Tough Without a Gun

by Stefan Kanfer

  Yet in other ways, the Warner brothers did what no other studio dared to do: they showed the American underside. MGM specialized in elegance and high production values, as in Gone with the Wind, as well as optimistic small-town stories like the adventures of the teenaged Andy Hardy. Paramount concentrated on sophisticated comedies, RKO on the sparkling Astaire-Rogers musicals. Columbia showcased Frank Capra’s directorial touch, and Twentieth Century Fox made a mint with Shirley Temple vehicles. Warner Bros. took a different road. In his study of Jewish filmmakers, An Empire of Their Own, historian Neil Gabler observes that the Warners’ conscience became palpable by the mid-thirties, “in dozens of films that embraced the losers and the loners, the prizefighters, the meat packers, truck drivers, coal miners, cardsharps, gumshoes, racketeers, con artists, and the rest of what might have seemed like the detritus of Depression America.”

  Warners made a star of the Yiddish theater crossover Paul Muni (né Muni Weisenfreund) by casting him as James Allen, a good man victimized by the prison system in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and, more advantageously, as the crime kingpin Tony Camonte in Scarface. That film was so graphic Warners added a subtitle, The Shame of the Nation, to assure viewers that the studio was condemning, not glorifying, the gangster life. The studio also elevated James Cagney from supporting player to leading man with an electric performance in his fifth film, The Public Enemy. At the same time, Edward G. Robinson entered the mainstream with his stark portrayal of Caesar Enrico Bandello—clearly modeled after Al Capone—in Little Caesar. All of these films made use of a new combination: irony and social criticism. In the last scene of Fugitive, the protagonist’s girlfriend spots him in the shadows. “How do you live?” she asks. Whispers the innocent escapee: “I steal.”

  As Public Enemy’s street-smart crook with an oedipal fixation on his kindly old mother, Cagney was so convincing that after the bloody finale Warners tacked on a pious title. It warned audiences that “The END of Tom Powers is the end of every hoodlum. ‘The Public Enemy’ is not a man, nor is it a character—it is a problem that sooner or later WE, the public, must solve.”

  In Little Caesar, as Bandello is gunned down, a phrase from his simple Catholic boyhood becomes an epitaph: “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?”

  Warners knew a good thing when they saw it, and gangland dramas ripped from the headlines were a very good thing indeed. It didn’t matter that Robinson was actually a cultivated gentleman who collected fine art and flinched so badly when he fired a gun that numerous retakes were required. He was the studio’s prime wrongo, and Jack Warner saw no reason to accommodate anyone from the original cast of The Petrified Forest—except, of course, for the celebrated Leslie Howard.

  Visibly upset at the Robinson disclosure, Humphrey cabled Howard, then vacationing in Scotland, with the bad news; Leslie wired back that he would handle things. Howard’s agent was instructed to press the Bogart name, and when there was no response, the star made a personal appeal. As it happened, Howard found himself pushing on an open door. For just at that moment Robinson had gotten mad at Warners, and Warners had gotten fed up with Robinson, who wanted major money and equal billing with Howard. Jack Warner regarded his contract player as ungrateful, expensive, and too big for his pants. Whereas Bogart would surely come cheap, and would just as surely take whatever billing the studio dictated. In one of his I-made-you-and-I-can-break-you moments, Warner passed on Edward G. Robinson and sent Humphrey’s agent a contract guaranteeing that his client would play Duke Mantee on-screen.

  The contract wasn’t as good as it sounded, but Humphrey signed it anyway. He would only be assured of three weeks’ work before the camera; his salary was $750 per. He had been paid as much in 1930, during the first Hollywood sojourn. Moreover, because he was more or less unknown to moviegoers, he would be billed below four members of the cast: Howard, of course, but also Genevieve Tobin, a seasoned character actress; Dick Foran, better known as the Singing Cowboy; and the rising young talent Bette Davis, who had completely eclipsed Humphrey when they worked together in The Bad Sister. Just the same, it was better than sitting around in New York, watching Mrs. Bogart get on in show business.

