Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  Like other actors such as Dane Clark, Duryea also became known as “the poor man’s Bogart.”

  Bogie also bonded with Lloyd Bridges, the California-born actor who is best known today for his role of Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt, which was the top American TV series in 1958. “He was no dumb actor,” Bogie said. “You could have a real conversation with this fucker,”

  Shortly after making Sahara, Bridges left Columbia to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard.

  Near the end of the shoot, Methot was back in Los Angeles, as was Bridges’ wife, Dorothy Simpson, whom he had married in 1938. Bogie invited him one night to drive across the Mexican border to sample the wares in a bordello.

  “I picked the wrong chick,” Bridges later said. “I got the clap. Bogie got a clean one and emerged unharmed. Perhaps he had so much alcohol in his body it killed all VD germs.”

  Bogie also liked character actor J. Carrol Naish, who, although of Irish descent, always ended up playing Latin, Arab, or East Indian characters. The year Bogie met him, he was also cast as Dr. Daka, the first villain to go up against Batman on the silver screen in the serial The Batman (1943).

  For his appearance in Sahara, Naish would be nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, losing as did Claude Rains himself ( Casablanca ), to Charles Coburn in The More the Merrier.

  When Bogie and Bennett had their final drink together at the wrap party for Sahara, Bogie said, “I’m a professional. I’ve done pretty well, don’t you think? I’ve survived in a pretty tough business.”

  Bennett claimed that, “Part of his survival was due to his great talent and his determination to pay the price, any price, for success. But certainly some credit must be given to Dame Fortune and timing, as well.”

  Shooting ended in April, and Bogie returned from the desert to Los Angeles. Since he didn’t have to go to work until May, he spent most of his time aboard his boat, Sluggy. He developed a technique. Right before leaving for days at sea, he’d stage a big fight with Methot, then storm out of the door.

  Sailing Sluggy in the Pacific, he’d spend the nights in the arms of Verita.

  ***

  Events were spinning around Bogie’s future in 1943. Often he didn’t know what they were, although his life would be affected by them.

  While he was in the Imperial Valley shooting Sahara, the March issue of Harper’s Bazaar fashion magazine came out. Its cover featured “Betty Bacal” an eighteen-year-old blonde from New York, who had a sultry, come-hither look. The magazine generated inquiries from Howard Hughes, who probably wanted to seduce her, David O. Selznick, and Columbia Pictures. But it was Howard Hawks, a Warner Brothers director, who ended up putting her under personal contract.

  In the closing days of the shoot of Sahara, Betty Bacal (later changed to Lauren Bacall) arrived in Hollywood.

  As Bacall settled into a new life, Mary Baker, still Bogie’s agent and “guardian angel,” negotiated a new contract for him at Warner Brothers that paid him $3,500 a week.

  Production was set to begin in May on Bogie’s next film, Passage to Marseille (1944). For some odd reason, the “s” was left out of the name of this Provençal city, and no one caught it.

  Back in Burbank and with Robert Peterson away at war, Bogie spent many a night at Verita’s home. His separation from Methot often stretched out for a week at a time. Sometimes she’d chase him from the house with an iron skillet.

  “There was many a night he would arrive drunk on my doorstep at two or three o’clock in the morning, having fled from Methot,” Verita said. “Once he escaped his house wearing nothing but his underwear. He always kept his keys in his car in case he had to make a fast getaway.”

  Inevitably the talk was of marriage. “He told me that he wanted to marry me as soon as I divorced Bob and he divorced Methot. I had reservations, but planned to go through with the marriage. We were in love with each other. I thought that once married to him I could straighten him out.”

  “All during the war, I couldn’t file divorce charges against Bob,” Verita said. “What could I do? Charge him with adultery? I also feared a scandal that would damage Bogie’s career. Also I didn’t want to call Methot’s attention to me. If I did, she might show up at my doorstep with an ax. I was in a real dilemma. Bob thought I’d get over Bogie and would settle down to become his hausfrau when he came marching home.”

