Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  That had seemed like a strange remark to Hump, because Belmont, at least to his knowledge, hadn’t entered Maud’s bed in years.

  She had also insisted that this “waterfront trash” eat in the kitchen with the Irish servants. To defy her, Belmont would also take his meals in the kitchen with the object of that evening’s fascination.

  Usually, a “river rat” would visit the Bogart home only once. Belmont’s interest in these uneducated specimens he would pick up rarely lasted more than two or three days.

  The exception had been a handsome, ruggedly masculine, and well-built “man of the sea,” Lars Schmidt. Depending on what day of the week you asked him, Lars claimed to be Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish, and during one particularly frank dialogue, German.

  Because he spoke six languages, had incredible good looks, and always dressed nicely, Maud had at first been attracted to his charm and personality. Even Hump had been fascinated with Lars. He’d entertain the boy with tales of all the shipwrecks he’d survived. The most fascinating adventure, as he’d related, was when his merchant ship had almost collided with another in the middle of the Atlantic. This ghost ship had seemingly come out of nowhere, appearing mysteriously in the fog.

  “It was definitely a Swedish man-of-war from the 17th century,” Lars had claimed. “Our crew could actually see seventeen sailors standing on deck as the ship passed us by. They were as lifelike as you are sitting across from me. We were awe struck as we watched the vessel drift away into the dawn. I’ve never seen anything like that before or since.”

  Whenever Lars came to the port of New York, he always arrived unannounced at the Bogart home. His parents’ explosion over Lars had come one hot, blistering August day as the entire city was melting under a record-breaking heat wave.

  It was so hot that when Lars had to walk outside his bedroom to go to the bathroom on the second floor, he’d wandered down the stairs stark naked. One of the Bogart daughters, Frances, had seen him nude in the hall and had run to her mother in her studio to report on this.

  Maud had been furious and had climbed to the top floor to see what was going on. The door to the bedroom where her husband had slept the night before with Lars was wide open. She’d looked inside and found Lars in the middle of the bed playing with himself. He’d invited her in to join him.

  She’d screamed and had run downstairs.

  That night when Belmont came home after a day’s work at the local hospital, she confronted him. “Lars is not a man,” she shouted in front of the children and the servants. “He’s a freak of nature. That is no penis that belongs on a man. A horse maybe. Frances will be ruined for life having seen such a thing. For all that poor girl knows, all men are built like that. Because of this, she’ll never marry, and if she does, she’ll be afraid to go to bed with her husband.”

  That night had led to a Bogart family drinking marathon and more violent arguments. Maud threatened that, “If Lars darkens this door again, I’m packing up, moving out, and taking the children with me.”

  Despite the enormous pressure, that drunken night didn’t end Belmont’s friendship with Lars. Whenever the sailor came to New York, the doctor packed a suitcase and checked into the Hotel Marseilles with Lars. A then-fashionable address, it lay across the street from the Bogart home, which was at 245 West 103rd Street.

  Like any hotel, it operated like a world unto itself. The beer kings, the Rheingold brothers, called it home, as did Sara Delano Roosevelt, mother of Franklin.

  When Mrs. Roosevelt learned of Belmont’s rescue of her son during the nearly fatal drowning incident at the lake, she sent a servant across the street with an invitation for Dr. and Mrs. Bogart and their young son, Humphrey. She may not have known about the existence of the two Bogart sisters.

  As Maud rarely accepted any social invitation and attended almost no parties, she tore up the invitation without telling her husband. Maud was offended by the politics of Theodore Roosevelt and didn’t want to seek any more intimate contact with the Roosevelts after she’d reluctantly sheltered Franklin for one night at her summer home.

  When Lars had some time off from sailing, he would go with Belmont on a train to Canada. Up there at an address never revealed to his family, the doctor and Lars would stay at a rustic hunting lodge owned by Belmont. Sometimes for weeks at a time, Belmont would neglect his medical practice, coming back to New York only when his supply of morphine had run out.

