Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  ***

  As days drifted into weeks, Bill Brady was becoming more possessive of Hump, who no longer planned his own life but allowed his best friend to do it for him. At plays or at the cinema, Bill took to holding Hump’s hand. Hump never objected to this and enjoyed the camaraderie. Even when Bill put his arm around him and walked along the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn, Hump did not object. A lot of schoolboys in those days did that.

  The word “homosexual” was just coming into vogue in avant-garde circles, but in the minds of most people, if such a thing existed at all, it was never spoken about. Many indulgent parents, especially those as sophisticated as Belmont and Maud, assumed that a young boy went through periods of infatuation with another boy his own age. Even if extreme affection was displayed, it was taken for granted that this was just a “stage” a young man went through before meeting the girl of his dreams and settling down.

  In spite of the domestic horror surrounding the shooting incident at school, and the subsequent injury to his lip, Hump had not lost interest in his Daisy Air Rifle. Nor had it been taken away from him by his father. The future actor, who would one day become a famous icon in a trench coat carrying a gun, spent hours in his room dismantling his gun and reassembling it.

  He even carried it in the leg of his trousers and took it with him whenever he went with Bill to the theater. After a show let out, they would find nearly deserted streets where no cop could be seen, then shoot out the globes of gas lamps before scampering off into the darkness of an alleyway to hide if anyone tried to chase after them.

  One late summer afternoon, Hump tired of his air rifle and wanted something more lethal. Before going over to Bill’s house, Hump went into the basement of the Bogart home and removed a .22 caliber pistol from his father’s collection which he kept there.

  Bill had been given tickets to see a performance that evening by Alla Nazimova. This Russian-born stage actress and silent film star was famous for her interpretations of works by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Hump was anxious to see her in the flesh, having read much press on her at Brady Sr.’s theatrical offices. It could not have been imagined by Hump at the time that he would one day live at the Garden of Allah in Hollywood which, as “the Garden of Alla,” had been Nazimova’s home before it was turned into a hotel and colony of bungalows.

  But it wasn’t a work by Ibsen that Nazimova was performing that night. She was starring in Bella Donna, a frothy lust-and-revenge melodrama. Hump would have preferred a more classical introduction to her repertoire. After all, this was the electrifying actress who had brought Chekhov and Stanislavsky to the American

  theater.

  Hump found the diminutive star “shatteringly powerful” and marveled at her “foreign sophistication.” This exotic actress would, in fact, pave the way for the likes of silent screen vamp Pola Negri and, in time, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. In just a few years Nazimova would& select Rudolph Valentino as her co-star in the film Camille before stealing his wife, the stunningly beautiful Natacha Rambova, as part of a well-publicized and notorious lesbian tryst.

  After seeing Bella Donna, Bill and Hump headed for a Broadway diner for a plate of ham and eggs for Hump and a hamburger for Bill. His friend told Hump, “Don’t go falling for Nazimova. She likes to have sex with women— not men.”

  This was the first knowledge Hump had of lesbianism, although he would in the 30s and 40s appear with more lesbian stars than any other leading male actor in Hollywood.

  He’d heard that boys fooled around together, and had late at night wondered if his own father might have some sort of “unnatural attachment” to the sailor riff-raff he brought to their home. Like Queen Victoria, he’d never given lesbianism a thought.

  Bill claimed that Nazimova had fallen in love with his mother, Grace George, and had ardently pursued her, sending her roses every day, even expensive gifts, until Nazimova had tired of Grace’s lack of response. By then, Nazimova had moved on, having fallen in love with another actress, Eva Le Gallienne.

  Later, Bill promised to invite Hump up to his bedroom where he claimed he would show him some “dirty French postcards” he’d stolen from his father’s files. Hump eagerly accepted that invitation. He’d never seen a picture of a man and a woman having sex together.

  After a snack, Bill asked Hump to go with him to Coney Island to ride the Ferris wheel. Later the boys planned to shoot out some more bright lights.