  “Bogie was talking with lawyers about divorcing Methot, and he urged me nightly to divorce Bob,” Verita said. “Still, I held back. We began to fight and argue about our mutual divorces—not the brutal fights he and Methot had. All this fighting was putting a serious strain on our romance, except when we were sailing aboard Sluggy, as we did every weekend.”

  As Verita related in her memoirs, she claimed that one night they were sitting and drinking at her kitchen table. She said, “I told him he had lousy taste in wives, and that he chose them as a fighter would choose sparring partners. I also told him that he drank too much and that I drank too much when I was with him, and I told him that maybe our fiery natures were too combustible for marriage. I wasn’t sure I could live with some of his characteristics, such as needling people to the brink of fight or flight.”

  The end result of that night in the kitchen led to an agreement between the two of them not to see each other until their divorce papers were filed. That way, she claimed, there would be no chance of her being named as a correspondent in his divorce proceedings against Methot.

  Bogie agreed but in the weeks ahead he called several times and wanted to renegotiate their agreement. But she remained steadfast, and he respected their deal.

  Years later in New Orleans, Verita claimed, “It was the worst mistake of my life. I almost set up a situation where he’d meet some other dame. Separation seemed right at the time, but I was wrong. I blew my chance to become the fourth Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, and I have no one else to blame but myself. For Bogie and me, it was the final curtain. Or so I thought at the time. But life moves in very unpredictable ways. I never dreamed that what would happen between us would actually happen.”

  ***

  Although Bogie hadn’t seen Leslie Howard in many months, the two actors still wrote each other. “I loved the man and would always be grateful to him,” Bogie said.

  On June 2, 1943, Bogie received the shocking news.

  On a KLM/BOAC flight from Lisbon to Bristol, England, the plane carrying Howard had been shot down by a German Junkers-JU 88 aircraft over the Bay of Biscay. All passengers aboard had lost their lives.

  There were rumors that the Nazis believed that Winston Churchill, who had been in Algiers, was on board. In his autobiography, Churchill expressed that a mistake about his activities might have cost Howard his life.

  Subsequent research does not verify Churchill’s belief. Other authors have concluded that the Germans wanted to shoot down the plane in order to kill Howard himself. His intelligence-gathering activities had come to their attention. It is also believed that the Nazis wanted to demoralize Britain with the loss of one of its most outspoken and patriotic figures.

  The Nazi high command knew the whereabouts of Churchill at the time of the attack on Howard’s plane. Also, they were hardly naïve enough to believe that the war-time prime minister would be traveling alone aboard an unescorted and unarmed civilian aircraft when both the secrecy and the air power of the British government were at his command.

  It is believed today that the order to liquidate Howard came from Josef Goebbels himself. He had denounced the actor for “being the most dangerous propagandist in the British service.”

  On hearing the news, Bogie went into a deep depression. He had his own theory as to why he thought Howard was assassinated in the air crash.

  He claimed that Howard was on a top secret mission at the bequest of Churchill to dissuade Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator, from joining the Axis with Benito Mussolini and Hitler.

  Bogie may have been right. Long after Bogie’s death, a Spanish writer, José Rey-Xiema
n, in his book El Vuelo del Ibis ( The Flight of the Ibis ) documents Bogie’s claim of the secret mission in convincing detail.

  ***

  Bogie was thrilled as he prepared to film Passage to Marseille. He would be reunited once again with “the gang”—or at least most of them— from Casablanca. But suddenly Jack Warner changed his mind and sent him a script called The Pentacle. This was a story of a man who kills his wife after their fifth wedding anniversary. At the time Bogie was trying to establish himself as a romantic hero on the screen or else an action hero. He did not want to return to the role of a villain, especially one who murders his wife.

  Steve Trilling had become Jack Warner’s executive assistant, and Bogie called him to denounce both the storyline and his part in it.

  Trilling reminded him that he had promised “greater cooperation” after signing a fat seven-year contract. “This part has George Raft written all over it,” Bogie said. “Give him my sloppy seconds.”