  On one particularly long trip, Maud had talked to Hump. “There are men like your father who don’t have natural instincts. He’d rather be socializing with riff-raff than in a good clean bed with his own wife. We stay together but only for the sake of you children. In time you’ll understand what a loveless marriage is. Perhaps you’ll even have one or two of your own.”

  ***

  At one school dance during his early teen years, Hump asked Leonore Strunsky—nicknamed Lee—to be his date. It was the beginning of a friendship that would last for the rest of his life, because Lee in time would become famously married to another Bogie friend, the lyricist Ira Gershwin.

  At the dance, just before Lee excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, she’d asked for a glass of punch. While he was getting it for her, two older students in their senior year had deliberately bumped into Hump. “Still dressing like a girl?” one of them had taunted him.

  Instead of trying to defend himself, Hump had escaped and fled to his school locker. Once there, he’d removed the Daisy Air Rifle his father had given him six weeks before. Belmont was a superb wing shot, and he wanted to pass his skill on to his son.

  Running outside of the school hall, he’d taken the rifle and aimed it at all the red lanterns lighting up the night. He hit every one of them before the school custodian had found him, chasing him from the grounds.

  He’d later walked in Central Park arm in arm with Lee, rather proud of his accomplishment. He’d known he couldn’t take the boys on in combat, but in some way had felt he’d gotten revenge.

  On a bench in Central Park, they’d indulged in some heavy necking. Lee not only let him kiss her, but told him that, “It’ll feel much better if you stick your tongue in my mouth.”

  He’d done just that. She didn’t object when he reached inside her dress and felt the firmness of her breasts. But she did not let him do any exploring below her beltline. “That’s only for when we’re married,” Lee told him.

  When he’d gotten home, after kissing Lee good night, he felt like a real man.

  The moment he walked into the Bogart’s living room, he knew that something was wrong. His father was there waiting for him, and he’d been drinking heavily. Maybe the doctor had also been drugged.

  The principal from the school had already contacted Belmont about the lantern shoot-out. Coming up to his son, his father seemed to tower above his teenage boy.

  Without warning, Belmont delivered several chopping blows to his son’s face, loosening two front teeth and smashing his upper lip repeatedly until part of it was torn from the boy’s face.

  As he’d stood back, realizing the damage he’d done, the doctor seemed to sober up. Maud rushed into the room. Seeing her son, she screamed before turning to confront her husband. “You touch him again, and so help me God I’ll kill you.”

  When the male servant, Liam Mangam, came up from the rear, having been aroused from his bed with one of the Irish maids, Belmont ordered him to carry Hump upstairs to his office.

  Once there, the doctor sewed up his son’s lip, but he was too drunk to do an adequate job. He ordered Mangam to summon a cabbie to take them to the nearest hospital.

  In the aftermath of the injury, Hump’s upper lip never healed properly. As every close-up in nearly every movie house in the world later revealed, Bogie’s upper lip throughout his adult life bore the scar of that awful night. His lip was to remain partly paralyzed, giving him a slight lisp.

  After surgery on his lip for the second time in five hours, Hump had been told that he’d have to go to th
e family dentist in the morning to replace those two missing front teeth.

  The attending doctor at the hospital, John Kells, also gave the teenage boy a thorough physical examination. He recorded that he was 5 feet, 9 inches, weighed 110 pounds, had brown eyes, a fair complexion and light brown hair, his chest measuring 33 inches.

  Belmont reported to Kells that his son had had a severe case of the mumps two years ago and that they had “fallen.” That most often led to a temporary enlargement of the testicles, followed by a massive shrinkage to a withered pea.

  Dr. Kells examined Hump’s testicles, finding that he’d escaped from this curse relatively intact, although noting a swelling of the spermatic vein on the left side of the boy’s scrotum. Both doctors agreed that this was a “congenital condition” and would probably not affect Hump’s ability to father children at some point in the future.

  At midnight, Hump, accompanied by a chastised Belmont and Mangam, was released from the hospital to return to the dismal life at 103rd Street.

  During his first week home, Hump made one trip to the dentist, accompanied by one of the Irish maids. The dentist replaced Hump’s two front teeth. Hump insisted on having his teeth in place before “my best gal,” Lee Strunsky, came to visit him at the family brownstone.

