Bogart, Humphrey

▪ American actor

in full  Humphrey DeForest Bogart 

born Dec. 25, 1899, New York, New York, U.S.

died Jan. 14, 1957, Hollywood, California

 American actor who became a preeminent motion picture “tough guy” and was a top box office attraction during the 1940s and '50s. In his performances he projected the image of a worldly wise, individualistic adventurer with a touch of idealism hidden beneath a hardened exterior. Offscreen he gave the carefully crafted appearance of being a cynical loner, granting only minimal concessions to Hollywood conventions. He became a cult hero of the American cinema.

      Bogart was the son of a prominent surgeon and a commercial artist. He served in the United States Navy at the end of World War I, and after the war he began a stage career in New York City playing juvenile roles in drawing-room and country-house comedies. By the mid-1920s he had won a leading role in the comedy Cradle Snatchers (1925) and other plays, and the young actor with the distinctive lisp began receiving good notices from critics. He often played the ascot-wearing playboy or country-club fixture who seemingly frolicked through life in dinner jacket and tails, which is the ultimate irony in light of his later screen persona as the hard-bitten, world-weary man of few words. He is reported to have originated the classic line of the mindless society fellow: “Tennis, anyone?”

      Bogart's Broadway success led to roles in two film shorts—The Dancing Town (1928) and Broadway's Like That (1930)—and a contract with the Fox Film Corporation. His supporting roles in some 10 films made between 1930 and 1934 failed to make an impact, and the disillusioned Bogart returned to the Broadway stage. He scored his biggest triumph to date as the ruthless killer Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood (Sherwood, Robert E.)'s The Petrified Forest (1935). He finally garnered some serious attention in Hollywood when Warner Bros. (Warner Brothers) adapted the play for the screen the following year. Bogart spent the next five years playing numerous supporting roles—mostly gangster types—and occasional leading roles in B-films (B-film). His best pictures of this period are such films as Black Legion (1936), Marked Woman (1937), Dead End (1937), The Roaring Twenties (1939), and They Drive by Night (1940).

  Two films in 1941 marked the turning point of Bogart's career. In High Sierra he played a killer with a tortured soul and a sense of morality—a departure from the one-dimensional thugs he had portrayed earlier. His performance as detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), John Huston (Huston, John)'s adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett (Hammett, Dashiell) detective thriller, helped make the film a classic. He followed this with leading roles in such well-regarded films as All Through the Night and Across the Pacific (both 1942) before he was cast in what is perhaps his quintessential screen characterization, that of cabaret owner Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942). Despite its hurried, chaotic production, begun when the script was only half-finished, Casablanca is one of the best in moviemaking history; it ranked second only to Orson Welles (Welles, Orson)'s Citizen Kane (1941) on the American Film Institute's 1999 list of the top 100 American films. Released just after America's entrance into World War II, Casablanca's topicality and sentimental cynicism helped to make it an enormous success. The film won the Oscar for best picture, and Bogart's Oscar-nominated performance secured his newfound status as Warners' top male star.

 From this success Bogart went on to compile an impressive list of screen credits. Few actors can match his track record for quality films: To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), The African Queen (1951; Academy Award for best actor), Sabrina (1954), and The Caine Mutiny (1954) are all regarded as screen classics. He seldom appeared in a truly bad picture, and his legend helped such minor films as Sahara (1943), Passage to Marseilles (1944), Dark Passage (1947), Beat the Devil (1953), and The Barefoot Contessa (1954) to achieve cult status.

      Bogart's screen persona was that of laconic reserve with the suggestion of complex underlying emotions. It was this duality that distinguished Bogart from other “tough guy” actors, who relied on swagger and bravado to convey their anger with the world; Bogart, conversely, employed cool detachment to suggest world-weariness. He often gave his most ruthless characters a slight hint of decency, whereas the heroes he portrayed often had a dark or vulnerable side. He succeeded in making cynicism an endearing quality.

      After three troubled marriages, Bogart found lasting happiness when he wed actress Lauren Bacall (Bacall, Lauren) in 1945. Their rapport was evident in their memorable onscreen pairings in To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. They teamed again for a well-received television adaptation of The Petrified Forest (1955) that also starred Henry Fonda (Fonda, Henry) and were planning another screen collaboration when Bogart died in 1957.

      Although he was a popular actor during the 1940s and '50s, Bogart achieved the status of a legend after his death. In 1999 he was named the top male film star of the 20th century by the American Film Institute.

Additional Reading

Terrence Pettigrew, Bogart: A Definitive Study of His Film Career, rev. ed. (1981); Stephen Humphrey Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father (1995); Gerald Duchovnay, Humphrey Bogart: A Bio-Bibliography (1999).

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