On that dark, rainy afternoon, as he drank alone and grew more despondent in his bleak apartment, the phone rang. Thinking it was Bill, he picked it up to discover Sheila Crystal on the line. His theatrical agent had gotten him another film job.
The great singing star of the Twenties, Ruth Etting, had seen Hump’s performance in the short-lived Skyrocket, and had told her backers that she thought “Bogart would be ideal as my leading man” in a ten-minute short she’d contracted to film for Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone Corporation.
Once again and without ever setting foot in Hollywood, Hump found himself cast in a movie opposite a famous woman star.
***
Like Katharine Cornell, the songbird, Ruth Etting, was late on the first day of rehearsals for their film short. She’d been rehearsing for her upcoming Broadway show, Whoopee! She was Hump’s favorite recording star, and he always proclaimed that she had a “gorgeous voice.” He’d seen many pictures of her in the tabloids and had found her a& “great beauty.”
Etting lived up to her billing. When she finally did show up, Hump was dazzled by the sultry torch singer known as “America’s sweetheart of song.” Only two years older than Hump, Etting had been born in Nebraska. But, as he later told Bill Brady, Jr. “She looked like no cow gal I’ve ever seen.” When introduced to him, he shook her gloved hand. She reached over to kiss him gently on the lips. “It’s good for me to see you in the flesh and up close,” she said, still holding his hand. “I found you very sexy and commanding in Skyrocket even if the critics
didn’t.”
He looked into her eyes. He’d later say, “I never saw a woman’s eyes dance before I met Ruth. We clicked from the very first. After only an hour together, we were confessing intimate secrets. She even told him that her secret ambition was to design clothing. “I design some of my outfits on Broadway,” she said.
Later, when the film script called for him to come on to her, he found that his impotence had been miraculously cured. Fortunately they were seated at a table. Otherwise, the camera might have recorded one of his biggest erections.
Although he wanted to, Hump didn’t put the make on Etting the first day. She gave him several opportunities and seemed to actively encourage him. Hump was afraid—not of Etting, but of her husband. She was married to the Chicago gangster, Martin Snyder, nicknamed “The Gimp” because of a lame left leg. He was promoting her singing career by throwing his weight around Broadway, using tactics he’d learned from a life on the streets in Chicago’s underworld.
As work on the short film began, Etting confessed that she’d left “The Gimp” and planned to dump him. She also told Hump that she’d had a very brief affair with showman Florenz Ziegfeld when she’d starred in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927, singing Irving Berlin’s “Shaking the Blues Away.”
When Hump didn’t invite her out that night, she asked him to go on tour of the speakeasies. After a few drinks, she confessed that she was having an affair with the young singer, Bing Crosby. “The Gimp” was supposed to be fanatically jealous, but she seemed to be screwing around a lot, even when she was living with the gangster.
Shortly before midnight, Etting invited Hump back to her apartment. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said.
Once in the apartment, she put on a record of one of her songs. She stood in front of her record player and told him to turn off the lights. Not knowing what was about to happen, he turned off the sole light in the room. “Lights,” she called out after less than a minute.
When he turned on the light bulb again, Etting was standing nude in front of her record player. She sang “Love Me Or Leave Me” to him. As she sang, he removed his clothing. At the wrap of her song, he moved toward her, his erection guiding his way.
In one of the many ironies of Hump’s life, that was not the last time “Love Me Or Leave Me” would figure into his career. Nearing the end of Bogie’s life in 1954, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer considered him for their upcoming picture, Love Me Or Leave Me conceived as a vehicle for Doris Day. The studio felt that Hump would be ideal cast as Etting’s gangster lover, “The Gimp.” Feeling the film was too much a star part for Day, he turned down the role, which eventually went to James Cagney, his longtime rival for gangster roles at Warner Brothers in the 1930s.
***
As it had with so many other women, his affair with Ruth Etting ended almost before it began. “The Gimp” arrived back in New York and had a reconciliation with Etting. Bill Brady Jr. told Hump that “The Gimp” often assigned hit men “to beat up or kill any man who moves in on his lady love.” Even with the dangerous gangster back in her life, Etting placed three more calls, hoping to arrange a private assignation with Hump. He was too afraid to return her calls.
