Bogart (17 page)

If Dad wasn’t going to kowtow to authority in prep
school and the military he certainly wasn’t going to do it
years later in Hollywood. His irreverence for the icons of the
movie world became one of his best-known characteristics.

In the 1930s when the studio public relations depart
ments were trying to make every actor look like a model of
gentility, Bogie refused to pose for the cornball photos they
wanted of him patting dogs, smoking pipes, and riding
horses. He thought that was phony. He hated phoniness. He
just wanted to be himself. I understand how he felt. Some
times when people ask me about being Bogart’s son I feel as if I am being asked to, somehow, pose for something that is
not really me.

“If I feel like going to the Trocadero wearing a pair of
moccasins, that is the way I go to the Troc,” Bogart said. “If
I go to the Troc and want to make a jackass of myself in front
of every producer in town, that’s my business.”

The biggest Hollywood authority figure for much of my
father’s career was Jack Warner, and Bogie’s battles with
Warner became a part of Hollywood lore.

Jack was one of the four Warner brothers. He was the
production chief, the guy who ran the studio. He fought, not just with Bogie, but with Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland,
and James Cagney, among others. Warner was, my father once said in an interview, “a creep.”

Warner called him up after that remark. “How can you
call me a thing like that?” Warner asked. “A creep is a loath
some, crawling thing in my dictionary.”

“But I spell it ‘kreep,’ with a k, not a c,” Bogie said.

“But how can you do this to me?”

“I did it for the publicity, for the studio and you,” Bogie
told him.

I suspect that the Bogart-Warner battles were special be
cause Jack Warner could be as tactless as Dad. Once when
Warner was introduced to Madame Chiang Kai-shek, he alleg
edly muttered that he had forgotten to bring his laundry.

I asked Sam Jaffe what my father and Warner
fought about.

“Scripts,” Sam said. “Jack Warner knew your father was
a good actor, but he would never consider him for better
roles. I remember one time Bogart wouldn’t do a certain pic
ture. Warner said to me, ‘Sam, you have no control of your
client.’ I said, ‘Jack, I can’t control Bogart’s mind. He reads
scripts and he knows what he wants to do. I can’t tell him
what to do.’ This was when they had what were called slave
contracts, and the studio could lay Bogie off if he rejected a
story. So he was always getting suspended. Warner would
hand Bogie a script and Bogie would read it and say, ‘This is
a piece of crap.’ The Warners never bought a really good
book or play for him. They would get some lousy script and
give it to your father just so they could comply with the con
tract requirement that they offer him a script. But Bogie al
ways said it was crap. He used that word, crap, a lot.”

Talking about his conflicts with Warner, my father said,
“I’d read a movie script and yell that it was not right for me.
I’d be called for wardrobe and refuse to report. Jack War
ner would phone and say, ‘Be a good sport.’ I’d say no. Then
I’d get a letter from the Warner Brothers lawyers ordering me to report. I’d refuse. Then another wire from Warner
saying that if I did not report he’d cut my throat. He’d al
ways sign it,
Love to Mayo
.”
(My father’s wife during much of
this haggling.)

I was happy to hear that my father fought with Warner
about scripts. We are always hearing that everybody in Holly
wood these days cares only about the deal, not the movie. My
father, admittedly, played in a lot of stinkers, but he was al
ways fighting for better movies and better scripts, never for
bigger paychecks.

Jack Warner certainly was not the only Hollywood figure to
get the Bogart needle. Bogie often slammed Hollywood fig
ures in print. And he was annoyed and amused when people
found this outrageous.

He said, “All over Hollywood they are continually advis
ing me, ‘Oh, you mustn’t say that. That will get you in a lot
of trouble,’ when I remark that some picture or director or
writer or producer is no good. I don’t get it. If he isn’t any
good why can’t you say so? If more people would mention it,
pretty soon it might have some effect. The local idea that
anyone making a thousand dollars a week is sacred and is
beyond the realm of criticism never strikes me as par
ticularly sound.”

The press, of course, loved the fact that Bogie was
outspoken and irreverent. They found him very quotable
because he did not dish out the pablum they were used to.

“I believe in speaking my mind,” Bogie said. “I don’t believe in hiding anything. If you are ashamed of anything, cor
rect it. There’s nothing I won’t talk about. I’ve never gone
along with the social structure of this town and as a result I
don’t have many close friends among the actors.”

My father was outspoken not just about Hollywood, but
about everything. He loved to argue. This is certainly one
area in which I am my father’s son. I love to argue just for
the fun of it. I’ll take the opposite side on any issue just to
watch the sparks fly. Dad was stimulated by the music of the
words and the exchange of ideas. And he was amused by the positions people held on various topics. One of his favorite
tricks was to say something outrageous in a group, get a de
bate going, and then sneak away while the others contin
ued arguing.

Bogie said, “I can’t even get in a mild discussion without
turning it into an argument. There must be something in my tone of voice, or this arrogant face. Something that antago
nizes everybody. Nobody likes me on sight. I suppose that’s
why I’m cast as the heavy.

