Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  Sorry to see her go, Hump and Bill agreed that Naldi would be one of the many chorus girls that The Great Profile would pick up and discard. In this rare instance, however, Barrymore did indeed cast her in the role, and Nita Naldi went on to become one of the reigning screen vamps of the Twenties. Her biggest break came in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, where she played the Eurasian temptress, Sally Lung, who contracts leprosy as a “wages-of-sin” payment for her evil ways. Her co-star? None other than Rod La Rocque himself.

  Brady Sr. went on to salvage Life, eventually selling it to Adolph Zukor for $100,000. After he’d purchased the film, Zukor looked at it carefully, deciding it wasn’t worth releasing. He assigned it to storage where it managed to disappear.

  When Bogie in later life learned there were no more copies left, he said, “Thank the Devil for that.”

  ***

  Out of work, Hump spent the next three weeks writing a scenario for a gory film, Blood and Death. He wrote the script at the 21 Club, then one of New York’s most famous speakeasies. Thinking that such a costume made him look more like a writer, he wore a tweed jacket and smoked a pipe.

  Even though he’d been fired by Brady, Hump showed up at his office with his completed film script. Fearing rejection, Hump was surprised when “Mr. Showman” himself thought the script “could play.” He sent it over to a trio of producers he knew, Jesse L. Lasky, Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn), and Cecil B. DeMille. All three producers were too busy to read it, and they turned the script over to an office assistant, Walter Wanger. He skimmed it before tossing it into a wastepaper basket.

  In later life, when Wanger had become one of Hollywood’s biggest producers and Bogie one of its biggest male stars, Wanger always claimed that “Bogart used to write for me.”

  Wanger went on to produce such classics as Greta Garbo’s Queen Christina in 1933, John Ford’s Stagecoach in 1939, and even the ill-fated Cleopatra in 1963, co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

  Following a night of tabloid scandal in 1951, Bogie visited Wanger in jail. The previous evening in a fit of jealous rage, Wanger had shot a well-known Hollywood agent, Jennings Lang, in the groin. The agent managed the career of the then famous actress, Joan Bennett. “I was aiming for the fucker’s balls,” Wanger told Bogie, “but I missed.” Bogie’s reply: “So what in hell was the matter with my screenplay?”

  By 1937, Wanger agreed to cast Bogie in Stand-In with his friends, Leslie Howard and Joan Blondell.

  Hump wasn’t off the Brady payroll for long. Brady Sr. claimed he had no peace at home, because his wife, Grace George, his daughter, Alice, and his son, Bill, kept urging him to give Hump another chance. Brady rehired Hump at $50 a week and sent him on tour as the stage manager for Grace’s play, The Ruined Lady.

  He toured with Grace for six months in East Coast cities, including Philadelphia and Boston. He did not fall for Grace, who remained faithful to her husband, but she later recalled that he always managed to find a female companion in the seedy hotels her husband had booked them in. Mostly they stayed in fleabags that accepted traveling actors. Many hotels in those days refused to accommodate actors because they gave loud, drunken parties late at night, tore up the furniture, and usually skipped town without paying the bill.

  Bogie in later life would view that tour of The Ruined Lady as the most sexually liberating period of his life. “Everything I learned about women, I learned then. I’d had sexual experiences with the likes of Nita Naldi and others, but on the road I met all sorts of women—all shapes, sizes, whatever. I learned that some gals will do things to a man that respectable women never do. After that road show, I found a return to New York restrictive.”

  Co-starring beside Grace was a handsome young actor, Neil Hamilton, playing the ingénu lead. Although Hamilton was headed for a big career in Hollywood where he would become one of its most durable actors, Hump as stage manager wasn’t impressed with him. He called Hamilton “the stuffed shirt model,” because the actor had posed for so many shirt ads in magazines. Hamilton countered by calling Hump “Baby Food.” Behind Hump’s back, he referred to him as “Baby Shit.”

  On tour with Hamilton, Hump needled him for “having such a soft job. All you have to do is show up every night, mouth some writer’s words, and get your paycheck.” Hamilton always protested that there was more to acting than that.

