Tough Without a Gun

by Stefan Kanfer

  To test Bill’s verdict, Humphrey had only to look in the mirror. Louise Brooks, the silent-movie star who had turned her back on Hollywood, was in New York City at the time, and her memoir speaks of him as “a slim boy with charming manners, who was extraordinarily quiet for an actor. His handsome face was made extraordinary by a most beautiful mouth. It was very full, rosy, and perfectly modeled. To make it completely fascinating, at one corner of his upper lip a scarred quilted piece hung down in a tiny scallop.” All very charming, but hardly the stuff of which icons are made.

  At winter’s end Humphrey talked himself into abandoning the single life. It cannot have been easy. In essence this was an arrangement, something he was forced to do in order to advance his career. He liked Helen well enough, but love was something else entirely. Was he even capable of such an emotion? He considered the example of his parents’ own marriage and its many difficulties. Marriage was not for him. Not now, anyway; not to Helen. Yet the single life would condemn him to obscurity. That was intolerable. So wedding plans were made, and in late May 1926 he and Helen were wed in her hotel apartment. The nuptials were witnessed by the press, a group of prominent actors, and Helen’s parents, both stone-deaf. The Episcopal minister was himself deaf, but he had learned to speak in a high-pitched singsong manner, creaking out the words as an assistant echoed them in sign language. It was a weird ceremony, made weirder when Helen faced a reporter, suddenly became hysterical, and had to be led to an adjoining room. Several hours passed before she granted the interview. It was not the happiest way to begin.

  Serenity remained in short supply. “We quarreled over the most inconsequential things,” Humphrey ruefully admitted later. Those things included a battle royal over the right of their pet dog to have caviar when people were starving in Europe. “I contended that the dog should eat hamburger and like it. She held out for caviar.” Customarily, these bouts ended with one of them storming out in a rage. Although the couple would reconcile within a day or two, the ceasefires grew shorter as 1926 wore on. At last Seventh Heaven closed after a forty-two-week run, the longest of the season. For the first time, Helen told friends, she was free to work on the marriage. But Humphrey was too busy to do any heavy lifting. First he took over for an ailing player in Maxwell Anderson’s comedy Saturday’s Children. Then he got a large part in another comedy, Baby Mine, starring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Arbuckle, the silent-film comedian who mentored Chaplin and gave Buster Keaton his first film role, had been ruined by one of Hollywood’s first sex scandals. In 1921 he and two friends drove north, checked into the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and enticed several women to their suite. During the course of the evening Arbuckle’s date, thirty-year-old actress Virginia Rappe, ran a high fever and complained of sharp abdominal pain. She died three days later of peritonitis, caused by a ruptured bladder. Subsequently, one of the other women claimed that the three-hundred-pound Arbuckle had raped the young woman, piercing her bladder in the process. Rappe’s manager went further: he claimed that the comedian had used a piece of ice to simulate sex with her. In vain Arbuckle protested that he had only used the ice on her skin, hoping to ease the young lady’s distress. The papers in America and Europe got hold of the news, and Arbuckle found himself endlessly pilloried in columns and editorials. The San Francisco district attorney, hungry for publicity, hauled him into court. The first trial ended in a hung jury; so did a second. The DA persisted. The third jury found the defendant innocent of all charges. They were too late; the damage had been done. Arbuckle was washed up in movies. Six years down the road, Baby Mine was supposed to provide a second act for one of the funniest men in America.

  Some actors shied away from an appearance with the fat man. Humphrey made a point of telling Arbuckle how glad he was to be working with a comic genius. The New York papers attempted to be broad-minded, and no mention was made of l’affaire Rappe. But the public no longer had any interest in the ruined star; he was old news. The show closed after just two weeks. No matter: Humphrey was promptly offered a role in Chicago, playing the lead in the touring company of Saturday’s Children. An idea occurred to him: Why didn’t Helen come along? They could be a couple of tourists in the Windy City. Mrs. Bogart said no, thank you; she preferred to hang around Broadway until the right play came along.

