This all started in the 1950's when he had already compiled a history. My first slight awareness of Bogart was with "The Roaring Twenties" (1939) where he was a lesser gangster in a James Cagney film. http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2015/09/james-cagney.html
Watching "Bogart Life Comes in Flashes" (2026) fleshed out a little of the real person outside the roles. He grew up in a sort of upper middle class family of Dutch background with a surgeon father and a mother who was a bit of a suffragette. He got into some trouble at school that curtailed university plans.
Towards the end of World War I he had been in the naval reserve. One lasting impact of that experience was his love for sailing. Using a family connection he ended up acting on Broadway, but with only mediocre success. He then tried films, but found that unsatisfactory and returned to the stage.
His big breakthrough came when Leslie Howard asked for Bogart instead of Edward G Robinson for "Petrified Forest" (1936 ). Bogart had played Duke Mantee, the gangster role on Broadway. Bogart was grateful and later named a daughter Leslie.
His first three wives were all actresses and helped advance his career.
Lauren Bacall met him as a 19 year old actress in "To Have and Have Not" (1944). He was married and she was not at first impressed, but he kept kidding her around and eventually they developed a relationship. About a year later he was divorced and they married. They were in a few films together, but she wanted to break away to establish herself, but they were Hollywood's most famous couple. Watching her husband hanging around with some other celebrities such as Frank Sinatra she commented they looked like a "damn rat pack."
Bogart never had children with his first three wives and in his late forties didn't particularly want any. But Lauren did and they ended up with two. He did become attached to them. Steven was one of the narrators for the film.
A part of his early career was gangster films in which he often got killed. By the 1940's, gangster movies made way for detective films. He became Sam Spade in the classic "Maltese Falcon" (1941) a role that had been slated for George Raft.
I saw 20 of his films, not all classics, but I enjoyed "Casablanca" (1942), "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" (1948), "Key Largo" (1948), "The African Queen" (1951) where he won his only Oscar, "The Caine Mutiny" (1954) and "The Harder They Fall" (1956) his last film before death in 1957.
Smoking, very visible in films and personal clips helped cause the cancer that made his last year tortuous. Sailing was one of his comforts. He was so frail at the end he had to squeeze into a dumb waiter to bypass walking the stairs. see http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2015/06/smoking-and-movies.html
Bogart has a distinctive voice, that was emphasized by his mannerism. He was seen as cool, reserved and aloof.
At one point he publicly argued with Joseph McCarthy and his House of Un American Activities. McCarthy wanted to censor movies. Bogart and Bacall did visit Washington to convey their feelings.
I have written about two other old movie stars shared with my parents, Glenn Ford and Ray Milland. See
You will like "Bogart Life Comes in Flashes" as it contains lots of memorable film clips, but also shows a lot of his personal life.