  Trilling promised rewrites. Bogie told him if they met his specifications, then he would agree to postpone Passage to Marseille and film The Pentacle.

  When the rewrites arrived, Bogie discovered that it was still basically the same script with him playing the wife killer “with no motivation.”

  “I won’t film this fucker,” Bogie told Trilling. “You’re an asshole to send it to me.” He slammed down the phone.

  Bogie’s new contract had brought him a huge financial gain, but it did not bring him script approval. Jack Warner had refused to grant that.

  Warner dug in his heels and got tough with tough guy Bogart. The studio had changed the film’s title from the God-awful The Pentacle to the more commercial Conflict, but the weak plot remained unchanged.

  Warner issued a threat to Bogie that he’d replace him in Passage to Marseille with French actor Jean Gabin.

  Even a threatening call from Jack Warner refused to make Bogie change his mind. It became a battle of wills between a gigantic star and a studio head.

  Exasperated, Warner slammed down the phone on Bogie but not before issuing a warning: “You’d better watch it that you don’t get your left ball caught in a wringer.”

  One clever telegram from Warner evoked the song from Casablanca.

  Dear Rick,

  You must remember this. As time goes by, you must remember your contract. Or else Ilsa may not be the only person you’re telling goodbye on the tarmac.

  Jack Warner.

  Soonafter, Warner fired off a telegram to super-agent Charles K. Feldman, who represented Gabin, who was known at the time “as France’s answer to Spencer Tracy.” Gabin was made a firm offer to star in Passage to Marseille.

  Warner called the next day. “Bogart, I’ve made stars and I can break them. Only the other day a star from way back when was trying to get me to cast him as an extra in one of our upcoming movies. You’ve got no hair; you’ve got bags under your eyes, and you’ve got the physique of a Nazi general who’s been held in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp for two years.”

  Willingly agreeing to go on suspension, Bogie told Warner, “Unleash your mad dogs on me.”

  But by now, Warner was harboring second thoughts about the box office allure of Gabin, who was being asked to carry a $2 million picture. His box office draw, strong in his home country, was virtually nil with American audiences.

  Hal Wallis was the producer of Passage to Marseille, and Bogie was caught up in a battle of egos going on between Warner and his greatest producer, Wallis. Secretly Warner had been tipped off that Wallis was in secret negotiations with Darryl F. Zanuck to move to 20th Century Fox.

  Warner fired off a telegram to Wallis, warning him that, “I, Jack Warner, am in charge of production at Warner Brothers, and I do not want any executive producer taking undue credit for my achievements.”

  Two weeks later, the agent, Feldman, responded to Warner’s offer. “Gabin has refused the role in the Marseille picture. He did suggest that an S be added to the spelling of one of his favorite French cities.”

  Because of his loyalty to Bogie, Sydney Greenstreet announced that, based on the studio’s bad treatment of Bogie, that he was considering pulling out of both Passage to Marseille and Conflict, as he’d been cast in each of them.

  At the last minute, Bogie caved in. Shooting began on Conflict, starring Alexis Smith.

  Originally Joan Crawford was slated for the female lead, that of Bogie’s first wife. She read the script and sent word to Warners: “Joan Crawford never dies in her movies, and she never loses her man to anyone.” She wrote that before Mildred Pierce, of course, in which she loses Zachary Scott to her own daughter, played by Ann Blyth.

  Greenstreet came back on board when Bogie agreed to do the film.

  Once again Bogie was reunited with Rose Hobart, with whom he’d worked before. She recalled that Methot arrived on the set to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her marriage to Bogie. “There was a certain irony here,” Hobart& said, “since the plot concerned a man plotting to kill his wife on their fifth anniversary. I found it amazing that the Bogarts had not killed themselves a long time ago.”

  As soon as Bogie completed Conflict, he rushed to the set of Passage to Marseille (1944), where he was reunited with many of his Casablanca stars, including director Michael Curtiz.