  Humphrey made his three weeks count. The daily footage showed Jack Warner and director Archie Mayo that Bogart was something new on-screen. Robinson (born Edward Emanuel Goldenberg) and Muni were Jewish; Cagney was half Irish, and that half dominated his appearance and style. The appeal of these men was ethnic; they represented the human sorrow of every city—immigrants, or the children of immigrants, who had taken a wrong turn. In contrast to those stars, Humphrey was a WASP, but that actually helped him in Petrified Forest. He represented the notorious malefactors from the heart of the heart of the country: “Baby Face” Nelson, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, John Dillinger, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, all of whom had been dramatically and savagely hunted down and killed in 1934.

  In the film version, Humphrey conveyed the same weary authority that had been so effective on Broadway. But the close-ups gave him something more. Duke Mantee seemed a guarded and intense man who was capable of larceny and murder, yet who had a speck of nobility buried deep within. Mantee’s desperate persona came across so effectively because of the confluence of acting talent and canny direction, but it was given added impetus by Humphrey’s situation. At the age of thirty-seven he sensed that Petrified Forest was his last chance for a career in movies. If he fell short, or if the film failed when it went into distribution, there would be no third opportunity. His unshaven face was a map of distress.

  iii

  Mary Philips went out to California to see her husband for Christmas 1936. Proudly, Humphrey displayed his new Warners contract. It was good for $550 per week, and it would run for a guaranteed twenty-six weeks. There would be additional contract extensions and raises if things worked out. Humphrey felt certain that they would. Mary was unimpressed. She pointed out what Humphrey already knew. In the coming months he would be making less per week than he had when filming Petrified Forest. He pleaded with her to stay, help him build a solid career, be a homemaker, start a family. It would be a fine thing to raise kids in the California sun.

  Mary wasn’t interested. She had just landed the role of Cora, the steamy adulteress in The Postman Always Rings Twice, a theatrical adaptation of James M. Cain’s best seller. It was a sensational part, her biggest so far. Why didn’t Humphrey come east to be with her during rehearsals? Arguments ensued. He refused to be the tail on her kite; she refused to live in his shadow. And what kind of shadow was it anyway? He was a fifth-billing character actor; she was a leading lady. They parted on less than cordial terms.

  As far as Humphrey’s working life was concerned, Mary’s instincts did not play her false. (Her feelings about the theater were a different matter; Postman ran for only seventy-six performances.) For by the time the Bogart contract took effect, Darryl F. Zanuck had left Warners to become the driving spirit of Twentieth Century Fox. His place was taken by Hal Wallis, a producer who believed, as the actors grumbled out of earshot, in getting every drop of milk from the cows. Under his aegis, low-budget “B” pictures were churned out on or ahead of schedule, to be double-billed with the million-dollar “A” films.

  Humphrey nurtured plans to rise to the top of the bill, especially after the debut of Petrified Forest in New York. Ads for the film wove a garland of enthusiastic quotes. Both the Post and the Tribune called Humphrey’s portrayal of Duke Mantee “brilliant”; the American labeled it “superb,” and the Times topped off the raves by stating, “There should be a large measure of praise for Humphrey Bogart who can be a psychopathic gangster more like Dillinger than the outlaw himself.” The movie turned a handsome profit everywhere it unreeled. Jack Warner was grateful; Hal Wallis was pleased. But that didn’t mean they planned to elevate Humphrey; it only meant they would employ him full-time. He punched a clock like a factory employee—which, in effect, he was—appearing next in Bullets or Ballots. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Blondell, a
nd Barton MacLane enjoyed the top spots. As Johnny Blake, an undercover cop, Robinson arouses the suspicion of Nick “Bugs” Fenner and the two die in a shoot-out. It was the first time Bogart and Robinson faced off. There would be many others.

  After Bullets came Two Against the World. Humphrey did receive top billing for this media melodrama, but he felt no cause for rejoicing. It was a remake of the much-heralded 1931 film Five Star Final, starring Edward G. Robinson and Boris Karloff. The new version—an honest reporter fighting his bosses at a radio station this time, rather than a newspaper—had a slapdash air about it, and it was headed straight for the grind houses.

  Humphrey got the message. He was going to be a journeyman out here, decently salaried but never a star. He stayed at the raffish Garden of Allah hotel, famous as a hangout for visiting New Yorkers like Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, as well as for its bacchanalias—“If a stark naked lady of acting fame,” reported The New Yorker, “her head crowned by a chattering monkey, chose to open the door to Western Union, no one was abashed, least of all the lady and the monkey.”