Still sleeping with Mary, he had managed a one-night stand with a beautiful actress who had had a brief walk-on in the Vitaphone short, Broadway’s Like That, in which he co-starred with Etting. Her name was Joan Blondell and her nickname was “Rosebud.” To him, she was a blonde bombshell from Texas, and he’d been captivated by her youthful exuberance, expressive face, and popped-out eyes that seemed to devour whatever man they focused on.
Like Kenneth MacKenna, she was heading for Hollywood to star in a picture, Sinners’ Holiday, with James Cagney.
After their one night of passion, Joan made him promise to “look me up if you ever come to Hollywood.” She gave him a phone number where she could be reached in Los Angeles. He wrote it down but didn’t expect to see her again.
As he said goodbye to Joan when he went down to see her off at Grand Central, little did he know that this would be “the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” and that he would one day be co-starring with her in motion pictures. Not only that, their one-night stand would mark the beginning of one of the most enduring and long-running affairs of his life.
***
Work came in the form of another three-act Broadway comedy, this one a superficial comedy by Laurence E. Johnson, produced and directed by David Belasco at the Belasco Theatre. It’s a Wise Child was slated to open on August 6, 1929, starring Helen Lowell, Olga Krolow, Leila Bennett, Mildred McCoy, and George Walcott. No longer a co-star as he had been in The Skyrocket, with Mary, Hump got fifth billing in yet another juvenile part.
In spite of the many drawbacks of both the play and his role within it, Hump got to work with some of the biggest names on Broadway. First, Guthrie McClintic had been his director. Now, he was being directed by David Belasco, an influential powerhouse sometimes known as “The Bishop of Broadway.” The theater, constructed in 1907, in which their play was to open, was even named after Belasco, who had emerged as one of the most influential men in the entertainment industry at the time. He had seemingly done everything in the theater, including the writing of a smash hit, The Heart of Maryland, about the Civil War. He had even selected the name “Mary Pickford” for the film actress who would eventually become “America’s Sweetheart.”
During the first week of rehearsals, Hump had been disappointed that Belasco, as director, spent so little time coaching him in his role of Roger Baldwin, a part he loathed. The comedy concerned a woman who falls for a young bank clerk as played by Hump. Already saddled with an elderly fiancé, she tells him she’s pregnant with another man’s child. Hump’s role was conceived as that of a “transitional beau,” and his character was described as “not one of those silly dancing and drinking men” but as “one of the best-looking men you were likely to ever meet, with the profile of a Greek God.” In the final act, the beautiful heroine irrationally dismisses Hump as “just a foolish kid” when he tells her that he cares more about his job than he does about her.
Not particularly attracted to the aging star of the play, Helen Lowell, Hump made a play instead for the enchantingly lovely second female lead, Mildred McCoy, considering her “twice as beautiful as Mary.” Mildred seemed fascinated with Hump and invited his amorous attention, even though she constantly refused to go out with him.
Word of Hu
mp’s flirtation with Mildred must have reached her beau. As rehearsals began one Monday morning, the stage manager came backstage to tell him that Mildred’s lover was sitting alone out front. He was none other than Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, the most famous “Indian” in America. Hump was even wearing a pair of canvas running shoes, “Long Lance Sport Shoes,” named after him.
Long Lance was a darling of the tabloids, which exploited his alleged adventures as an athlete. He was said to have been trained by the legendary Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe and in addition, he was a war hero. He was also a journalist, biographer, public lecturer, pilot, Indian rights advocate, and was heading to Hollywood to become a movie star. Not only that, he was a boxer, having claimed that he had knocked out Jack Dempsey during a sparring match.
In the glittering world of New York society of the 1920s, hostesses vied in sending out invitations to this so-called full-blooded Blackfoot chief, who had captured the imagination of North America with the story of his life and the plight of downtrodden Indians. As a special dispensation, Woodrow Wilson had even appointed Long Lance to West Point.
