Home> Facts and Trivia > Stars > Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart Facts
| Sign | Capricorn |
| Born |
Dec 25, 1899 New York City, NY |
| Died |
Jan 14, 1957 Los Angeles, CA |
| Age | Died at 57 |
| Total Facts | 72 |
Frank Sinatra's group of friends, known as The Clan, was actually originally a group of Bogart's friends, including Sinatra, who enjoyed drinking heavily. They referred to themselves as The Holmby Hills Rat Pack, derived from the Holmby Hills section of Hollywood where the Bogarts lived. The origin of the term The Rat Pack was this: One morning, after a night of heavy drinking by Bogart and his friends, Bogart's wife Lauren Bacall walked into the room, looked at the group and flatly stated, "You look like a God-damned rat pack." Bogart enjoyed the term, and a legend was born. The name "Rat Pack" stopped being used by Bogie's friends when he died. Sinatra and his friends hated being called the Rat Pack. (source: Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies).
Lauren Bacall once recalled that while John Wayne and Fred Astaire hardly knew her husband Humphrey Bogart at all, they were the first to send flowers and good wishes after Bogart was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in January 1956.
Clifton Webb once said about Bogart, "Humphrey was not a tough guy, He was not at all. He was about as tough as Little Lord Fauntleroy".
According to "The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood" by Ezra Goodman, Bogart would often strategically disappear from his table at the Hollywood landmark restaurant Romanoff's--a favorite Bogart hangout--when the check was brought to the table, especially after he had invited a magazine writer to dinner and drinks. Often the writer would wind up having to put on his expense account the bill that Bogart had run up for himself and his friends.
After undergoing a nine-and-a-half hour operation for esophageal cancer on 1 March 1956, Bogart began smoking filtered cigarettes for the first time in his life.
All four of his wives were actresses.
Almost all of the roles that made him a star (after a decade of toiling in minor films) were roles he got because George Raft had turned them down, from High Sierra (1941), in which Bogie was first noticed as a viable box office draw, to Casablanca (1942), which made him a true international star. Ironically, after having been overshadowed by Raft the whole first half of his career, Bogart is today by far the better-known star and is considered the superior actor of the two.
Although he and wife Lauren Bacall initially protested the House Un-American Activities Committee, they both eventually succumbed to pressure and distanced themselves from the Hollywood Ten in a March 1948 Photoplay Magazine article penned by Bogart titled "I'm No Communist".
Although usually considered a quiet and accommodating actor by most of his collaborators, he became disliked by William Holden and Billy Wilder during the filming of Sabrina (1954). A good friend before they made the film, Wilder later said that Bogart, near the end of his life, apologized for his behavior on the set and said it was due to his personal problems. Even so, Audrey Hepburn got along with him despite his criticism of her.
At 5'8", he was almost exactly the same height as his beloved wife Lauren Bacall.
Bogart's father, a wealthy surgeon, was friends with famed Broadway and film producer William A. Brady and the families lived near each other in New York City. It was through Brady that Bogart got his first acting job on Broadway, and he in fact worked for a while as the manager of Brady's film studio, World Films.
Bogart's speech defect (lisping) does not appear in the German dubbings of his voice, which is also lower.
Co-starred not only in Casablanca (1942), the film rated No. 1 on American Film Institute's list of Top 100 U.S. love stories (2002), but in four other films on AFI romance list: The African Queen (1951), ranked at #xx; Dark Victory (1939), ranked at #32; Sabrina (1954),ranked at #54; and To Have and Have Not (1944), ranked at #60.
Decades after his death, Bogie made a guest appearance on the TV horror series "Tales from the Crypt" (1989). Footage from several movies was computer enhanced and combined with a voice and body double to allow Bogart to receive top billing for the episode "You, Murderer." Guest starring with "Bogie" were John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini, performing an eerie (and hilarious) parody of her mother, Ingrid Bergman.
Distantly related to the late Princess Diana, Princess of Wales, through her American relations.
Father: Belmont Bogart (1867-1934), mother: Maud Humphrey (March 30, 1865 in Rochester, NY-1940), sisters: Frances Bogart (1901-?) and Catherine "Kay" Bogart (1903-?).
For years, a 16mm print of the Janet Gaynor/Fredric March version of A Star Is Born (1937) would be screened at the Bogart household each and every Christmas Day (Bogart's birthday) while Bogart would sit watching the film and weeping. Finally, one year, director Richard Brooks, a long-time friend of Bogart's asked him why. "Because," Bogart explained, "I expected a lot more of myself. And I'm never going to get it.".
Frank Sinatra's group of friends was known as the Clan. Sinatra's Clan included many of the same hard-drinking friends as Bogie's Rat Pack. The name "Rat Pack" stopped being used upon Bogie's death. Bogart was the official founder and leader of the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, as he called them. Sinatra, a friend, was a member and, when Bogart died in 1957, started calling his group of friends the Clan, which of course had Sinatra as their Chairman. (From Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies).