  Having never had a girl friend before, Hump was excited when Lee called to tell him that she was coming over at three that afternoon.

  Maud ushered Lee upstairs to Hump’s bedroom, where he was convalescing. From the look on his mother’s face, Hump knew that Maud disapproved of this visit.

  It wasn’t until an hour later, after Lee had gone, that Maud stormed into his bedroom. “Don’t you ever invite that stinking little tramp into my house again,” she yelled at her son.

  “She’s a very respectable girl, and very nice,” Hump protested.

  “She’s a slimy Jew,” Maud charged. “I don’t want a son of mine going out with a Jewess. These money-changers are the anti-Christ. They have no appreciation of the finer things of life. They’re all about greed and chicanery. They are the bottom-feeders of life.”

  “Jews are just as good as anybody else,” Hump said. “No better, no worse.”

  “You’re a moronic fool if you think that,” Maud said, her temper flaring. “If you ever again invite a Jew into my house, boy or girl, I will personally shut the door in their face. Is that understood, young man?” She turned and left the room, leaving Hump in total bewilderment. Since he didn’t plan to give Lee up, he’d sneak away and see her in private.

  Maybe, when he finished school, he might even ask Lee to marry him. That would really piss off Maud.

  As Hump saw it, there was one major problem in their courtship. Lee wanted to wait until they were married before doing it.

  Hump decided the time for seduction was at hand. In the days ahead, he was going to figure out a way to charm the bloomers off that pretty girl.

  The way he saw it, a Jewish pussy could be just as hot as a Gentile one. Maybe even more so. Time would attest to the accuracy of that perception.

  ***

  In ways that anticipated the plots of some of the movies he’d eventually make in the 1930s for Warner Brothers, Hump did not get the girl in the final reel. He never knew exactly what happened to his budding relationship with Lee, but it ended almost as suddenly as it had begun.

  All Hump found out later was that Maud had placed a telephone call to Lee. He never knew what his mother had said to his young girl friend, but Lee never saw him until decades later, and he did not press her for the answer.

  He even went to her house, but a servant informed him that Lee was not at home, even though he suspected that she was upstairs hiding in her bedroom.

  He would meet Lee later in life as a political ally and friend. He always referred to her as “my first girl friend,” even in front of her husband, Ira Gershwin.

  A new friend had come into Hump’s life that made him forget all about Lee. William Brady Jr. was the son of the showman and promoter, William Brady Sr., whom Hump had met when this entrepreneur was a patient at his father’s office. Brady Sr. had promised an introduction to his son, who was Hump’s age, and in spite of the producer’s busy schedule, he remembered and set it up.

  The moment he arrived at the Brady house and met Bill Jr., Hump almost overnight transferred his crush on Belmont to Bill. Bill was a handsome, precocious young man, filled with facile charm and a manly grace. He’d grown up in a world of famous names in both boxing and the theater, and he had a sophistication that Hump envied.

  Many young girls were captivated by this dashing man, but once Bill met Hump Bill had no more time for the females in his life. The two young boys became fast friends. Soon after they met, they pledged loyalty to each other and a devoted friendship “for the rest of our lives.”

  When Hump was finally invited into the Brady home for chocolate milk and cookies, he was dazzled by the opulence of the parlor. Although Maud decorated her house elegantly, it didn’t have the ostentation of the Brady home, which some guests had described as “a Victorian stage set.”

  Not only was Bill’s father famous, but so were his mother and step-sister. Hump was especially intrigued by Bill’s mother, Grace George, a bigtime star of her day who had appeared in many of her husband’s films or Broadway productions.

  A darling of Broadway’s theater critics, George had gone from triumph after theatrical triumph that included appearances in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara, as well as Divorçons, The School for Scandal, and Kind Lady. She was also a major talent scout for her husband, encouraging him to offer breaks to such newcomers as Helen Hayes in What Every Woman Knows. She also picked out the then-relatively-unknown Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., from a cast of hopefuls, persuading her husband to cast him opposite her in Clothes, even though “he’s not good-looking.”