“The thing is, I can’t understand why people get mad.
You can’t live in a vacuum, and you can’t have a discussion
without two sides. If you don’t agree with the other fellow, that’s what makes it a discussion. I’d feel like a sap, starting
things by throwing in with my opponent and saying, ‘Well, of
course, you may be right,’ or ‘You know more about it than
I do,’ and all the other half-baked compromises the tact and
diplomacy boys use. My idea of an honest discussion is to be
gin by declaring my opinion. Then, when the other fellow
says, ‘Why you’re nothing but a goddamned fool, Bogart,’
things begin to move and we can get somewhere. Or, I’m
the one that pulls that line on him. Anyway, it gets a lot
of action.”

Because my father was burdened with the screen image of be
ing a tough guy, he was often confronted by jerks who
wanted to test him so they could boast in the office the next
day about how they had drawn down on Bogie the tough guy.

It was always a difficult spot for Dad. Usually his wit could win
over these dolts, who often as not were drunk. But Bogie
couldn’t always wisecrack his way out of a sticky situation.
Sometimes things got physical.

Because Dad was not well known during the time of his
marriages to Mary Philips and Helen Menken, most of his physical fights occurred during his third marriage, to Mayo
Methot, from 1938 to 1945. In fact, she was involved in many
of them. One night, for example, he and Mayo were closing down a bar. Some guy came over to their table, leaned down
real close to my father and said, “I hear you’re a tough guy. But they must have been talking about somebody else, be
cause you don’t look so tough to me.”

“You’re probably right,” my father said. “Why don’t you
sit down, pal, and have a drink on me.”

The man accepted my father’s offer. But soon he started
getting belligerent again. “You know what I heard?” he said.

“No,” Bogie said, “what did you hear?”

“I heard you won’t sign autographs for kids. I heard
you’re too tough for that, you just brush them off.”

Bogie could see that he wasn’t going to charm this guy
into submission, so he turned to Mayo and suggested it was
time to quit for the night.

“Just what I thought,” the stranger said. “You’re trying
to run out. Tough, huh? That’s a laugh.”

Suddenly, the man took a swing at my father. My father
ducked and caught only a slight glancing blow. Then they
started grappling and finally ended up on the floor of this
New York night spot. Mayo yanked off one of her shoes and
began banging the man with it. Finally the manager had to
step in and break up the brawl.

“Darling,” Mayo later said, “it must be wonderful to be a movie star and receive such recognition from your fans.”

If Dad’s being a movie star sometimes got him into trou
ble, there were other times when he used his screen persona to create trouble. One time at a restaurant a friend of his,
knowing Bogie’s love for pranks, came up behind my father
and tapped him on the shoulder.

“All right,” the friend said, “finish your drink and get
out of here. We don’t want you in this place.”

Bogart turned slowly, looked carefully around the room,
then took the cigarette out of his mouth and flipped it
onto the floor, grinding it out. He narrowed his eyes, spat
out the last of the cigarette smoke, and said, “Listen, pal,
I’m staying here. If you don’t like it you can move along. This
is my territory and you know it. Or do I have to prove it
to you?”

The people in the restaurant were getting nervous now
and some of them started putting distance between them
selves and Bogart. Bogie let the tension hang in the room for
a moment, then he started laughing.

This was something he did a lot, and sometimes he
would get into fake fights, pulling his punches the way he
had to in the movies.

Many of my father’s pranks would be big hits today on
David Letterman. When Bogie was in Paris with Mother,
Peter Viertel, and Joan Fontaine, he picked up a street
wino and invited him to join them all for dinner. After din
ner he gave the bum fifty bucks and a cigar. Also in Paris,
he picked up a prostitute and introduced her around as
his fiancee.

When I was eight months old, Bogie went back to New
York and his visit to the El Morocco club led to one of the most infamous stories of his mischief.

The story, as it appeared in newspapers the next day,
was that Bogie and Bacall were in New York on vacation.
They went out nightclubbing with Bogie’s friend Bill Seeman
and other friends. Around midnight my mother and the
others went home, but Bogie and Seeman stayed out to continue carousing. They arrived at El Morocco after midnight,
carrying two giant stuffed pandas, which my father had bought for me. They introduced the pandas all around as
their “dates,” and asked to be seated at a table for four, so their pandas could have chairs. They propped the pandas,
which were over three feet high, in the chairs and proceeded
to drink.

At a nearby table two young women, one a socialite, the other a well-known fashion model, were having drinks with
their dates. At one point one of the young women came over
and picked up one of the pandas. Bogie, offended, pushed
her and she fell to the floor. When the other young woman
picked up the other panda, Bogie said something insulting to her. At that point the second woman’s boyfriend got into the
act and started throwing dishes. This was followed by a me
lee, the details of which were not clear to anybody. My father,
his friend, and their pandas were thrown out of El Morocco
and banned from the club forever.

My father, admitting he was drunk at the time and that he was not completely clear on the sequence of events, tells a similar story but with important differences.

“My wife had some sense and went home to bed,” he
says, “which I guess is where I should have been. But Mr.
Seeman and myself went on to make it a stag party. It seemed
like a good idea to us to buy a couple of those huge pandas as a present for my son and it seemed like a very good idea
to take them to El Morocco for a nightcap.