  On the fast-spinning wheel, something went wrong. The pistol Hump had concealed in his trousers blasted off. The bullet missed his chest, which could have killed him, but blasted into his right wrist. At first Bill thought that Hump was screaming at the thrill of the ride until Hump held up his wrist in agony as the blood gushed out.

  Nothing could be done until the end of the ride. Knowing they would have to seek help from the police, Bill took the gun from Hump and tossed it into the night.

  At the end of the ride, the manager saw that young Hump had been injured and immediately called the police. Hump, with Bill in attendance, was rushed to the hospital where a doctor discovered that it was a bullet wound. Until then, the police believed that somehow he’d been cut, perhaps by one of the moving parts on the Ferris wheel.

  Hump lied to the police and to the doctor, claiming that during the ride a sniper had shot at them, missing Bill but hitting him. The police bought that unlikely story.

  When the police drove Hump back home to Manhattan that night, Maud and Belmont were in the foyer waiting for him. After thanking the cops for their assistance, an angry Belmont didn’t strike his son in the face this time. What he did do was to forbid him to carry guns any more. He said that he’d gone to his son’s room and removed the beloved Daisy Air Rifle.

  “It’s time to ship you off to the Phillips Academy at Andover to prepare you for Yale,” Belmont said.

  “And I absolutely forbid you to see that Brady boy again,” Maud said. “You were a good boy until you took up with the likes of that Jew.”

  “I’ll go to the academy,” Hump said to his parents. “But there’s no way in hell I’ll give up my friendship with the Bradys.” He stormed upstairs to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

  ***

  With a bandaged wrist, Hump accepted Bill’s invitation to visit his bedroom at the Brady house to view a collection of pornographic French postcards. They had been collected by his father on a visit to Paris and smuggled through U.S. Customs, as was the way in those days of heavy censorship.

  Today, in an era when pre-adolescents routinely watch porno on television, it’s difficult to imagine the effect back then of a “dirty picture” on young boys at the height of their sexual potency.

  Hump was fascinated by the sepia-toned photographs, one showing a young man with a large erection standing up while two bare-breasted women kneeled to service him. Another depicted the same man bedding one of the women. Yet another pictured him plunging down on a woman in the act of cunnilingus.

  Bill became so excited by the pictures that he whipped out his penis and began masturbating, urging Hump to do the same. Reluctantly Hump pulled out his penis and he too masturbated to climax.

  After putting the postcards back into their folder, Bill asked Hump to kiss him since he hadn’t touched him during their sex together.

  Hump agreed, providing Bill would swear not to tell anybody. “It’s okay,” Bill told him. “I’ve done this to other guys. All the guys at school do it.”

  Hump kissed him back. As he was to recall years later to his friend, Truman Capote, “It wasn’t at all bad. It felt kinda nice. I didn’t think anybody in the world loved me at the time, and it was good to know that Bill did. At first I kissed him because I felt I owed him a favor. After we kissed, I liked it a lot. It was the beginning of many kisses we’d exchange over the years. Our relationship never developed much beyond that. Kissing and playing with each other was as far as I was willing to go. I knew Bill wanted to do some of the things in those pictures, bu
t I could never bring myself to it. I loved the guy, though.”

  ***

  The marriage between Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, some twenty miles north of Boston, and Humphrey Bogart was doomed from the beginning, when he arrived there a week late for classes during an unseasonably cool September in 1917. Founded by Calvinists during the American Revolution, it was the finest prep school in the country. One of its stated purposes was to guard young men “against the first dawnings of depraved nature.”

  The Academy could name-drop like no other school, having historical ties with John Hancock, Paul Revere, John Adams (its fourth principal), George Washington (who gave an address there), and, in time, Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes and, much later, President George Bush Sr.

  Belmont had graduated with the class of 1888, having excelled in baseball and football. He’d written his former schoolmate, Alfred Stearns, now headmaster, asking him to admit his son in spite of his poor grades at Trinity.