  The actor drove to work in a dented old Chevrolet. When the weather turned windy, Humphrey put on a camel’s hair coat frayed at the cuffs and collar. Criticized by publicists for his shabby outfits and beat-up jalopy, he countered, “I’ve seen too many guys come here, make one picture, and blow themselves to Cadillacs and big houses.” They wound up wage slaves, forever in hock to the studio. That would not happen to him; he was putting all his extra cash in the F.Y. fund.

  That fund grew in small increments as he went on to make China Clipper, an adventure film about an obsessed, heroic pilot modeled on Charles Lindbergh. Humphrey played the airborne sidekick. A brash but agreeable Pat O’Brien got all the attention and most of the good reviews. The Times was typical: “Mr. O’Brien has contributed a tense portrait of energy incarnate.” As for Mr. Bogart, he “must be included on the credit side of an entirely creditable film ledger.”

  Next time out Humphrey played a beachcombing fugitive holed up in the South Seas. Isle of Fury was almost contemptuously hacked out and directed as if by machine. There was no way he could look anything but embarrassed, especially behind an unbecoming mustache, and in footage where he fought an ill-constructed octopus.

  During this discouraging time, Humphrey ran into a singer-actress he had known slightly in New York. Mayo Methot, the daughter of a Portland, Oregon, newspaperwoman and a sea captain who plied the Orient, had been cast in amateur productions from the age of seven. She went to Broadway as a teenager, and spent most of the 1920s singing and dancing in musicals. But as the Depression took hold, the job market for chorines dried up. So, like many another performer, she came west to try her hand at movies. Mayo was just as comely out there as she had been back east—and just as wild and hard-drinking. At a Screen Actors Guild dinner Humphrey couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was wearing a low-cut, flame-red dress; her eyes glittered and her smile ignited the room.

  To Humphrey, Mayo seemed to be all the things Mary was not: she liked a good time, adored sailing, spoke her mind, and had an explosive sense of humor. He pursued her avidly, completely unaware that she had designs on him. In their profile of Humphrey Bogart, A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax quote the veteran actress Gloria Stuart. She knew Humphrey in the old days and recalled that Mayo “just went after Bogart and that was it. I think he found her amusing. She made him laugh a lot.” At that particular time Bogart needed a laugh. Early in 1937, his little sister Kay had died of a ruptured appendix, worn and vulnerable at the age of thirty-three. Although the two were not close, he had kept track of her misadventures. In a melancholy recollection, Humphrey called her “a victim of the speakeasy era. She burned the candle at both ends, then decided to burn it in the middle.” Kay’s death, coupled with the sense that he was treading water in Hollywood, made Mayo seem all the more desirable, a woman who would mute his troubles and, perhaps, change his luck.

  The trouble was that she was married. This led to scenes that could have come out of a Feydeau farce. On one occasion the lovers were at a dinner party at the home of Eric Hatch, scenarist of the hit comedy My Man Godfrey. The conversation was lively, the attendees witty. They included the gangling Russian character actor Mischa Auer and the former silent-movie star Louise Brooks. After supper the guests began to tango to recorded music when a call came in from Mayo’s husband, restaurateur Percy T. Morgan Jr. He was on his way to pick up his wife and take her home. Humphrey made ready to sweep Mayo away. “But wait!” wrote Brooks in her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood. Mayo “had taken off her slippers to dance, and now one of them could not be found.” Pandemonium reigned supreme. Everyone was in on the clandestine romance; all in attendance began a frantic search—all, that is, except Louise. Humphrey furiously turned on her, demanding to know where she had hidden the slipper. Brooks was innocent, but “too stunned by this strange and violent Humphrey to speak.” At the last instant, Auer stretched up to an oak beam. He was the only one tall enough to reach the place; obviously he had put the slipper there. The lovers exited into the night as Morgan insistently rang the front doorbell.

