Humphrey Bogart Served In Both World Wars, But He Had A Very Different Role The Second Time Around

You can’t talk about film noir without Bogart getting a mention. His roles in classic noirs such as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep — the latter co-starring his wife Lauren Bacall — made him something of a poster boy for the genre. Bogie was of course, also the star of one of the most celebrated pieces of classic cinema: Casablanca. And he picked up a Best Actor Oscar for his unforgettable turn in The African Queen.

You would think that a movie star of Bogart’s status would have acting in his blood, wouldn’t you? Well, that wasn’t exactly the case. You see, Bogie’s parents were serious-career types. His father Belmont was a heart surgeon, while his mother Maud was a successful commercial illustrator who earned big bucks in the early 1900s.

The Big Sleep star’s parents were apparently more focused on their work than they were on raising their son and his sisters Frances and Catherine Elizabeth. Maud even insisted that her children address her by her first name; and would merely pat them on the shoulder to show affection, “almost the way a man does,” the Casablanca star was quoted as saying in Ann Sperber and Eric Lax’s 1997 book Bogart.

The Bogart we know from the silver screen was mostly a surly, jaded tough guy. So it might surprise you to learn that as a child, the Caine Mutiny star was a curly-haired cutie, who was teased for his immaculate appearance and “uncool” name. Which might go some way to explaining why he became a rebellious student in his teens.

Despite being accepted into a prestigious boarding school, with his parents hoping that he would go on to Yale, Bogart flunked most of his classes. Stories abound concerning what happened exactly; but there are theories that the future star was expelled for shoving a faculty member into the campus pond. Another theory was that his drinking, smoking, and general insolence were to blame.

So it was that the young Bogie dropped out of school and decided to sign up for the United States Navy. It was early 1918 — when World War One was still raging — but that didn’t faze the courageous teenager. In Jeffrey Meyers’ 1997 biography Bogart: A Life in Hollywood, the actor was quoted as saying, “At 18, war was great stuff. Paris! Sexy French girls! Hot damn!”

While he might not have been the model student, Bogart fared considerably better in the Navy, being an excellent sailor by all accounts. As a crew member of the U.S.S. Leviathan, his time was mostly spent transporting troops between Europe and the States. It was reportedly during his time in the Navy that the Key Largo star sustained the injury that left him with his famous facial scar.

One story is that Bogart was injured by a piece of shrapnel when the Leviathan was shelled. Another is that he was struck in the face by a German prisoner of war, who tried to escape while handcuffed. Then there is the less “exciting” explanation that the Casablanca star’s injury was simply from a childhood mishap. According to War History Online, Hollywood movie bosses might have embellished the tale for Bogart’s tough-guy image.

An account by the late British actor David Niven in Sperber and Lax’s Bogart book suggests the latter tale to be true. Niven reportedly asked the Big Sleep star how he got his scar, and Bogart confirmed it had been from a childhood accident. He was reportedly quite upset about the doctor who had sewn up his face.

Bogart left the Navy in June 1918, having achieved the rank of boatswain’s mate third class. But he didn’t entirely leave the sea behind, as he went on to work in shipping and became a member of the Coast Guard Reserve. Through his pal Bill Brady Jr., he landed a clerical job with World Films, which was owned by Brady’s father. Believe it or not, the future silver-screen icon didn’t aspire to be an actor back then.

In fact, Bogart wanted to work behind the scenes as a director or screenwriter. But it soon became clear that that wasn’t where his talents lay. He tried his hand at stage managing, working on Brady Senior’s daughter Alice’s play, A Ruined Lady. The Casablanca star went on to appear in a number of Alice’s productions, soon discovering a taste for acting.

By his own admission, Bogart was kind of lazy! He took to acting because it mostly involved working late nights; plus he liked being in the limelight. “I was born to be indolent and this was the softest of rackets,” the star was quoted as saying in Meyers’ Bogart: A Life in Hollywood book. He was rumored to be a heavy drinker too — according to Sperber and Lax — and might’ve got his famous scar from a bar-room brawl. But there’s no proof of that.

