Humphrey Bogart

At 57 years old, Humphrey Bogart has this physical status:

Riding high in 1947 with a new contract which provided limited script refusal and the right to form his own production company, Bogart rejoined with John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: a stark tale of greed among three gold prospectors in Mexico. Lacking a love interest or a happy ending, it was considered a risky project. Bogart later said about co-star (and John Huston's father) Walter Huston, "He's probably the only performer in Hollywood to whom I'd gladly lose a scene."

The film was shot in the heat of summer for greater realism and atmosphere and was grueling to make. James Agee wrote, "Bogart does a wonderful job with this character ... miles ahead of the very good work he has done before." Although John Huston won the Academy Award for Best Director and screenplay and his father won the Best Supporting Actor award, the film had mediocre box-office results. Bogart complained, "An intelligent script, beautifully directed—something different—and the public turned a cold shoulder on it."

Bogart, a liberal Democrat, organized the Committee for the First Amendment (a delegation to Washington, D.C.) opposing what he saw as the House Un-American Activities Committee's harassment of Hollywood screenwriters and actors. He later wrote an article, "I'm No Communist", for the March 1948 issue of Photoplay magazine distancing himself from the Hollywood Ten to counter negative publicity resulting from his appearance. Bogart wrote, "The ten men cited for contempt by the House Un-American Activities Committee were not defended by us."

Bogart created his film company, Santana Productions (named after his yacht and the cabin cruiser in Key Largo), in 1948. The right to create his own company had left Jack Warner furious, fearful that other stars would do the same and further erode the major studios' power. In addition to pressure from freelancing actors such as Bogart, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, they were beginning to buckle from the impact of television and the enforcement of antitrust laws which broke up theater chains. Bogart appeared in his final films for Warners, Chain Lightning (1950) and The Enforcer (1951).

Except for Beat the Devil (1953), originally distributed in the United States by United Artists, the company released its films through Columbia Pictures; Columbia re-released Beat the Devil a decade later. In quick succession, Bogart starred in Knock on Any Door (1949), Tokyo Joe (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), and Sirocco (1951). Santana also made two films without him: And Baby Makes Three (1949) and The Family Secret (1951).

Although most lost money at the box office (ultimately forcing Santana's sale), at least two retain a reputation; In a Lonely Place is considered a film-noir high point. Bogart plays Dixon Steele, an embittered writer with a violent reputation who is the primary suspect in the murder of a young woman and falls in love with failed actress Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame). Several Bogart biographers, and actress-writer Louise Brooks, have felt that this role is closest to the real Bogart. According to Brooks, the film "gave him a role that he could play with complexity, because the film character's pride in his art, his selfishness, drunkenness, lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence were shared by the real Bogart". The character mimics some of Bogart's personal habits, twice ordering the actor's favorite meal (ham and eggs).

A parody of sorts of The Maltese Falcon, Beat the Devil was the final film for Bogart and John Huston. Co-written by Truman Capote, the eccentrically filmed story follows an amoral group of rogues, one of whom was portrayed by Peter Lorre, chasing an unattainable treasure. Bogart sold his interest in Santana to Columbia for over $1 million in 1955.

Outside Santana Productions, Bogart starred with Katharine Hepburn in the John Huston-directed The African Queen in 1951. The C. S. Forester novel on which it was based was overlooked and left undeveloped for 15 years until producer Sam Spiegel and Huston bought the rights. Spiegel sent Katharine Hepburn the book; she suggested Bogart for the male lead, believing that "he was the only man who could have played that part". Huston's love of adventure, his deep, longstanding friendship (and success) with Bogart, and the chance to work with Hepburn convinced the actor to leave Hollywood for a difficult shoot on location in the Belgian Congo. Bogart was to get 30 percent of the profits and Hepburn 10 percent, plus a relatively small salary for both. The stars met in London and announced that they would work together.

Bacall came for the over-four-month duration, leaving their young son in Los Angeles. The Bogarts began the trip with a junket through Europe, including a visit with Pope Pius XII. Bacall later made herself useful as a cook, nurse and clothes washer; her husband said: "I don't know what we'd have done without her. She Luxed my undies in darkest Africa." Nearly everyone in the cast developed dysentery except Bogart and Huston, who subsisted on canned food and alcohol; Bogart said, "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whisky. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." Hepburn (a teetotaler) fared worse in the difficult conditions, losing weight and at one point becoming very ill. Bogart resisted Huston's insistence on using real leeches in a key scene where Charlie has to drag his steam launch through an infested marsh, and reasonable fakes were employed. The crew overcame illness, army-ant infestations, leaky boats, poor food, attacking hippos, poor water filters, extreme heat, isolation, and a boat fire to complete the film. Despite the discomfort of jumping from the boat into swamps, rivers and marshes, The African Queen apparently rekindled Bogart's early love of boats; when he returned to California, he bought a classic mahogany Hacker-Craft runabout which he kept until his death.