Not everybody bought his story. There were rumors that he was not a Cherokee from Oklahoma at all. He’d become such a famous fixture on the American landscape that reporters were investigating rumors about his true identity. Reports were turning up from western North Carolina that Long Lance was descended from African slaves. He was dark skinned but not black skinned so he was able to pass as an Indian. Other rumors suggested that his actual father might have been a tobacco planter from England, who had moved to the Winston-Salem area and conceived Lance with a local woman of color, which would account for Long Lance’s skin tone.
After the rehearsals, Long Lance went backstage to meet Belasco and other actors. In front of Hump, he kissed Mildred on the lips, asserting his territorial rights. He was an imposing figure towering over Hump. From that day on, Long Lance attended every rehearsal, always coming backstage to rescue Mildred.
After a few days, Long Lance’s hostility toward Hump ended as he’d come to view him as no competition for& Mildred’s affections. “What would she want with that little runt when she’s got me?” he& asked Belasco one day, “After all, they don’t call me Long Lance for nothing.”
He even invited Hump to join Mildred and him on a round of the city’s speakeasies, where Long Lance dominated the conversation with tall tales of his exploits. Hump listened attentively and seemed enthralled, although later telling Belasco that he too believed that Long Lance was an imposter. “An imposter,” Hump said, “but a glorious one.”
As he got to know Long Lance better, Hump came to believe that he was indeed black but had assumed the Indian identity to escape the restrictive segregationist policies of the South. Long Lance viewed himself as following in the tradition of what he said was his “remote maternal relative,” Kit Carson, and was filled with fascinating tales of his experiences which allegedly ranged from being a rider in a Wild West show to fighting bravely as a Canadian soldier who’d won the Italian War Cross and the French Croix de guerre.
One day, Long Lance didn’t show up for rehearsals, but cornered Hump when he was leaving the theater in the late afternoon. There was a look of desperation on Long Lance’s face. Hump led Lance across the street as a means of talking to him privately. “You can have Mildred,” Long Lance said. “She’s all yours. In fact, I want you to take her off my hands.”
“What’s going on here?” Hump asked.
“One of America’s most famous women has fallen madly in love with me.”
“You mean, the very, very rich Anita Baldwin?”
“Anita and I are through,” Long Lance said. “It’s someone else. She’s big. I can’t tell you her name. But I’ve got to get rid of Mildred. You go after her. Maybe she’ll fall for you. If not, she might fuck up this new thing I have going.”
Hump said he’d always found Mildred sexy and appealing, and he’d do his best to lure her away from him.
“You’re a swell guy, Bogart,” he said.
That didn’t sound like Cherokee talk to Hump. The two men talked for an hour, pledging eternal friendship to each other. Long Lance even promised to make Hump an honorary Cherokee.
Having been dumped by Long Lance, Mildred finally agreed to go out with Hump after the opening night curtain fell on It’s a Wise Child. They were in a mood to celebrate when they hit Tony’s. Many of the critics also descended on Tony’s that night, having already filed their reviews of It’s a Wise Child. Hump was eager to ask them what they had written but knew that that wasn’t proper Broadway protocol.
Mildred and Hump waited for the reviews, which were lukewarm. She was disappointed that only three reviews even listed her, with no comment about her acting. Woollcott wrote that Hump played his role with “more than his usual vigor and sincerity.”
Feeling despondent and wanting to be cheered up, Mildred invited Hump back to her hotel room.
The next morning he got one of the worst reviews of his young life. Over coffee downstairs in the breakfast room, Mildred confessed to him. “You and I have no future,” she told him. “After enjoying the embrace of Long Lance for many weeks, I realize that you are that inadequate sprig reviewers are always citing.”
***
During the run of the play, the Wall Street crash of October, 1929 came tumbling down on the worldwide economy. Miraculously, the play survived the drop-off in business. Many other theaters shut their doors. At first Hump and Mary were unaware of how thoroughly Broadway would eventually be impacted by America’s financial crisis. “In bad times, people need to be entertained,” Mary told him. “They’ll flock to the theater for escapism.”
“Yeah,” Hump said. “But how in the fuck are they going to afford the tickets?”