  Not long after Isle of Fury wrapped, Mary crossed the country for a visit. Perhaps she had received word of the Methot-Bogart romance; perhaps she just missed her husband. In any case, she was less confrontational and insistent this time. Humphrey left his digs at the Garden of Allah, and he and Mary settled into a rented house. The surroundings made little difference; they still couldn’t get along. While they were trying to decide whether their marriage was alive or dead, Mayo successfully sued Morgan for divorce, charging him with cruelty. Then she sat back, ready for Humphrey to fall into her lap. She did not have long to wait. Kenneth MacKenna had been in love with Mary for years. When it became obvious that Humphrey’s heart was not in the reunion, Mary gave up on the dream of reconciliation, moved out, filed for divorce, and as soon as the papers were ratified final, became Mrs. MacKenna. Humphrey followed suit, marrying Mayo on August 20, 1938. He was about to be thirty-nine; she was thirty-five. It was the third marriage for both. At the wedding party, Mischa Auer stripped to the skin and did a Cossack dance. That evening, Mayo and Humphrey carried on the eccentricity: they had an argument that degenerated into a battle royal. Humphrey walked out and spent the rest of the night drinking with colleagues. Mayo slept in a friend’s guest room.

  They made up the next day, and all was smiles and kisses. Save for that outburst it seemed a perfect union. Mayo announced an eagerness to forsake her own career and attend to Humphrey’s every need. He bought a house on Horn Street above the Sunset Strip, and filled it with attractive furniture, twenty-six finches and canaries, four dogs, and four cats. She went sailing with him on his newly purchased thirty-six-foot cruiser, cooked his dinners, kept his home spotless, played the genial hostess to his pals and their wives.

  But the truth was that except for tobacco she was his worst enemy. Mayo was jealous of every woman he talked to, and beside herself when he played love scenes. She and Humphrey had nightly arguments. Sometimes she would throw a bottle at his head, or slap him. He professed to admire her spirit, took to calling her “Sluggy,” gave his boat and their Scottish terrier that name, and put a sign reading “Sluggy Hollow” on their front lawn. There were raucous scenes in restaurants and at parties, and rarely did Humphrey bother to ameliorate the situation by talking calmly to Mayo or taking her out of the room. She misbehaved in front of everyone; Humphrey goaded her on. Visiting the Bogarts one night, humorist James Thurber watched the hostilities and later sent Humphrey a sketch of the mêlée entitled “Jolly Times.” Humphrey had it framed and hung over the mantelpiece. Columnists started referring to the couple as the Battling Bogarts. Humphrey enjoyed the label; he said it might be good for business. “I live dangerously,” he declared in one interview. “I’m colorful. But Sluggy’s crazy about me because she knows I’m tougher than Edward G. Robinson.”

  Mayo did have a soft side; she was very solicitous of Maud B
ogart when Humphrey brought his mother out west. He set Maud up in a luxurious Sunset Boulevard apartment at the Chateau Marmont, a Hollywood landmark, where Mayo paid frequent visits, bringing flowers and food. People remembered the seventy-something lady from that period. One witness recalled that every day she would walk to Schwab’s drugstore “as proud as Queen Mary out for an airing, still erect and wasp-waisted.” Most of the patrons knew who she was; Maud Bogart “talked to everyone, made little purchases and then strolled grandly home again.”

  Mayo’s tender feelings ended with her mother-in-law. When she dealt with Humphrey she was verbally abusive, and sometimes a lot worse than that. One night, for example, raving drunk, Mayo went after him with a knife. He avoided the first thrust, but when he headed for the door she stabbed him in the back. Humphrey slumped to the floor, unconscious. A doctor was hysterically summoned; he removed the knife and discovered that it had only penetrated about an inch. The back muscle was torn, but no other damage had been done. For five hundred dollars the physician agreed to stitch up the wound and keep his mouth shut.

  Alternately distracted, appalled, and amused, Humphrey kept working. From 1937 to 1940 he appeared in twenty-four films. Most of them were standard products of the Warners assembly line and looked it—although Humphrey found a moment of transcendence. In The Great O’Malley he was a memorable second banana to Pat O’Brien; rounding out a scene reminiscent of Warners’ earlier film I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, he played a down-at-the-heels war veteran, trying to peddle his military decorations. The pawnbroker dismisses him: they’re worthless. With a combination of rage and pathos the onetime soldier replies, “The only things left to remind me that I was once a man, and you call them junk!”