  In fact, neither partner had ever really invested emotion or time in the marriage, and from that point on they agreed on only one matter: separation. Helen did accompany her husband to Chicago, but only to file for divorce. She charged neglect and cruelty, although her lawyers were instructed not to ask for alimony. Later she summed up the eighteen-month union to a reporter: “I was deeply interested in acting, but I felt that the managing of a home was something greater.” Unfortunately, her husband “did not want a home. He regarded his career as more important than married life.” This was half true at best. Indeed, Humphrey was more interested in professional advancement than in settling down. But so was Helen; the ink had hardly dried on the divorce agreement when she sailed off to London to be the lodestar in the West End version of Seventh Heaven. In time Menken was to admit that she was “to blame for the breakup of our marriage. I put my career first.” There is no evidence that Humphrey cared much for the marriage, or about its breakup. He just didn’t want any trouble. In a letter to a colleague he protested, “I have tried my very best to keep my mouth shut—and be discreet. Any talking has come from my so-called friends and not from me.…” The prep school rebel gave way to the gentleman. He acknowledged that the marriage with Helen had been a mistake, but even so, “she’s a wonderful girl.”

  Now that he was free, Humphrey celebrated for a couple of weeks—and then again fell into the tender trap. To his friends it seemed an odd thing for him to do. The public failure of his first marriage should have been a chastening experience. What was the rush to repeat—especially with another actress? But when they thought about it later, Humphrey’s move made sense. He was uncomfortable with “civilians,” women outside show business who never quite understood what he did for a living. And then there was the hidden careerist in Bogart, a man still looking for the main chance. He knew a lot about Mary Philips; she was not only attractive, she was a comer, someone who might give him a boost. He called her up out of the blue. “I had had enough women by the time I was twenty-seven,” he remembered, “to know what I was looking for in a wife next time I married.” After a few weeks of dating, he decided that Mary was his belle ideal. And when he learned that Kenneth MacKenna was also wooing the actress, his desire for her became unappeasable. He plied Mary with boxes of candy, bouquets of roses, dinners in expensive restaurants, always decorous, never forcing the issue. Philips remembered the Bogart of 1927: “He was a strangely puritanical man with very old fashioned virtues. He had class as well as charm”—the nineteenth-century guy on display. She fell for him, casting aside a cruelly disappointed MacKenna. In the spring of 1928 the twenty-five-year-old became the second Mrs. Humphrey Bogart at a wedding at the home of her widowed mother in Hartford, Connecticut.

  The marriage could not have had a better beginning. The attractive couple hung out in after-hours clubs and attended parties. She was known for her winning smile, he for consuming vast quantities of booze without slurring his words or losing his appeal. For a time the Bogarts were cast opposite each other in Skyrocket, a drama about a married couple who fall in love when they’re indigent—and out of love when they strike it rich. In the last act they reconcile for good when they lose all their money and become poor again. The run was brief, but critics praised the leading actor and actress. Humphrey caught on again in Bill Brady Jr.’s production of A Most Immoral Lady, and following that, in the comedy hit of the 1929 season, It’s a Wise Child.

  And then, on October 30, everything changed for everyone. WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG, said Variety’s cheeky headline. The story added some melancholy details. The paper spoke of a “vaudeville producer, elderly, who was found weeping like a child on the street having lost $75,000
,” and added, “Many people of Broadway are known to have been wiped out.” Matters got dire in a hurry. A week later, the front page read: “Market cataclysm echoed in New York’s nite clubs, speaks & dives—Afterdark rounders limp, in dough & spirit.”

  After the Crash, the New York theater shrank to half its size. Productions were canceled; actors, directors, choreographers, musicians, set and lighting designers were thrown out of work. Everyone’s eyes turned west, where jobs were said to be available. Now that sound had come in, what the town wanted was stage actors who knew how to project, not silent-film stars like John Gilbert, whose fluting voices failed to match their macho screen images.

