5 minute read
Literary Lives 12
from 09242021 WEEKEND
by tribune242
Jack Warner was furious, conscious of the fact that other leading actors like James Stewart and Henry Fonda would follow suit – which they did.
Bogart made his final two films for Warner Bros. Chain Lightning (1950) and The Enforcer (1951).
Advertisement
All Santana Productions’ films were distributed through Columbia Pictures between 1949 and 1953: Knock on Any Door (1949); Tokyo Joe (1949); In A Lonely Place (1950); and Sirocco (1951). Beat the Devil (1953) – the last film Bogart and John Huston made together, was distributed in the United States by United Artists. But before that, outside Santana Productions, they made The African Queen together with Katherine Hepburn. None of the Santana films made any money and Bogart sold his Santana Productions interest to Columbia Pictures for $1 million in 1955.
John Huston jumped at the chance to do another adventure film with Bogart. He and Sam Spiegel had bought the rights to the CS Forester novel The African Queen which had lain dormant for fifteen years. Spiegel sent the book to Katherine Hepburn who suggested Bogart for the lead. He was to get thirty percent of the profits, and she was to get ten percent. Both would receive small salaries. The stars met in London before flying to the Belgian Congo for a difficult shoot in difficult conditions. Bacall came over for the four-month film production. Nearly everyone in the cast developed dysentery except Bogart and Huston who survived on baked beans, canned asparagus and alcohol.
Hepburn, a teetotaller, fared worse than the other film crew in difficult conditions. She lost a lot of weight, at one point becoming extremely ill. The crew overcame illness, surviving ant infestations, poor food, attacking hippos, bad water filters, extreme heat, and dangerous marshes, rivers, and isolation to make the film.
“Lauren Bacall and Bogie seemed to have the most enormous opinion of each other’s charms, and when they fought it was with the utter confidence of two cats locked deliciously in the same cage.”
- Katherine Hepburn The Making of the African Queen or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind.
Bogart’s performance as the cantankerous harddrinking river-boat captain Charlie Allnutt earned Bogart his only Academy Award for Best Actor in 1951. It was a popular decision and he thought it the best performance of his career. The world agreed with him.
Humphrey Bogart was a founding member of the Hollywood Rat Pack. In the spring of 1955, after a long party in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Sidney Luft, Michael Romanoff, David Niven and Angie Dickinson, Bacall surveyed the wiped-out performers and said, “You look like a goddamn rat pack”, and the name stuck. At Romanoff’s in Beverley Hills, the name was made official, with Sinatra appointed “pack leader”, Bacall “den mother”, and Bogart “director of public relations”. Asked by the columnist Earl Wilson what the Pack’s purpose was, Bacall replied: “To drink a lot of Bourbon and stay up late.”
LAUREN Bacall with her and Humphrey Bogart’s two children, Leslie and Stephen, in 1959_
MEMBERS of the original ‘Rat Pack’ - Bogart with Lauren Bacall and Frank Sinatra
“I gave up drinking once. It was the worst afternoon of my life.”
- Humphrey Bogart
Anxious to get the role of Captain Queeg in Edward Dmytryk’s drama The Caine Mutiny (1954), Bogart dropped his considerable asking price. He got the part and played the paranoid, self-pitying character and received another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
In the mid 1950s, Bogart’s health started to deteriorate but he kept on working. The Barefoot Contessa by Joseph Mankiewitz was filmed in Rome and Bogart played a broken man who makes a star out of a flamenco dancer. Although Bogart’s performance was strong, he was disillusioned by the weak acting of Ava Gardner. The film was not a success but gave Bogart the opportunity to resume a long-time affair with Venita Bouvaire-Thompson – his studio assistant and drinking companion.
In 1954, he agreed to play the older conservative brother in Sabrina (1954) where he competed with his younger playboy brother William Holden for the elf-like Sabrina – played by Audrey Hepburn. Despite a strained relationship with the film’s director Billy Wilder (Bogart far preferred John Huston), the ageing Bogart adeptly managed his unlikely romantic lead with skill and sympathetic timing. It was a difficult role and gave the film the success it deserved.
He made The Left Hand of God (1955) with a mentally depressed Gene Tierney, and insisted on Joan Bennett’s starring role when a personal scandal erupted causing an outraged Jack Warner to demand her replacement in We’re No Angels (1955). She stayed in the picture. He was always generous with fellow performers.
Bogart formed another production company and a long-term deal with Warner Bros. However, his health was deteriorating and a persistent cough and difficulty eating became too serious to ignore. His plans for a film Melville Goodwin, U.S.A. were dropped. A heavy smoker and drinker, Bogart had developed esophageal cancer, confirmed by his doctor in January 1956. The condition worsened and Bogart had surgery to remove his esophagus, two lymph nodes and a rib. The surgery was unsuccessful, and he had additional surgery in November 1956. He bore his pain with stoic bravery and, when too weak to walk, requested he ride up and down floors in the dumbwaiter in style. It was then altered to accommodate his wheelchair.
Bogart lapsed into a coma and died on January 14, 1957 – twenty days after his fifty-seventh birthday.
A simple funeral was held at All Saints Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, and attended by Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracey, Judy Garland, David Niven, Ronald Reagan, James Mason, Bette Davis, Danny Kaye, Joan Fontaine, Marlene Dietrich, James Cagney, Errol Flynn, Edward G Robinson, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, Billy Wilder, and Jack L Warner. John Huston delivered the eulogy.