  On the train to Andover, Hump read Stove at Yale, Owen Johnson’s popular novel which painted a romanticized version of what college life was really like. To Hump, the novel read like a saccharine-laced fantasy. He’d also bought a newspaper that morning, as he always read the front page news carefully. The United States had entered the war on the side of the Allies on April 6, 1917. Before leaving New York, Belmont had told him that many of the students at Andover, along with some faculty members, had temporarily resigned or left the Academy to join the forces on the Western Front in Europe, battling the Kaiser’s armies.

  Assigned a spartan-looking cell, Number Five, at Taylor Hall, Hump felt that his steel cot evoked a prison cell. Up to now, he’d lived in grand comfort.

  Next to Hump’s room was the bathroom, shared by twelve other young men on the floor. A previous occupant of Hump’s cell must have had an interest in boys taking a shower, because he’d carved a hole about the size of a baseball between Hump’s room and the shower.

  Hump discovered that hole in the wall on his second day there when he went to remove the reproduction of an antique map of Massachusetts. Looking through the hole, he could have a perfect view of the genitalia of the young men showering. Fortunately, no one was in the shower room when he peeked in, or else he would have been embarrassed.

  Lonely and sad to be away from Bill and the bright lights of Broadway, the seventeen-year-old Hump found himself facing a Puritan regime that was launched at 7:30 every morning at chapel.

  Classes were boring and he wanted to drop out of Phillips Academy after the first semester until he met schoolmate Floyd Furlow, who also lived in Manhattan. The son of the president of Otis Elevator Company, Floyd was a fun-loving guy full of wicked humor.

  Although only eighteen years old at the time, Floyd claimed to have had ten affairs with women, three of whom were married to some of his father’s best friends. He also stashed away booze in his room and would invite his “favorites” on the floor to come and join him.

  Floyd and his friends seemed to know much about the world. All of them had been to Europe and one of them, Philip Burton, had once been taken to Africa on a safari with his father.

  Hump couldn’t match these adventures, as he’d never been taken even to Canada on one of Belmont’s hunting trips.

  Frederick Boyce, the stern headmaster of Hump’s dormitory, was also a physics teacher. With his white mop of hair, he stuck his eagle’s beak into everybody’s business. Boyce was known for raining hell and damnation onto anyone who violated house rules.

  With his wife, Betty, and their three children, Boyce lived on the dormitory’s main floor so he could observe the coming and going of all “my boys.” Students were forbidden to use the entrance in the rear.

  The only boy on the floor who Hump disliked intensely was a nerd who wore thick wire-rimmed glasses, Charles Yardley Chittick. Chittick wanted to study law at either Harvard or Yale. Hump suspected that he was a spy, reporting every infraction to Boyce.

  Charles had the single cell directly opposite Hump’s. Whenever they would meet in the hallway, neither spoke to each other. If they encountered each other in the shower room, Hump would turn his back to Charlie and conceal his genitals.

  Charles had told Floyd that he considered Hump a spoiled brat, secretly resenting that Hump was invited to Floyd’s drinking parties and that he was excluded. Both Floyd and Hump referred to Charles as “a bookworm.”

  Hump eagerly awaited the Christmas vacation when he could return to Manhattan and take in some Broadway entertainment and resume his friendship with Bill.

  Ten days before Hump’s anticipated return to New York, Dr. Stearns had written Belmont a bad report. “Your son appears bored in class, his mind dreaming dreams of God only knows what. He is indifferent to the school curriculum. He doesn’t participate in sports or any school activities. He doesn’t even try to maintain a respectable gentleman’s C average. Although we are allowing him to return after the holidays, I must withdraw all off-campus privileges. He will be confined to his room, the library, the dining room, and his classrooms. Despite your earlier assurances to the contrary, I fear that your son is definitely not Andover material. Unless he improves in the upcoming semester, I fear for the continuation of his academic career.”

  That Christmas, a few days before his eighteenth birthday, Hump was certain of only one thing: he didn’t want to be a surgeon like his father, and he didn’t want to go to Yale or Harvard.