  Missing was Ingrid Bergman. The French actress, Michèle Morgan, who had originally been asked to play Ilsa, was his female co-star. Although a stunning beauty, she and Bogie did not make sparks on the screen in this lackluster gathering of the clan.

  Casey Robinson, one of the scripters for Casablanca, worked on the screenplay with Jack Moffitt, based on a novel Men Without Country. This was another World War II drama, depicting a Devil’s Island escape marred by a flashback-within-flashback confusion. As WWII films go, it was not bad, but a disappointment considering the collective talent of its Casablanca stars that included Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Helmut Dantine.

  “Bogart was a difficult man to relate to,” Morgan said. “He was polite, but always seemed to have his guard up. I knew he was in an unhappy marriage. He appeared every morning on the set with an awful hangover. He was very hard to direct, and argued constantly with Curtiz.”

  Director Howard Hawks, who had cast Bogie in the lead for To Have and Have Not, his upcoming picture, brought his new discovery, Betty Bacal (to be billed as Lauren Bacall) to the set of Passage to Marseille.

  She would recall the moment in her memoirs, Lauren Bacall By Myself. Hawks wanted to determine if there was any chemistry between his star and the young actress. He introduced Bacall to Bogie.

  She wrote: “There was no clap of thunder, no lightning bolts, just a simple how do you do. Bogart was slighter than I imagined—five feet ten and a half, wearing his costume of no-shape trousers, cotton shirt, and scarf around neck. Nothing of import was said—we didn’t stay long—but he seemed a friendly man.”

  Bacall may have had visions of appearing opposite Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, or Charles Boyer. Reportedly, she had not been impressed with Bogie on screen.

  Biographer Joe Hyams quotes her as saying, “When Hawks said the star would be Bogart, I was disappointed and thought, ‘How awful to be in a picture with that mug; that illiterate. He must not have a brain in his head. He won’t be able to think or talk about anything.’”

  Hawks had acquired the rights to the Ernest Hemingway novel, To Have and Have Not. He had long wanted to make a movie out of it, which he planned to both produce and direct.

  He hoped to introduce Lauren Bacall to movie audiences, along with a supporting cast that included crusty old Walter Brennan and even Hoagy Carmichael.

  The upcoming release of Passage to Marseille sparked controversy before it was shipped around the world. The domestic version showed footage of Bogie, in an act of vengeance, shooting down unarmed Nazi pilots escaping from their downed plane. The U.S. Office of War Information asked Jack Warner to cut this violent footage before sending the film abroad. Warner ag
reed, but told the office that Warner Brothers would retain the scene for domestic consumption within the United States.

  Because of its broad similarities to Casablanca, including a recycling of most of its cast, Passage to Marseille did mediocre business, although most reviewers concluded, “It is no Casablanca.”

  Conflict, as Bogie had predicted, was a disaster of a film, as reflected by the poor box office. On viewing the movie, Jack Warner realized he’d made a mistake by forcing Bogie into the role. He delayed Conflict ’s release for two years.

  ***

  An early morning call came in for Bogie, who was staying anonymously at a small hotel in West Hollywood. It was from Methot, who had somehow found out where he was lodging. “I’ve cut my wrists,” she shouted to him when he picked up the phone. “I’m bleeding to death.”

  In his pajamas and a robe, he drove to their home where he rushed upstairs to the bedroom. She hadn’t lied to him. Her wrists had been slit. He called immediately for an ambulance.

  No one knows the exact details of what happened next, and neither Bogie nor Methot volunteered any information. It was an embarrassing incident that the Warners publicity department rushed to suppress from the newspapers.

  The end result of that suicide attempt led to Bogie moving back in with Methot, much to the chagrin of Verita.

  After Methot recovered, Bogie told Michael Curtiz, “The old men declare the wars, then send the young men off to get killed. I want to do something for the war effort.”

  He asked Jack Warner if he could apply to the Hollywood Victory Committee and take his month-long vacation entertaining the troops overseas. Seeing the publicity value of such a tour, Warner agreed to it, not realizing that Bogie planned to take along the emotionally unstable Methot.