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Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon. The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema.

Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).

His breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941, with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); The African Queen (1951), Sabrina (1954) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His last movie was The Harder They Fall (1956). During a film career of almost thirty years, he appeared in 75 feature films.

Bogart had been raised to believe acting was beneath a gentleman, but he enjoyed stage acting. He never took acting lessons, but was persistent and worked steadily at his craft. He appeared in at least seventeen Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935. He played juveniles or romantic second-leads in drawing room comedies. After the stock market crash of 1929, stage production dropped off sharply, and many of the more photogenic actors headed for Hollywood. Bogart's earliest film role is with Helen Hayes in the 1928 two-reeler The Dancing Town, of which a complete copy has never been found.

Bogart then signed a contract with Fox Film Corporation for $750 a week. Spencer Tracy was a serious Broadway actor whom Bogart liked and admired, and they became good friends and drinking buddies. It was Tracy, in 1930, who first called him "Bogey".

Bogart's sharp timing as private detective Sam Spade was praised as vital to the quick action and rapid-fire dialog; the film was a huge hit. Bogart was unusually happy with it, remarking, "it is practically a masterpiece. I don't have many things I'm proud of... but that's one".

Bogart gained his first real romantic lead in 1942's Casablanca playing Rick Blaine, the hard-pressed expatriate nightclub owner, hiding from the past and negotiating a fine line between Nazis, the French underground, the Vichy prefect and unresolved feelings for his ex-girlfriend. In real life, Bogart played tournament chess, one level below master level and often played with crew members and cast off the set. He reportedly insisted that Rick Blaine be portrayed as a chess player.

Bogart met Lauren Bacall while filming To Have and Have Not (1944). When they met, Bacall was nineteen and Bogart was forty-five. He nicknamed her "Baby." Bogart was still miserably married and his early meetings with Bacall were discreet and brief, their separations bridged by ardent love letters.

Just months after wrapping the film, Bogart and Bacall were re-united for their second movie together, The Big Sleep. Bogart was still torn between his new love and his sense of duty to his marriage.

Divorce proceedings were initiated by February 1945. Bogart and Bacall then married in a small ceremony at the country home of a close friend on May 21, 1945.

The marriage proved to be a happy one, though there were the normal tensions due to their differences. He was a homebody and she liked nightlife. He loved the sea; it made her sick so Bacall allowed Bogart lots of weekend time on his boat. Bogart's drinking sometimes inflamed tensions

Bogart starred with Katharine Hepburn in the movie The African Queen (1951) which meant leaving the comfortable confines of Hollywood for a difficult shoot on location in the Belgian Congo in Africa. Bogart got 30 percent of the profits and Hepburn 10 percent, plus each got a relatively small salary.

Bacall came for the duration (over four months). Soon the glamour was gone and she made herself useful as a cook, nurse and clothes washer, for which Bogart praised her, “I don't know what we'd have done without her. She Luxed my undies in darkest Africa”.

Bogart was a founding member of the Rat Pack. In the spring of 1955, after a long party in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, her husband, Sid Luft, Mike Romanoff and wife Gloria, David Niven, Angie Dickinson and others, Lauren Bacall surveyed the wreckage of the party and declared, "You look like a #*%%*&! rat pack."

Romanoff's in Beverly Hills was where the Rat Pack became official. Sinatra was named Pack Leader, Bacall was named Den Mother, Bogie was Director of Public Relations, and Sid Luft was Acting Cage Manager. When asked by columnist Earl Wilson what the purpose of the group was, Bacall responded "to drink a lot of bourbon and stay up late." (A later group known as the "rat pack" consisted of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.)


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