  Home from Andover for the holidays, Hump endured the criticism of his parents and listened to how disappointed they were over his academic record. He promised them he’d buckle down during the second term and make them proud of him, although secretly he had no intention of changing any of his behavior at the academy. None of the teachers inspired him, and their boring recitations of dates and historical events conveyed no drama for him.

  On the first night of his return, Hump couldn’t wait for the end of his reunion with his parents, so he could sneak out of the house to see Bill Brady. While at the Phillips Academy, Bill had written him almost daily, and Hump had answered every letter. At times Bill’s letters were all that kept Hump from wanting to commit suicide.

  At the Brady home, Hump was welcomed more lovingly by this Jewish family than by his own dysfunctional and coldhearted parents. Brady Sr. seemed genuinely interested in him, and Grace George and Alice Brady filled him in on all the news of their latest theatrical successes. Hump was particularly intrigued by the silent screen flickers Alice was making, although Grace George considered the movies a passing fancy and not worthy of the attention of a serious actor.

  Once alone with Hump in his upstairs bedroom, Bill hugged Hump in a tender embrace and kissed him on the lips. “You’re still my best buddy or did you mate with some other person up at Andover?”

  “I’m still your best friend,” Hump said. “For always. I’m pretty much a loner at school.”

  In spite of this pledge of devotion, Bill regaled Hump with tales of his recent sexual exploits. Hump was surprised that Bill had never mentioned this in any of his letters. “I met this girl,” Bill said. “Priscilla Davenport. I know. A real dumb name. But she was terrific. She let me get into her bloomers any time I wanted. Those secret sessions you and I had together were just kid’s stuff. I got the real thing and it was terrific.”

  “I can’t match your record,” Hump said. “I pursued a few gals at Andover but nothing happened. A harmless date here and there. Maybe a kiss. Nothing heavy. I’d like to meet this gal of yours.”

  “Too late for that,” Bill said. “She moved to California with her family. Her dad’s in the movie business. He thinks Hollywood will one day be the center of films. My dad knows a lot more about flickers than Priscilla’s old man. Dad says the heart of the film colony will still be New York and New Jersey.”

  Hump had mixed feelings about Bill’s relationship with Priscilla. He was both happy about his friend’s scoring with a woman, yet jealous at the same time. For some reason he resented B
ill’s intimacy with someone else.

  Those feelings of resentment disappeared later that afternoon when Alice Brady introduced Hump to her new beau.

  Only slightly younger than Hump, Stuart Rose was the best-looking and most dashing teenager Hump had ever met. In his case, Alice didn’t seem to mind that Stuart was younger than herself. She’d treated Hump like a kid, but related to the even younger Stuart like a man of the world.

  Precocious for his age, Stuart was a cavalryman in the U.S. Army and was home on leave. The Rose family lived on Riverside Drive, only a ten-minute walk from the Bogart home.

  Alice had met Stuart when he’d come backstage to congratulate her for her appearance in the revival of Little Women, in which she played Meg, a role she’d first performed on Broadway in 1912.

  “Since that first meeting, we’ve seen each other every day,” she told Hump, as she took Stuart’s hand and gazed into his eyes.

  Caught up as they were in the theatrical productions of Brady, Sr., each member of the Brady family was preoccupied with his newest film, Love Eternal, being produced on a sound stage in Queens. Even the dignified Grace George, despite her oft-expressed disdain for “the flickers,” was about to appear in her husband’s movie, having agreed at the last minute to replace the film’s original star, actress Beatrice Lane, who had suddenly fallen ill with pneumonia. Grace was co-starring in the movie with her stepdaughter, Alice Brady, who played the role of the naïve ingénue, and young Bill was working as the assistant director to his father.

  One evening, when every member of the Brady family was caught up in some aspect of the film’s production, Stuart Rose found himself alone for the evening. In the same position, Hump immediately invited him to dinner at Luchow’s, the long-established German restaurant on 14th Street so beloved by his father, Belmont.

  Throughout the evening, Hump became enthralled with Stuart, who entertained him with stories of his life as a cavalryman. “Women really go for a man in uniform.”