  Humphrey had paid little attention to his sister’s husband, Stuart Rose. But now Stuart was of great interest: he had gone to work for Fox Films. The studio owned a property titled The Man Who Came Back, and the moguls had an idea about casting. Instead of using such established names as Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, they thought of employing newcomers, people they could get on the cheap and build into stars. But which newcomers? The casting department gave screen tests to more than fifty Broadway actors. None seemed right. The front office didn’t want to put Humphrey before the cameras; they were not hiring sprigs in 1930. They wanted men, real men, with bass voices and animal magnetism. Stuart pulled some strings and got his brother-in-law an audition. Humphrey surprised the Fox executives with his precise diction and on-screen personality; they offered him a contract of $750 a week and offered to pay his way to the coast.

  The money was more than the Bogarts had ever been offered, singly or together. Even so, Mary was uncertain. She was currently in a straight play, The Tavern, and it was thriving in a bad time. If she went west now she would forsake Broadway to be in her husband’s shadow. Times were bad; she might never find work again. The odds were weighted in his favor, she continued, not in hers. It was the Helen Menken story all over again. In the end Mary refused to leave New York and Humphrey insisted on going to Hollywood. They did agree on one thing: the Bogarts would have an open marriage—not an uncommon arrangement in the early 1930s. Discreetly, it was agreed, Humphrey would see other women while in California. Mary would date in Manhattan.

  For all the studio talk about new faces, Fox decided to use Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor. Humphrey’s first assignment in Hollywood was not as an actor but as a vocal coach. He was there, said the Fox front office, to teach silent-film star Farrell how to articulate with authority. Humphrey hated his job and let everyone around him know it—particularly Farrell. To mollify the newcomer, Fox cast him in two pictures. The first was an inconsequential bit of fluff, A Devil with Women, in which he played yet another juvenile; the second, a comedy titled Up the River, had no box office impact at all. Nonetheless, it contained two assets: director John Ford, then learning his trade with great alacrity, and Spencer Tracy, a young, versatile, hard-drinking actor. Humphrey immediately took to both of them.

  Professionally, however, Humphrey appeared to be on a treadmill. In 1931 he was cast in the World War I aviation drama Body and Soul. The male lead was Charles Farrell, and in one scene the two men shared a cockpit. Humphrey needled him and Farrell, who never thought he needed a vocal coach, especially one with such a pronounced sibilance, needled back. When the film wrapped, Humphrey decided to have it out with the arrogant star. Farrell, who was at least six inches taller and far more muscular, asked if Bogart knew how to fight. Humphrey’s blood was up and he agreed to do battle. Before they began, the gentlemanly Farrell thought it only fair to inform his opponent of a vital fact: he had been a boxing champion at Boston University. Ah well, Humphrey concluded, that was different. Perhaps they could talk things over peaceably. And so they did, concluding with an amiable voyage on Farrell’s boat, where Humphrey showed off his navigation skills.

  It was a brief hiatus during an unhappy time. In the sixteen months between his arrival and departure, Hollywood was either indifferent or openly hostile to Bogart’s prep school pugnacity. He made casting directors uneasy, and they looked elsewhere for male talent. But Humphrey refused to change. Indeed, he began to go public with his contradictory persona, mixing elevated manners with a surly disdain for authority. The inner conflict of wellborn New Yorker and insubordinate actor was never more apparent than on the day he and a buddy were out on a local golf course. They tried to finish their nine holes quickly, only to find themselves stuck behind a stuffy foursome. Humphrey inquired whether they might play through. One of the quartet harrumphed that they could do no such thing. And who the hell was asking, anyway?

  “I’m nobody,” Humphrey informed him. “My name is Humphrey Bogart; I work at Fox, and what are you doing playing a gentleman’s game at a gentleman’s club?”

  The gentleman in question identified himself as the first vice president at Fox.