His performance as cantankerous skipper Charlie Allnutt earned Bogart an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1951 (his only award of three nominations), and he considered it the best of his film career. Promising friends that if he won his speech would break the convention of thanking everyone in sight, Bogart advised Claire Trevor when she was nominated for Key Largo to "just say you did it all yourself and don't thank anyone". When Bogart won, however, he said: "It's a long way from the Belgian Congo to the stage of this theatre. It's nicer to be here. Thank you very much ... No one does it alone. As in tennis, you need a good opponent or partner to bring out the best in you. John and Katie helped me to be where I am now." Despite the award and its accompanying recognition, Bogart later said: "The way to survive an Oscar is never to try to win another one ... too many stars ... win it and then figure they have to top themselves ... they become afraid to take chances. The result: A lot of dull performances in dull pictures." The African Queen was Bogart's first starring Technicolor role.

Bogart dropped his asking price to obtain the role of Captain Queeg in Edward Dmytryk's drama, The Caine Mutiny (1954). Though he retained some of his old bitterness about having to do so, he delivered a strong performance in the lead; he received his final Oscar nomination and was the subject of a June 7, 1954 Time magazine cover story.

Despite his success, Bogart was still melancholy; he grumbled to (and feuded with) the studio, while his health began to deteriorate. Like his portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bogart's Queeg is a paranoid, self-pitying character whose small-mindedness eventually destroys him. Henry Fonda played a different role in the Broadway version of The Caine Mutiny, generating publicity for the film.

For Sabrina (1954), Billy Wilder wanted Cary Grant for the older male lead and chose Bogart to play the conservative brother who competes with his younger, playboy sibling (William Holden) for the affection of the Cinderella-like Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn). Although Bogart was lukewarm about the part, he agreed to it on a handshake with Wilder without a finished script but with the director's assurance that he would take good care of Bogart during filming. The actor, however, got along poorly with his director and co-stars; he complained about the script's last-minute drafting and delivery, and accused Wilder of favoring Hepburn and Holden on and off the set. Wilder was the opposite of Bogart's ideal director (John Huston) in style and personality; Bogart complained to the press that Wilder was "overbearing" and "is [a] kind of Prussian German with a riding crop. He is the type of director I don't like to work with ... the picture is a crock of crap. I got sick and tired of who gets Sabrina." Wilder later said, "We parted as enemies but finally made up." Despite the acrimony, the film was successful; according to a review in The New York Times, Bogart was "incredibly adroit ... the skill with which this old rock-ribbed actor blends the gags and such duplicities with a manly manner of melting is one of the incalculable joys of the show".

Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa (1954) was filmed in Rome. In this Hollywood backstory, Bogart is a broken-down man, a cynical director-narrator who saves his career by making a star of a flamenco dancer modeled on Rita Hayworth. He was uneasy with Ava Gardner in the female lead; she had just broken up with his Rat Pack buddy Frank Sinatra, and Bogart was annoyed by her inexperienced performance. The actor was generally praised as the film's strongest part. During filming and while Bacall was home, Bogart resumed his discreet affair with Verita Bouvaire-Thompson (his long-time studio assistant, whom he drank with and took sailing). When Bacall found them together, she extracted an expensive shopping spree from her husband; the three traveled together after the shooting.

Bogart could be generous with actors, particularly those who were blacklisted, down on their luck or having personal problems. During the filming of the Edward Dmytryk-directed The Left Hand of God (1955), he noticed his co-star Gene Tierney having a hard time remembering her lines and behaving oddly; he coached her, feeding Tierney her lines. Familiar with mental illness because of his sister's bouts of depression, Bogart encouraged Tierney to seek treatment. He also stood behind Joan Bennett and insisted on her as his co-star in Michael Curtiz's We're No Angels (1955) when a scandal made her persona non grata with studio head Jack Warner.

Bogart had already been diagnosed with terminal cancer when shooting The Harder They Fall, a boxing drama with Rod Steiger in a supporting role. Steiger later mentioned Bogart's courage and geniality during his final performance:

Bogart rarely performed on television, but he and Bacall appeared on Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person and disagreed on the answer to every question. He also appeared on The Jack Benny Show, where a surviving kinescope of the live telecast captures him in his only TV sketch-comedy performance (October 25, 1953).

Bogart and Bacall worked on an early color telecast in 1955, an NBC adaptation of "The Petrified Forest" for Producers' Showcase. Bogart received top billing, Henry Fonda played Leslie Howard's role and Bacall played Bette Davis's part. Jack Klugman, Richard Jaeckel, and Jack Warden played supporting roles. In the late 1990s, Bacall donated the only known kinescope of the 1955 performance (in black and white) to the Museum Of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media), where it remains archived for viewing in New York City and Los Angeles. It is now in the public domain.

Bogart also performed radio adaptations of some of his best-known films, such as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, and recorded a radio series entitled Bold Venture with Bacall.

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