  Before sending him out on the road, Brady had insisted that Hump understudy all the male parts in case one of the actors got sick. Before the final performance of The Ruined Lady, Hamilton developed the flu and called in to cancel.

  The cast assembled that Saturday afternoon for a dry run with Hump as the male lead. He’d memorized all the parts, having heard them week after week. But facing the seats of the empty theater, he was paralyzed and couldn’t remember one line of dialogue.

  Fortunately for Hump, Grace also developed a fever, perhaps having caught the flu germs from Hamilton during their love scenes. When members of the prospective audience showed up that night, their money was refunded at the box office.

  In spite of what Hump would later call “the disaster that never was,” the ever-faithful Brady family continued to believe in his acting talent. In May of 1921, Alice Brady offered him a walk-on part in her play, Drifting. It was going to have try-outs in Brooklyn in hope of obtaining backers for a Broadway production.

  Its director was John Cromwell, Hump’s close friend who was also a stage performer himself. In time, he would become one of Hollywood’s leading directors, known for turning out such classics as Of Human Bondage in 1934, Algiers in 1938, Abe Lincoln in Illinois in 1940, and Anna and the King of Siam in 1946.

  For Hump’s stage debut in Drifting at Brooklyn’s Fulton Theater, he invited everyone he knew. Maud chose not to go see her son on stage, still disapproving of his preferred choice of a profession. But the ever-faithful Bill Brady Jr. showed up, bringing with him Belmont and Stuart Rose. Stuart was still dating Frances. Hump’s sister had just seen her husband-to-be march in the Memorial Day parade. All three were eager to see Hump on the stage, hoping it would be a triumph for him.

  To Stuart’s horror, he discovered that Hump was spectacularly miscast in the role of a Japanese butler. Alice played a femme fatale, an archetype that would be perfected by Marlene Dietrich in films of the 30s. In later life, Hump called her role “early Sadie Thompson.” Kicked out of her home by her Puritan father, Alice’s character ended up in Singapore “drifting” into a life of depravity before being rescued by a handsome American soldier who falls in love with her.

  Bogie made his brief appearance carrying a tray of pink gin fizzes. Trying to imitate a Japanese accent, he uttered the words, “Drinks for my lady and for her most honored guests.” Frances and Stuart slid down in their seats in embarrassment, although Belmont later said that he thought his son “did a right fair job.”

  After he became a star, Bogie always derided the role as “the dumb Jap butler part,” as if anticipating the words of Erich von Stroheim who called his role in Sunset Blvd. opposite Gloria Swanson “the dumb butler part.” Von Stroheim made the role the greatest butler part of all time, whereas Bogie’s stage debut hardly merits a footnote in theatrical history.

  Somewhere between the time the tryouts were held and the play’s Broadway opening, Hump and the slightly older Alice began a quiet affair, even though she had married James Crane.

  “It’s a cordial romance,” Hump told Bill, who didn’t seem at all horrified that his best friend was sexually involved with his married stepsister. As Hump related to Bill, “We talk theater half the night and then get into bed together. Fortunately, Crane is out of town a lot. I get on top of her, do my job, then roll over and go to sleep,”

  It wasn’t love, but it was sex. Actually it evolved more into friendship than anything else. Until her death, Hump would remain her steadfast friend.

  Drifting did make it to Broadway and ran for sixty-three performances, even though Alan Dale, theater critic fo
r the New York American, called the play “strangely protuberant.” Its Broadway run at an end, Brady sent Alice and Hump on the road with Drifting.

  Two months into the run of Drifting, Alice announced to Hump that she was pregnant and was going to leave the cast. At first he was petrified, thinking that he might be the father. Alice assured him that the father was her husband.

  After she bowed out of the show, she never resumed her affair with Hump, later referring to it as “that brief fling that often happens between actors.” For Hump, it would become the role model for a future series of involvements with actresses with whom he appeared on stage or in films.