  Humphrey expected the ax to fall that afternoon. Instead he was hired as the second lead in The Bad Sister. He went unnoticed; it was Bette Davis’s film debut. (“Even when I had a gun,” Humphrey said about his co-star, “she scared the be-Jesus out of me.”) He was also ignored in a handful of other movies. In Big City Blues his name was at the bottom of the cast list. In Three on a Match he played a gangster for the first time. No one seemed impressed, least of all the studio executives. Holy Terror was his first Western. “I was too short to be a cowboy,” he remembered, “so they gave me elevator shoes and padded out my shoulders. I walked around as though I were on stilts, and felt like a dummy.” When Fox failed to renew his contract he was disappointed but not surprised, and he headed directly back to Broadway.

  As Humphrey unpacked he learned that Mary had fallen in love more than once during his absence. His ego was badly bruised, but no sympathy came from his informant: by agreeing to the open marriage, he had opened the door to mutual infidelity. Then and there Humphrey determined to get Mary back and, in his traditionally courteous but newly attentive manner, wooed and won her all over again. A month after his return the Bogarts renewed their vows. He swore to return to the Broadway stage for good, and began auditioning.

  His timing was execrable. The Depression had battered the Broadway theater, usually immune to stock market tergiversations. Openings dipped from more than four hundred per year to well under two hundred. Humphrey had enough of a name to get work in five plays in the 1932–33 season, but not one of them lasted more than seven days. Producers of the last one, Our Wife, guaranteed him a percentage of the gross. It opened on March 4, 1933—the day the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, declared a bank holiday in order to bring some order to the nation’s finances. There were ten people in the opening-night audience. Our Wife closed after twenty performances, assuring the star a grand total of fifty-six dollars.

  Mary picked up some work in summer stock, and Humphrey kept her company. Edith Oliver, an actress who would leave show business to become The New Yorker’s off-Broadway critic, ran into them in New England. She remembered that he was often inebriated, but always beguiling (“Bogart had class—he was such a gent”) and that Mary could match him drink for drink. One night a policeman in Cohasset, Massachusetts, arrested both Bogarts for disorderly conduct, along with another young actor, Broderick Crawford, the troubled son of a leading stage comedienne, Helen Broderick. The police chief failed to recognize any of them, and Humphrey wondered aloud if he had chosen the wrong profession.

  The younger Bogarts returned to the city with only a few hundred dollars in their bank account. They had hoped for a loan from the elder Bogarts, but Belmont and Maud’s dwindling investments had crashed with the market. The couple had sold the house on 103rd Street and taken a floor in an East 56th Street brownstone. Dr. Bogart had given up his practice. He was ill and apathetic, wholly dependent on drugs and alcohol. Maud, as strong-willed as before, paid the bills and kept order. It was a full-time job. Humphrey’s younger sister, Catherine, called Kay, had started out as a clothes model. Now she was unemployed and alcoholic. Her older sister, Frances, had been unable to shake the p
ostpartum blues that began with the birth of her son in 1930.

  The autumn of 1933 brought no relief. Frances remained in the slough of despond and Kay kept drinking. Belmont got sicker. Mary and Humphrey were unemployed. He brought in some money by playing chess for fifty cents a game at the arcades along Sixth Avenue. He was a shrewd, audacious opponent, and frequently returned to their East Side apartment with enough funds to bankroll dinner and a few drinks. But it was a precarious life, and each week their meager savings dwindled a little more.

  With the new year came two breaks, allowing Humphrey to believe that his moribund career might get jump-started after all. Early in 1934 he won a meaty part as a gangster in Midnight, a film hastily shot, edited, and released in New York. It was just as hastily dismissed by the movie critics. In the fall he got a major role in a Broadway melodrama, Invitation to a Murder, playing the part of an aristocrat whose fortune is derived from criminal enterprises. It also failed. Bitterly, Humphrey returned to the chess tables. In the middle of a match, Mary telephoned with bad news: Belmont had suffered a stroke. An ambulance conveyed him to the unpleasantly named Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled. As the seventy-eight-year-old man took his last breaths, his son held him close.