charge of violating the Mann Act when he transported a teenage girl to New York “for immoral purposes,” and drew an eighteen-month jail sentence.

  Bogie liked Ingram and visited him in prison,
telling him, “It’s too damn bad when a guy gets sent up the river for liking young pussy. I’ve been known to go for teenage pussy myself.”

  The German-born actor Kurt Kreuger was befriended by Bogie who called him “The Kraut.” A strikingly handsome “blond God,” as the press called him, Kreuger was the third most requested male pinup at 20th Century& Fox, after Tyrone Power and John Payne. He complained to Bogie that he was going to have to go through all the war movies of the 1940s being typecast as a Nazi.

  “Don’t complain,” Bogie told him. “It beats a concentration camp.”

  As quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Kreuger said, “I was running across the dunes when Tambul [Rex Ingram] jumped on top of me and pressed my head into the sand to suffocate me. Only Korda forgot to yell cut, and Ingram was so emotionally caught up in the scene that he kept pressing my face harder and harder. Finally, I went unconscious. Nobody knew this. Even the crew was transfixed, watching this dramatic ‘killing.’ If Korda hadn’t finally said cut, as an afterthought, it would have been all over for me.”

  That’s not the story Bogie told when he got back to Los Angeles. He said he came onto the set and immediately saw what was happening. “I was the one who called cut. If I hadn’t, The Kraut would have bit the dust in more ways than one.”

  Another member of the cast, Dan Duryea, who had graduated from Cornell University in 1928, had made his name on Broadway in the play Dead End. Ironically, Bogie had starred in the film version.

  Duryea was one of those “stars of tomorrow” that Bogie dreaded to meet, but he got along with him. The actor would go on to demonstrate a certain villainy on the screen.

  When he had a brief fling with actress/girl about town Liz Renay, Duryea said, “I looked at my nude body in a full-length mirror. Ugly puss. So-so dick. A 155-pound weakling. No leading man. So I decided right there and then to become the meanest SOB in movies.”