Even in the midst of the disaster, Hollywood agents had descended on New York, hoping to find “actors who know how to talk.” Out on the West Coast the unattractive voices of many silent-screen greats were repositioning them into the dustbin of film history.
Stuart Rose had become good friends with the former Broadway producer, Al Lewis, who ran the New York office for Fox in which Stuart worked. Stuart’s job involved reading plays, hoping to find one suitable to be filmed. He managed to persuade Lewis to give his brother-in-law a chance at a screen test. Stuart took Lewis to see It’s a Wise Child, and Lewis reluctantly agreed, although he wasn’t impressed with the scar on Hump’s upper lip.
Hump didn’t think much would come of yet another screen test for him, but he performed a ten-minute segment from The Man Who Came Back.
When Lewis sent Hump’s test to Fox in Hollywood, the studio wired him to sign Bogart for $750 a week. If he did well, an option called for his paycheck to go up to $1,000 a week, a virtual fortune at the beginning of the Depression.
Without checking with Mary, Hump signed with Fox. In their apartment that night, he tried to persuade Mary to drop out of The Tavern, a play in which she was starring on Broadway. He asked her to go on the train with him to Los Angeles. She refused, and violently so, leading to one of their biggest fights.
“You want to become a big-time movie star,” Mary shouted at him. “Well, I want to become a big-time Broadway star. Bigger than your lez wife, Helen Menken.”
“You’re not talented enough to carry the train of Helen’s gown on stage,” he yelled back at her. “She’s a bigger star than you’ll ever be. I thought you’d jump at the chance to go to Hollywood. That way you could fuck Kenneth one night, me the next.”
She stormed out of their apartment and didn’t come back all night. Even if she had returned, Hump wouldn’t have been there.
After having farewell drinks with Bill and Stuart at Tony’s, Hump called Helen Menken and asked her if he could spend the night with her. She agreed, inviting him to come over right away. With his suitcase already packed, he hugged and kissed both Stuart and Bill good-bye, and took a taxi to Helen’s apartment.
Waking up the next morning, he s
melled breakfast cooking. Helen was freshly made up and had his favorite bacon and eggs on the table. It was Helen, not Mary, who accompanied him to Grand Central where he caught a train that would take him to Chicago and on to Los Angeles.
On the way to Chicago, drinking heavily, he mixed freely with the passengers, and, like a little boy, even showed some doubters his newly signed contract with Fox. After a few drinks, he told one Kansas City cattleman, who’d never heard of Humphrey Bogart, that those Broadway screen writers were right on the mark. “That screen fob, Valentino, is going to be replaced by me. I’m going to become the biggest movie star Hollywood’s ever seen.”
CHAPTER THREE
When the train pulled into Los Angeles, photographers rushed to snap pictures of the most famous passengers. In the confusion, Hump was ignored until he saw Kenneth MacKenna rushing to embrace him at the station. “Welcome to Hollywood,” Kenneth said. “Old buddy, old pal.”
Hump embraced him warmly. It was good to see someone from New York.
“My apartment’s waiting for you,” Kenneth said. “I even washed the toilet seat.”
Later, Hump read about the death of Long Lance. In 1932 he was found shot dead in the Arcadia, California home of Anita Baldwin. A pistol was by his side. A statement released to the press said that Long Lance, Chief Buffalo Child, had “absented himself from this harsh world by a pistol shot.”
But despite the “official” report, up until the day of his death, Hump claimed that Baldwin had killed her black lover, “the great Indian impostor.”
***
En route in a taxi to Kenneth’s apartment, Hump looked for signs of resentment or hostility from Kenneth, finding none. Even though he’d been in love with Mary and had proposed to her first, he seemed to have forgiven Hump for marrying her instead.
Hump was candid with him, admitting that he and Mary were seeing other people and that the marriage had indeed been a mistake. Hump could have let it go at that, but he was the constant provocateur. He confessed Mary’s secret to Kenneth: that she was having an affair with Kenneth’s brother, Jo Mielziner. This news seemed to hurt Kenneth, and the moment Hump told his friend that, he regretted the confession.
Humphrey Bogart Page 17
