Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart, widely known as Bogie, was born on Christmas Day 1899 in Manhattan and died on January 14, 1957. He built a career playing gangsters and detectives in film noirs, becoming a defining figure of classic Hollywood and an American cultural icon. His work earned him an Academy Award, and in 1960 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Bogart began in theater, making his Broadway debut in 1922. Over 16 plays, he usually took supporting parts as gangsters, earning praise for his role in *The Petrified Forest* (1936). His first feature film was the pre-code *A Devil with Women* (1930), followed by early roles in *Dead End* (1937), *Angels with Dirty Faces* (1938), and *Dark Victory* (1939). He rose to stardom in 1941 with leading roles in two film noirs: a career criminal in *High Sierra* and detective Sam Spade in *The Maltese Falcon*.

He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing a rough steamboat captain in *The African Queen* (1951). He was nominated for an Oscar as a nightclub owner in *Casablanca* (1942) and as an unstable captain in *The Caine Mutiny* (1954). Other major leading-man roles included *The Treasure of the Sierra Madre* (1948), *In a Lonely Place* (1950), *Sabrina* (1954), and *The Barefoot Contessa* (1954). He starred opposite Lauren Bacall in *To Have and Have Not* (1944), *The Big Sleep* (1946), *Dark Passage* (1947), and *Key Largo* (1948). His final film was the boxing drama *The Harder They Fall* (1956).

Bogart married four times, including to Bacall from 1945 until his death. A heavy smoker and drinker, he died of esophageal cancer in January 1957. He also worked on radio and television. He kept his private life guarded and rarely spoke out, except against the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named him the greatest male star of classic American cinema. Four of his films made the AFI’s list of the top 100 movies of all time.

Bogart was the eldest child of surgeon Belmont DeForest Bogart and commercial illustrator Maud Humphrey. His father was a Presbyterian of English and Dutch descent; his mother, an Episcopalian of English heritage, was a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland. Bogart was raised Episcopalian but was non-practicing as an adult. His birth date has been disputed—Warner Bros. once changed it to January 23, 1900, to soften his on-screen villain image—but official records, including his birth certificate, confirm December 25, 1899. He always celebrated on Christmas Day, joking that he was cheated out of a present each year.

Maud Humphrey earned over $50,000 a year at her peak, far more than her husband’s $20,000. She used a drawing of baby Bogart in a Mellins Baby Food campaign. The family lived in an Upper West Side apartment and owned a cottage on a 55-acre estate on Canandaigua Lake in upstate New York. As a child, Bogart put on plays with friends there. He had two younger sisters, Frances and Catherine. His parents were formal and distant; his mother told her children to call her “Maud” and showed little physical affection. Bogart recalled being raised “very unsentimentally but very straightforwardly.” He was teased for his curls, tidy clothes, and the “cute” pictures his mother made him pose for. From his father he inherited a sharp tongue, a love of fishing and boating, and an attraction to strong-willed women.

He attended the private Delancey School through fifth grade, then the prestigious Trinity School, where he was an indifferent, sullen student.