Here’s looking at you, kid: K Narayanan on the cult of Bogart - Hindustan Times
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Here’s looking at you, kid: K Narayanan on the cult of Bogart

ByK Narayanan
Dec 24, 2021 04:20 PM IST

What explains the popularity of this far-from-typical tough guy? As his friend Katharine Hepburn put it, ‘He walked straight down the center of the road. No maybes. Yes or no... There was no bunk about Bogie. He was a man.’

In 1999, the American Film Institute announced its list of the top male and female stars of the 20th century. At the top of the list of female stars was Katharine Hepburn, whose career spanned six decades, with 12 Oscar nominations and a still unbeaten record of four wins.

 (Getty Images) PREMIUM
(Getty Images)

Atop the list of male stars was Humphrey Bogart. Bogart wasn’t good looking. He wasn’t tall. He wasn’t physically imposing. But the camera loved him.

Born — at least as per Warner Bros — on Christmas Day, 1899, Humphrey DeForest Bogart was American aristocracy, the son of a successful doctor and an equally successful illustrator. He was a model for Mellin’s Baby Food; his mother created the illustration and based it on him as a toddler. After a brief stint in the US navy in World War 1, he drifted to New York and Broadway, where his roles were lightweight.

Not exactly the ideal background for a future “tough guy”.

Then, in 1935, Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins offered him the role of the antagonist in Robert Sherwood’s new play, The Petrified Forest. The play was a hit, and Warner Bros bought the film rights. The lead was to remain Leslie Howard, the well-regarded British actor. Bogart’s role was to be played on screen by Edward G Robinson, one of Warner’s biggest stars. On hearing this, Howard put his foot down, refusing to star in the movie if Bogart did not reprise his role. (Bogart would later name his second child after Howard.)

If it was a friendship that got Bogart his first big break, it was another friendship that made him a superstar.

In the late ’30s, John Huston was a successful scriptwriter. Warner Bros gave him a chance to direct, and Huston wrote the script for The Maltese Falcon, based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel. The lead role was offered to George Raft, who turned it down. Bogart got the job on the rebound. He and Huston became fast friends, and their first collaboration was pure magic.

In the novel, the protagonist, Sam Spade, is described as a tall “blonde Satan”, nothing like the short, slight Bogart. But there is a scene towards the end of the film in which Bogart, as Spade, confronts the killer. You can’t take your eyes off him. And in a few short, and famous, lines, you get the entire measure of Spade – his cynicism; his willingness to lie, cheat and manipulate; his desperate adherence to a certain code, a battered but still intact integrity.

Between The Petrified Forest and The Maltese Falcon, Bogart made many films, usually playing the villain. Off-screen, he made a reputation for himself as prickly, with little patience for Hollywood hypocrisy, but a straight-shooter. When black actress and singer Lena Horne moved into his neighbourhood in Hollywood in 1941, other residents were aghast. They circulated a petition to her neighbours. The petition picked up steam… until it came to Bogart. After that, it was dead in the water. Later, he “sent word over to the house that if anybody bothered me, please let him know,” Horne said. She had no trouble from the neighbours again.

A year after The Maltese Falcon came Casablanca (1942), the film that made him a superstar. More hits followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), on the sets of which he met and fell in love with a 19-year-old Lauren Bacall, whom he would marry in 1945. She was his fourth wife, and his last.

Bogart was diagnosed with cancer in 1956. He died a year later, just 57 but a legend in his lifetime.

Perhaps the best summation came from his friend and co-star Katharine Hepburn. “He walked straight down the center of the road. No maybes. Yes or no. He liked to drink. He drank. He liked to sail a boat. He sailed a boat. He was an actor. He was happy and proud to be an actor… To put it simply: There was no bunk about Bogie. He was a man.”

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