  Brady hired a fast-emerging young star of her day, Helen Menken, to replace his daughter. Arriving at the theater, Helen spotted Hump backstage. She told the theater manager, Glenn Wilson, “Daddy I want a taste of that.”

  ***

  A slender, beautiful actress, Helen Menken—because of her temper tantrums—was known as “the Irish Menk” in theatrical circles. She had moppish hair, a sort of auburn red, and her cupid’s-bow mouth was just as expressive as her hands, which Richard Schnel, a theater critic, had called “the most expressive on Broadway.”

  She looked at the world through liquid dark brown eyes that sometimes left the impression that she was misty-eyed. Her face was thin and pale, made even more so by her excessive use of rice powder. She kept her figure because of an extraordinary diet of two boiled eggs a day and perhaps a leaf of lettuce. That dietary advice had been given to her by the stage actress, Nazimova, who recommended it to all aspiring actresses as a guaranteed way of keeping one’s figure. Nazimova, as Hump was to learn later, had introduced young Helen to the delights of lesbian love.

  When Helen met Hump, she was already an established star, although not yet at the height of her fame. She’d appeared in Victoria Herbert’s play, The Red Mill, to critical acclaim.

  She’d also scored a success in 1918 in Three Wise Fools, a play by Austin Strong. Before her steady employment in the theater, she sold women’s hats and also did some clothes modeling at department stores. Prospective employers always commented on her “narrow shoulders,” preferring, even then, the more broad-shouldered look that in just a few more years would be popularized by Joan Crawford.

  Helen had made her theatrical debut at the age of six when she’d walked out nude in a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is said that the circumstances that surrounded Helen’s true-life stage debut at the age of six inspired the creation of the fictional career of the character of Margo Channing in the 1950 film, All About Eve, starring Bette Davis.

  Poorly educated and born into poverty, Helen had acquired a gloss of sophistication because of all her years in the theater. Born in New York City, she was the oldest of three children. For some reason of her own, Helen was proud to be a direct descendant of John Wilkes Booth.

  Hump was intrigued by her upbringing, which she called “my world of silence.” Both of her parents were deaf mutes, although Helen had been born with perfect hearing. She learned to communicate with them in sign language. Whenever her parents would get into an argument, one of them would turn off the lights, ending a fight since they could no longer see each other to communicate.

  Helen’s mother earned $3.50 a week sewing identification badges for business conventions, but her father had never held down a job for very long. Helen herself had come from a rough-and-tumble background of acting in road shows and sleeping in seedy rooms above drunken saloons.

  She remembered when one of these fleabag hotels near Trenton, New Jersey, had caught fire. “I climbed down from the second-floor window since the fire was raging up the only stairway. I raced out into the night and was standing out on the highway before I realized I was stark naked. It was twenty degrees that night.”

  For years she’d supported her family and had even managed to send one of her brothers to college. Helen herself had had only one and a half years of grade school. She didn’t enroll in school until she was twelve years old.

  Hump disliked Helen on sight. Because of Alice’s sudden withdrawal from the play, he had only twenty-four hours to teach her her lines. He might not have liked her personally but was amazed at how fast she learned the script. Before the curtain went up the following night, she was letter perfect.

  Unfortunately the play called for a series of eight complicated set changes. Deep into the second act, Hump and the stagehands in their haste had not secured the props. In the middle of Helen’s big scene, the wall of a set collapsed on her, burying her in front of the audience. Hump had to pull the curtain before Helen, who had not been hurt, could resume her theatrics.

  Helen tried to recoup her dignity but many customers walked out, demanding a refund on their tickets, claiming that they had purchased them to see Alice Brady.

  Enraged, Helen rushed backstage to confront Hump. “You asshole!” she shrieked at him. “You little shit.”

  Because of the abuse suffered at the hands of Maud’s ill-mannered and ill-tempered servants, Hump could not stand being called little shit. He kicked her in the rump, sending her sprawling onto the wooden floor. Jumping up, she aimed her sharply pointed high-heel shoe at his groin, scoring a bull’s-eye assault on his testicles. Falling to the floor, he doubled over in pain, which is where she left him as she stalked off to her dressing room.