Bogie never had any formal acting training, but worked hard at his chosen profession. He starred in over 17 Broadway shows throughout the 1920s and early ’30s. And while some theatre critics were pretty brutal in their appraisals of the actor — “inadequate” was how Alexander Woollcott described the actor in Time magazine in 1954 — there were more positive reviews from others.

“Humphrey Bogart gives the most effective performance… both dry and fresh, if that be possible,” wrote critic Heywood Broun of the actor’s performance in Nerves, quoted by Sperber and Lax. The Caine Mutiny star met the first of his four wives, Helen Menken, when they worked together on a 1922 Broadway production of Drifting. The couple married in May 1926, but were divorced little over a year later.

It seems that Bogart was quick to marry the loves in his life, as he got hitched to second wife Mary Philips in 1928, less than a year after divorcing Menken. Philips was another actress who had met the Big Sleep star when they’d worked together on a 1924 production of Nerves. That marriage lasted almost 10 years but sadly ended in another divorce in 1937.

The actor’s career was on the up, though. When the 1929 Wall Street Crash hit the theatre industry hard, Bogart was among the actors who made a bid for movie stardom. His first silver-screen role was in the since-lost 1928 picture The Dancing Town. Shortly afterward, he signed a deal with Fox Film, which saw him land roles in bigger and better feature flicks starring the legendary likes of Bette Davis.

Davis also co-starred with Bogart in his first notable movie role — as fugitive killer Duke Mantee — in 1935 drama The Petrified Forest. Touted in the film’s trailer as “the most terrifying villain since the Cagney of ‘Public Enemy,’” the actor had scored his first tough-guy part. And the film was a box-office hit and established Bogart as a star.

The only problem was that Bogie started getting typecast as a criminal or gangster, which he didn’t like. According to Gary Provost’s 2012 book Bogart: In Search of My Father, the actor once said, “There must be something in my tone of voice, or this arrogant face — something that antagonizes everybody. Nobody likes me on sight. I suppose that’s why I’m cast as the heavy.”

The African Queen star made light of his typecasting, though, when he told Life magazine’s George Frazier in 1944 that in his first 34 movies, “I was shot in 12, electrocuted or hanged in eight, and was a jailbird in nine.” Still, the iconic jaded-charmer character that we know and love Bogart for was developing in those early roles. Publicly, he was becoming known as something of a loose cannon too.

According to biographer Meyers, the Maltese Falcon star made himself kind of unpopular with studio bosses, due his outspokenness. As Bogie himself put it, wrote Provost, “All over Hollywood, they are continually advising me, “Oh, you mustn’t say that. That will get you in a lot of trouble,” when I remark that some picture or writer or director or producer is no good.”

His tempestuous marriage to third wife Mayo Methot, another actress, was making headlines too. The couple married in August 1938 but had a famously rocky relationship. According to Meyers, the wedded pair reportedly had explosive arguments that led to them being dubbed “the Battling Bogarts.” In 1945 another marriage ended in divorce for the Casablanca star.

That marital breakdown has been partly attributed to The Big Sleep star’s relationship with fellow film-noir icon Lauren Bacall. The two screen legends first worked together on the 1944 romantic adventure flick To Have and Have Not. Bogart was apparently bewitched by Bacall’s beauty and — according to Meyers — said to her, “I just saw your [screen] test. We’ll have a lot of fun together.”

The two stars did indeed “have a lot of fun together,” embarking on a passionate love affair, despite a 25-year age difference: Bacall was just 19 when they met, Bogart, 44. But their relationship was built on solid stuff, and the couple married in 1945, before going on to have a son and daughter together: Stephen and Leslie Bogart. The silver-screen legends remained happily married until their dying days too.

