Bogart (14 page)

Some film critics say that the first sign of Bogie’s film im
mortality was in France in 1960. It was in the famous French
movie
Breathless
that Jean-Paul Belmondo stood in front of a
poster of my father smoking a cigarette and simply said, “Bo
gie.” Critics disagree about just what Belmondo was trying to
say, but the fact that they discuss it at all is the telling thing.

But other film historians will tell you that the Bogie cult was born in America, specifically in Cambridge, Massachu
setts, at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square. In 1956, a
year before he died, the Brattle booked
Beat the Devil,
which
had come out in 1954.
Beat the Devil
was an offbeat comedy
which starred, along with my father, Robert Morley and Gina
Lollobrigida and Dad’s friend Peter Lorre. Huston directed.
It was another one of those movies where nobody was quite
sure of what the movie was, even by the time they started
shooting. It had not been a commercial success.

But in Cambridge in 1956 the students from Harvard and MIT loved the offbeat humor and they loved Bogie.

The following year, the Brattle booked
Casablanca
and
the response was even greater. It turned into a Bogart film
festival and the Bogie cult was born. In fact, in Harvard
Square there is still a Bogie-themed restaurant.

Then the Bogart cult spread to the Bleecker Street
Cinema in New York City’s Greenwich Village and the Lyric
in Lexington, Virginia, and all across the country, first in
college towns and then art houses, and then everywhere.
Posters went up on walls. Woody Allen wrote
Play It Again, Sam.
Eventually there was a hit record,
“Key Largo”.
Howard Koch, one of the cowriters on
Casablanca,
and one of Dad’s
chess partners, says that when he appeared at college show
ings of
Casablanca,
the kids would recite the dialogue along
with the actors just as they did for the
Rocky Horror Picture Show.
He says he has met students who have seen the film
dozens of times.

So over the years there has been a lot written about the
appeal of Bogie. And there is little diversity in the opinions.
Almost everybody who has written about the Bogart myth says
that we love Bogart because he was his own man. He told the
truth. He saw right through phonies. He was cynical, yet he
could be idealistic when the time came.

The last family friend I talked to about this phenome
non was George Axelrod. Axelrod is the writer-producer-
director who is probably best known for writing Broadway
comedies like
The Seven Year Itch.
He was a friend of my fa
ther’s and when I asked him why he thought Bogie has
endured, he said, “Your father understood that the world was
absurd. That’s something that nobody understood. He didn’t
really take life seriously. He knew it was all bullshit. Steve, it’s
good to go through life knowing it is all bullshit. Bogie would
have loved all this politically correct stuff today. Oh, what he
would have done with this. When you understand that there’s
no purpose, that it’s all an accident and there’s no value and
you still make a life for yourself, that’s the trick of the thing. Once you understand that, you realize everything is delusion and illusion, then life is kind of existential, and Bogie under
stood that this existential quality is the kind of subtext that comes out in his performance and that is why he is an im
mortal figure. Bogie made that quality somehow come across
on the screen, and he had it in real life, too. He was an
existentialist. I don’t know if he would use that word, be
cause that would be too pretentious for him, but that’s what
he was.”

Rod Steiger, who starred with my father in his last movie,
The Harder They Fall,
also had an interesting take on Bogart’s
lasting fame. He said, “I think Mr. Bogart—that’s what I al
ways called him—has endured because in our society the family unit has softened and gone to pieces. And here you
had a guy about whom there was no doubt. There is no
doubt that he is the leader. There is no doubt that he is the
strong one. There is no doubt with this man that he can han
dle himself, that he can protect the family. This is all uncon
scious, of course, but with Bogart you are secure, you never
doubt that he will take care of things.”

I guess the real question is not, why do we like Bogart?
It’s which Bogie are we talking about—the Bogart movie im
age projected on film screens around the world through
seventy-five films? Or my father, the wry, but somewhat inse
cure man, who I think was kind of lonely and did not tell ev
erybody what was on his mind all the time? I think George
Axelrod was telling me that the answer is both, and I think
he’s right.

One of the first things all Bogie historians like to point
out is that Bogart was educated, well spoken, genteel, not at
all like the gangsters he portrayed in most of his early films.
This, they say, is the starting point for separating Bogie from
his roles. But I think it might also be the ending point, be
cause my father really was a somewhat cynical wisecracker
who hated phonies. Aside from the fact that he had no back
ground with real gangsters, and that he had the insecurities that come with being human, there is no big surprise in the
real Bogart. Sure, he played chess and golf, and maybe you didn’t know that. And maybe you didn’t know he was an avid
reader, or that he coined the phrase “Tennis, anyone?” But
that’s the end of the surprises. My father was not a child
abuser, like Joan Crawford, and he did not have bad breath,
like Clark Gable. He was not gay and he was not a Nazi spy, and if he had a secret life I think it was mostly a secret life of
the mind. These days it seems like once a month we are
shocked and disappointed by the gap between a star’s real
nature and his public image. So maybe my father has en
dured because there is no significant gap. Bogie, to a great extent, really was Bogie. He was the man John Huston de
scribed in his eulogy when he said:

Humphrey Bogart died early Monday morning.
His wife was at his bedside, and his children were
nearby. He had been unconscious for a day. He was not in any pain. It was a peaceful death. At no time
during the months of his illness did he believe he
was going to die, not that he refused to consider the thought—it simply never occurred to him. He loved
life. Life meant his family, his friends, his work, his
boat. He could not imagine leaving any of them,
and so until the very last he planned what he would do when he got well. His boat was being repainted.
Stephen, his son, was getting of an age when he
could be taught to sail, and to learn his father’s love
of the seas. A few weeks sailing and Bogie would be
all ready to go to work again. He was going to make
fine pictures—only fine pictures—from here on in.

With the years he had become increasingly
aware of the dignity of his profession…actor, not
star. Actor. Himself, he never took too seriously—his
work most seriously. He regarded the somewhat
gaudy figure of Bogart, the star, with an amused cyn
icism; Bogart, the actor, he held in deep respect.
Those who did not know him well, who never
worked with him, who were not of the small circle
of his close friends, had another completely differ
ent idea of the man than the few who were so priv
ileged. I suppose the ones who knew him but
slightly were at the greatest disadvantage, particu
larly if they were the least bit solemn about their
own importance. Bigwigs have been known to stay
away from the brilliant Hollywood occasions rath
er than expose their swelling neck muscles to Bogart’s banderillas.

In each of the fountains at Versailles there is a pike which keeps all the carp active, otherwise they
would grow overfat and die. Bogie took rare delight
in performing a similar duty in the fountains of
Hollywood. Yet his victims seldom bore him any malice, and when they did, not for long. His shafts were fashioned only to stick into the outer layer of
complacency, and not to penetrate through to the
regions of the spirit where real injuries are done.

The great houses of Beverly Hills, and for that
matter of the world, were so many shooting galleries
so far as Bogie was concerned. His own house was a
sanctuary. Within those walls anyone, no matter how
elevated his position, could breathe easy. Bogie’s
hospitality went far beyond food and drink. He fed
a guest’s spirit as well as his body, plied him with
good will until he became drunk in the heart as well
as in the legs.

Bogie was lucky at love and he was lucky at
dice. To begin with he was endowed with the great
est gift a man can have: talent. The whole world
came to recognize it. Through it all he was able to
live in comfort and to provide well for his wife
and children.

His life, though not a long one measured in
years, was a rich, full life. Over all the other bless
ings were the two children, Stephen and Leslie, who gave a final lasting meaning to his life. Yes, Bogie
wanted for nothing. He got all that he asked for out
of life and more. We have no reason to feel any sor
row for him—only for ourselves for having lost him.
He is quite irreplaceable. There will never be an
other like him.

* * *

I
am on the floor watching television. I am straddled across Pandy, my giant stuffed panda, pretending that Pandy is a horse. My father comes in. “What you watching, Steve?” he asks.

“The Alone Ranger,” I tell him.

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

“Wanna see me ride?” I say.

“Sure, pal. Go ahead, Steve, ride ’em cowboy.”

I lift myself higher in my make-believe saddle. I make galloping noises with my mouth. I fire my cap pistol at the outlaws on the black-and-white television. I spank Pandy with my other hand to make him ride faster. I sway back and forth as if I might fall from my horse, and I start giggling.

“Go get ’em, cowboy,” my father says. “Go get ’em. “ He watches me for a while longer, then he laughs and leaves the room. I think to call him back. I want to ask him if he wants to watch the Alone Ranger with me. But I don’t. I stare at the door. He is gone. I hear him downstairs talking to my mother. I turn back to the TV screen and watch the rest of the Alone Ranger alone, riding my stuffed panda.

* * *

4

Bogart thought of himself as Scaramouch, the mischievous
scamp who sets off the fireworks, then nips out.

—NUNNALLY JOHNSON

We left England when my mother finished making
Flame Over India,
which was a fast-paced action film set on the
northern frontier of India. She plays the governess of an Indian prince, and she’s trying to help British soldiers get the
prince to safety from some bad guys. I thought Mom was ex
cellent, and the movie did very well.

With the film in the can, Mom moved us from London
back to the US. But we did not return to California where I
had spent my childhood. We flew, instead, to New York, where we moved into an apartment that was being rented
jointly by us and Richard and Sybil Burton.

My parents had met the Burtons in England in 1951. As
a toddler I had spent a lot of time on Richard Burton’s knee.
I think I might have vomited on his shoes once. (God, when
I think of the voices I used to listen to as a kid: John Huston, Richard Burton, Humphrey Bogart, and of course, Lauren
Bacall, who is known for her voice.) I know I used to confuse
Burton with Richard Greene, who played Robin Hood on
television, and I always pronounced Richard and Sybil, “Wretched and Simple.”

When we moved to New York, May, the cook, was still
with us, and a new nurse was hired to look after Leslie
and me.