Has three films on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time. They are: Dark Victory (1939) at #72, The African Queen (1951) at #48, and Casablanca (1942) at #32.
He and Lauren Bacall are immortalized in Suzanne Vega's song "Freeze Tag".
He had just turned 57 and weighed only 80 pounds when he died on January 14, 1957.
He had many famous visitors as he grew ill from cancer during the year before he died, including but not limited to Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, George Cukor, Peter Ustinov, Billy Wilder and Kirk Douglas.
He was a close friend of Richard Burton, and once confessed to the Welsh actor that his ambition had always been to act in a Shakespearean play on stage. He regretted that the public probably would not be able to take him seriously in such a role, due to his screen image as the tough guy.
He was a friend of the English actor Jack Hawkins, who also suffered from throat cancer nine years after Bogart's death.
He was involved in a serious automobile accident late in the production of Beat the Devil (1953). Several of his teeth were knocked out in the accident, hindering his ability to speak clearly. Director John Huston hired a young British actor noted for his mimicry skills to re-record some of Bogart's dialog during post-production looping. And although the talent of the young impersonator is such that the difference is undetectable while viewing the film today, it is a young Peter Sellers who provides Bogart's voice during some of the scenes.
He was voted the 13th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.
He was voted the Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
His coffin contains a small, gold whistle, put there by his wife, Lauren Bacall.
His marriage to Lauren Bacall occurred at the Pleasant Valley area of Richland County, Ohio, known as Malabar Farm, the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield (4 miles southeast of Lucas within Monroe Township). The home is now an Ohio State Park.
His performance as Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) is ranked #24 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
His performance as Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942) is ranked #19 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
His performance as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) is ranked #50 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
His performance as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) is ranked #80 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
His preferred brand of cigarettes was Chesterfield.
In Key Largo (1948), Bogie takes the helm of a boat called the Santana. In real life, Santana was the name of Bogie's yacht, which he purchased from June Allyson and Dick Powell.
In 1952, he campaigned for Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson after initially supporting Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In her essay "Humphrey and Bogie," Louise Brooks, who knew Bogart early in his career, said that the role she felt most closely personified Bogart's personality was Dixon "Dix" Steele in In a Lonely Place (1950): "In a film whose title perfectly defined Humphrey's own isolation among people, In a Lonely Place (1950) gave him a role that he could play with complexity because the film character's, the screenwriter's, pride in his art, his selfishness, his drunkenness, his lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence, were shared equally by the real Bogart.".
In late 1947, was to be a partner with producer Mark Hellinger in a proposed new company, Mark Hellinger Productions. Bogart invested $25,000 and was contracted to do two films a year. Hellinger owned the rights to Willard Motley's best selling novel "Knock on Any Door". However, Hellinger died in Dec. 1947. The rights to the novel passed to Bogart, and it became the first film of his own new independent production company, Santana Pictures Corporation: Knock on Any Door (1949).
In the episode of "The Simpsons" (1989) entitled "Sideshow Bob Roberts", Bogart's name is spoofed when Lisa mentions a famous snake named 'Humphrey Boa-Gart".
In the Woody Allen film, Play It Again Sam, Allan's character (Allan Felix) is seen receiving dating advice from Humphrey Bogart's ghost (played by Jerry Lacy), who is visible and audible only to Allan.
Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA, in the Garden of Memory, Columbarium of Eternal Light (not accessible to the general public).
Is mentioned in the Bon Jovi song "Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen of Mars" along with his wife Lauren Bacall.
Is mentioned, along with wife Lauren Bacall, in the hit 1980s song "Key Largo" ("We had it all, just like Bogie and Bacall").
Is portrayed by Jerry Lacy in Play It Again, Sam (1972).
Is portrayed by Kevin O'Connor in Bogie (1980) (TV).
Like his friends John Huston and Spencer Tracy, Bogart was a heavy smoker and a heavy drinker, allegedly sustaining two packs of Chesterfields a day.
Maud Bogart's drawing of her baby Humphrey appeared in a national advertising campaign for Mellin's Baby Food, not as often erroneously reported, for Gerber.
Named his daughter, Leslie Bogart, "Leslie" to show his gratitude to Leslie Howard, who got him his big break in The Petrified Forest (1936).
New York Times reported on 12/25/2000 that "Humphrey Bogart was born on 23 January 1899, but Warner Brothers publicity decided that a Christmas birthday would be far more advantageous because 'a guy born on Christmas can't be all bad.'" However, copies of two 1900 census forms prove this to be incorrect.
Off the set, he and Ingrid Bergman hardly spoke during the filming of Casablanca (1942). She said later, "I kissed him, but I never knew him." Years later, after Ingrid Bergman had become involved with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, and borne him a child, he bawled her out for it. "You used to be a great star," he said. "What are you now?" "A happy woman," she replied. Bogart's coolness towards Bergman was later revealed to have been caused by the violent jealousy of his wife at the time, Mayo Methot, whose fears were realized when Bogart entered an affair with future wife Lauren Bacall.