Saturday, September 4, 2021

Actors I Love: Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart
December 25, 1899 - January 14, 1957
 

Ah Bogie...

Where do I even start with the greatest male movie star of all time? Maybe I should begin at the very start with how I got into Bogart in the first place; in the late-2000s when I was in my freshman or sophomore year of college, though I have to apologize first to Cinematic Corner for stealing this format. Ah the mid-late 2000s, it was a time when emo was all the rage and having heard of the classic movie Casablanca over my high school years I found it at the local digital media store that sold a color version of the movie on VCD and what I didn't know was how I would be in awe of Humphrey Bogart and his undeniable screen presence. 

What I remember was not how Bogart looked but more of how he carried himself like a man would as Rick Blaine and how I saw the movie for the second time in a short span of hours all because of him. Of course, a color version of a black and white movie may not be ideal for anyone to watch but it was what was available to me at that point so I trudged on waiting for the next available free time to visit the local digital media store to find more of Bogart's movies. I remember some of the titles; Dark Passage, Passage to Marseille, Key Largo and Marked Woman all of which nearly covered his decades long career and Bogart held his own against other actors of the day.

Fast-forward to around 14 years later and I decided to continue on with my fascination of the man and watched The Maltese Falcon, In A Lonely Place, The African Queen and All Through The Night and all four showcased just what a talented and versatile actor he was. What fascinated me even more was how he didn't have it easy unlike his contemporaries such as Cary Grant or Clark Gable who were considered far more to be leads in movies while he was busy playing gangsters for Warner Brothers. Bogart was 5'8" tall, he was unconventionally handsome, had a lisp and later in his career wore a toupee but when the cameras got rolling his screen presence and charisma shined through and was said to be a professional off-screen. Finally in the 1950s Bogart was free to do projects he was passionate about and even started his own production company called Santana Productions, (named after his 55-foot sailboat) which has since been revived by his son Stephen Bogart. 

Bogart is often considered a movie star rather than an actor, though in truth he was actually underestimated in the acting department, leaving us with many memorable performances throughout his career and was even nominated three times for an Academy Award for Best Actor with Casablanca, The African Queen and The Caine Mutiny and won for The African Queen though he should have been nominated for In A Lonely Place and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and won for those as well. One could argue which among his roles is the best, the man can play a straight-up villain like in his early gangster movies such as Angels With Dirty Faces, he can be cynical but deep down a sentimentalist as seen in Casablanca, he can play a hardboiled detective who you'll never know is his angle until the third half of the movie like in The Maltese Falcon, and he can turn on the violent mood swings to 11 without coming across like a child on screen in In A Lonely Place.  

Unfortunately, Bogart was a heavy smoker and died of esophageal cancer in his Los Angeles home in January 14, 1957 just under a month after he turned 57. He may not have been considered versatile the way Marlon Brando is seen as by modern actors but Bogart knew how to use his physicality especially his eyes in order to communicate with an audience and even made film noir popular as a genre. We would never know what Bogart's career would have become had he been alive during the 60s and 70s, would he have retired early and turned to producing? No one knows but Bogart's legendary career would live on for years to come.


Casablanca
*Favorite films:
Casablanca
In A Lonely Place
All Through The Night
The African Queen
The Maltese Falcon
Marked Woman


The African Queen
*Best Performances:
Black Legion
Dead End
High Sierra
Casablanca
In A Lonely Place
The African Queen




Trivia:
  • Maud Bogart's drawing of her baby Humphrey appeared in a national advertising campaign for Mellin's Baby Food, not as often erroneously reported, for Gerber.
  • Though a poor student, he was a lifelong reader, and could quote Plato, Pope, Ralph Waldo Emerson and over a thousand lines of Shakespeare. He admired writers, and some of his best friends were screenwriters, including Richard Brooks, who directed him in 'Deadline - USA' (1952).
  • He was voted the Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
  • The first actor to form his own production company; Santana Productions.
  • Got the part in The Maltese Falcon after George Raft turned it down saying that the role was too wishy washy. For Bogie the film transformed him from gangster roles to those of hero.
  • While playing Anne Scott in The Left Hand of God, Tierney became ill. Bogart had a personal experience as he was close to a sister who suffered from mental illness, so during the production, he fed Tierney her lines and encouraged her to seek help.
  •  In 1941, Lena Horne moved to Hollywood, which at the time did not permit black residents. When her neighbors tried to get rid of her, Humphrey Bogart came to her defense. Ms. Horne always remembered that Bogie “raised hell with them for passing around a petition trying to get rid of me.” Ms. Horne said that Bogart told her “if anyone bothers you, please let me know.” 

*This list will be updated overtime once I see more of Humphrey Bogart's filmography.

No comments:

Post a Comment