  It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  ***

  Within six weeks Helen was professing her love for Hump. That love was not reciprocated, although he later told his friend Bill that “she’s great in the sack.” She invited him to come and live with her at her flat at 43 East 25th Street in New York but only for four nights each week. The other three nights of her week, Helen enjoyed the “wild side” of New York with her newly discovered companion, Tallulah Bankhead.

  Tallulah was a gorgeous and outrageous Alabama belle, living at the Algonquin Hotel on $50 a week sent to her by her daddy. Her stated ambition for coming to New York was: (1) to become the biggest Broadway star of all time; (2) to seduce John Barrymore, and (3) to “fuck Ethel Barrymore.”

  Hump had moved in with Helen without knowing much about her. In the first month or so, she kept him like a “toy boy,” not introducing him to her friends or making him part of her glittering Broadway world. It was as if she couldn’t decide what role he was going to play in her life.

  Day by day Hump learned more about his new girl friend. A high strung, nervous woman with a bizarre (perhaps anorexic) diet and a tendency to drink heavily, she worried and fretted most of the day. She read Broadway news with a certain fury, often bursting into violent rages when a rival actress received a part that she felt she was “destined to play.”

  Although bitterly resentful of the success of other actresses, she encouraged Hump with his theatrical ambitions. “After all, you’re no competition to me, darling. Be an actor out in front of the lights, not some God damn prop man. As a stagehand, you stink.” She constantly ribbed Hump for that opening night when the scenery fell on her.

  Helen had some peculiarities. Long before the world ever heard of Imelda Marcos, Helen spent a good part of her salary buying expensive shoes, even it if meant going without some of life’s essentials. She adored her tiny feet, which to Hump evoked memories of Maud’s small feet.

  The only difference was that Helen demanded that Hump spend as much time in bed kissing, licking, and biting her feet, as well as sucking her toes, as he did in attacking other parts of her body. Helen would spend hours washing, bathing, and caring for her feet, with endless pedicures. She would fret over the right nail polish to use for her dainty toes.

  In spite of her lack of schooling, she spoke perfect English. She said she’d learned to speak properly listening to other actresses on the stage, beginning with the star Annie Russell in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Helen’s voice sounded slightly husky, something like that of the future actress, Barbara Stanwyck, Bogie’s 1947 co-star in The Two Mrs. Carrolls.

  H
elen was much the same off-stage as she was on, which was very flam-boyant. She called everybody “darling,” an appellation soon picked up by her protégée, Tallulah.

  Almost overnight, Helen became the toast of Broadway. Austin Strong had “loved” her performance in his play, Three Wise Fools, and campaigned for her to be cast as Diane in his latest play, Seventh Heaven, which opened on Broadway in 1922 and became an immediate hit.

  Hump himself was in the opening night audience and was dazzled by her performance. In the role, she played a street urchin in Paris. Her most memorable scene was when she took a bullwhip, and in her rage and despair, drove her mean sister out of the house.

  Before meeting Helen, Hump had dated an aspiring young actress, Katharine Alexander. Briefly smitten with her, Hump pursued Katharine for a week or two. He’d never known anyone who’d been born and reared in Alaska, and was fascinated to learn of her experiences in the cold north. “I can take the chill off you,” he promised Katharine. She never gave him a chance to prove that.

  In spite of her sexual rejection of him, Hump and Katharine would become lifelong friends. She told him that she had never wanted to be an actress, but had studied to be a concerte artiste. For some strange reason, she seemed to take the greatest pride in her heritage. She was one-eighth Cherokee Indian.

  “I’ve never had a squaw woman before,” he jokingly suggested to her.

  “Many conquests are better off dreamed than experienced in real life,” Katharine told him. “I’ll see you in your dreams.”

  When he introduced Katharine to the handsomer, taller, richer, better built, and more successful Bill Brady Jr., Hump’s romance with Katharine came to an abrupt end. She fell at once for Bill. Hump showed little jealousy, and even suggested at one point that “we should share her,” evoking their brief fling with Nita Naldi.