  The daughter from Brady’s first marriage,& born in 1892, was Alice Brady, a rising star in her own right. Seven years older than Hump, beautiful, and educated during a period of her life in a convent in New Jersey, she captivated Hump with her talent and charm. She had abandoned a budding career as a singer in grand opera, preferring instead a career as a Broadway actress. She had been appearing on Broadway since her debut as an ingénue in The Balkan Princess in 1911. Having made a name for herself in several Gilbert and Sullivan revivals, she had been in dozens of her father’s silent films shot for World, his film company. She’d first appeared on screen in 1914 in a flick called As Ye Sow. When Hump met her, she’d just filmed The Gilded Cage.

  The first time Hump appeared in her living room, Grace George was polite but distant, and soon excused herself to go and read a script sent over by her husband. Alice remained behind to have a cup of tea, but it quickly became obvious that she was not smitten with Bill’s young friend the way Hump seemed to be with her.

  As she recalled years later, “He was just too young for me when we first met. But when Humphrey came back from the Navy, he’d matured a lot. I became very interested in him despite the difference in our ages.”

  Brady Sr. always gave his son all the free passes he wanted to Broadway shows, both his own productions and those of his rivals. Bill’s father had dreams of becoming a theatrical producer as well known and successful as David Belasco.

  Paying a nickel fare, Hump and Bill rode to 42nd Street on the rickety Broadway trolley, headed for a vaudeville show at the Palace Theater. Hump had never been to a performance at a major Broadway theater before, and he was immediately captivated by the bright lights and bustle. The show they were headed for was noteworthy in that it included, on the same bill, both Sarah Bernhardt, the greatest dramatic actress of her day, and the comic actor, juggler, and drunk, W.C. Fields.

  Decades later, Mae West, co-starring with Fields in My Little Chickadee, and herself a Broadway star at the time of Hump’s introduction to the theater, dismissed the claim that “The Divine Sarah” and Fields appeared on the same bill. “I’m sure Madame Bernhardt has other things to
do than appear on stage with a low-rent, drunken comedian,” West claimed. “If Fields thinks Bernhardt was there, he’d had too many drinks, as usual.”

  But despite Mae West’s denials, Bogie maintained through the rest of his life that he’d seen Bernhardt on the same playbill with Fields.

  When Bernhardt was rolled onto the stage in a wheelchair, Hump was shocked. He’d expected to see some tall and statuesque figure of glamour and intrigue. Instead he saw a pale and very frail hospital patient in her 70s, with frizzy red hair. In an accident in France, she’d slipped and had fallen, breaking her leg. Gangrene had set in, and her doctors had to amputate her leg. For her first U.S. performance, she had turned that tragedy into an advantage. Wearing a poilu (the uniform French soldiers wore at the time), she’d appeared in New York playing a French soldier who had lost a leg. She’d held a battered flag in her hand while standing unsupported on her still-remaining good leg. Hollow cheeked and colorless, she emphasized her deadly whiteness with a dense coat of chalk-colored poudre-de-riz on her face. Looking like a consumptive wraith, she evoked the mummy of an Egyptian Pharaoh.

  But when Bernhardt spoke lines from Dumas fils ’ La Dame aux Camélias, her beautiful voice radiated magic. Even from her wheelchair, she moved her body with the lashing grace of a panther.

  Spellbound, Hump sat with Bill throughout the performance in a state of rapture. At the end, Bernhardt received a standing ovation that lasted ten minutes. Of her voix d’or, the writer, Maurice Baring, rhapsodized, calling her sound, “A symphony of golden flutes and muted strings, a silver dawn lit by lambent lightnings, soft stars and a clear-cut crescent moon.”

  After that day, Hump became addicted to the theater the way an addict is to heroin. He couldn’t get enough of Broadway shows.

  Back home that night, Hump poured out his enthusiasm for the world of the Bradys and his love of the theater. Maud was not impressed. “Not only are they in show business, they are Jews.” Hump didn’t care.