The couple were a movie-maker’s dream team, and were paired up in three more successful film noirs: The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). They were a near-perfect match both in life and in art. There was one problem, though. As we know from his service to the Navy, Bogart was a keen sailor. But Bacall got seasick.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre actor was so passionate about sailing, in fact, that he owned a 55-foot yacht called the Santana, on which he spent most of his weekends. According to biographer Provost, Bogart once said, “An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to be.”

The Santana would prove to have an important role in the Second World War effort, as would Bogart. You see, in 1944 the actor tried to sign up for the Navy once again but was turned down due to his age. The Maltese Falcon star wouldn’t be deterred, though, and volunteered for service with the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve Auxiliary instead. In his own yacht, he patrolled the Californian coast until the war’s end.

That wasn’t all Bogart did to support the war effort either. He and his then-wife Mayo agreed to take part in a video promoting the work that the American Red Cross was doing during World War Two. And in a promotional video for the charity, the couple were filmed being greeted by reporters on their return from a tour. Bogie delivered an Oscar-worthy speech when questioned about how the troops were doing.

“Our boys are doing a great job,” the star says, continuing, “On our trip overseas my wife and I saw thousands of American boys in Africa and Italy. You can be awfully proud of them. We did the best we could to entertain them. But there’s an organization that’s looking after them in every theater of the war. That’s the American Red Cross.”

The “Report From The Front” video from Periscope Film was all staged of course, with Bogart and Methot disembarking from a fake airplane. But the screen icon did all he could to maximise the film’s impact: donning his signature fedora and making sure to memorize his three-minute monologue. It seems that Bogart badly wanted to compensate for being excluded from the military.

His serviceman experience sure did come in handy for many of the actor’s movie roles too. Bogart played a Broadway gambler who helped to foil a Nazi plot in the 1942 action-comedy All Through the Night. And his protagonist similarly stopped the invasion of the Panama Canal by a Japanese war ship in Across the Pacific, the same year.

Then in the 1943 picture Action in the North Atlantic, the star brought his nautical experience to the role as an officer aboard a U.S. Merchant Marine vessel during the Second World War. And he would play a Navy officer in 1954 classic The Caine Mutiny. That movie was a huge success and earned Bogart an Oscar nomination. But there was another sailing-themed film for which the star finally bagged one of the coveted golden trophies.

We’re talking about The African Queen of course. Bogart won the Best Actor gong for his portrayal of jaded steamboat captain Charlie in the beloved 1951 picture. He starred opposite fellow silver-screen legend Katharine Hepburn, playing starchy missionary Rose, who eventually falls for Charlie’s rugged charm. The shooting experience was far from Hollywood glitz and glamor, mind you.

The African Queen was filmed on location in the Belgian Congo, with the cast and crew enduring some pretty testing conditions. Bogart had to navigate the boat through swamps and marshes in the intense African heat. And according to Sperber and Lax, almost everyone suffered from dysentery. All except for former Navy man Bogart, whose seasoned sea legs clearly put him in good stead. That and his erm, unique diet…

“All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus, and Scotch whisky,” said the Oscar-winning actor, according to Sperber and Lax’s book. “Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead,” Bogart joked. Meanwhile, poor Hepburn reportedly got very sick and lost a bunch of weight. For her co-star though, the experience only renewed his love of sailing — prompting him to buy a traditional Hacker-Craft boat that he cherished.

Bogart’s role as Navy officer Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny earned him another Oscar nod. After that, he signed up to Billy Wilder’s 1954 rom-com Sabrina on a whim — shaking hands with Wilder before even reading the script. It would be a mistake; as the actor and director clashed on set. Bogart accused the latter of favoritism toward his co-star Audrey Hepburn and called the film “a crock of crap,” wrote biographer Meyers.

Despite the actor’s own damning appraisal of the movie, he attracted some pretty decent reviews — the New York Times calling Bogie, “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.” The film was warmly received by the public too; staying in the top box-office spot for two weeks.

By 1955 it was becoming clear that something was wrong, though. Bogart had a cough that wouldn’t go away and was struggling to eat. When he couldn’t ignore those things any longer, he finally sought medical help and found out he had cancer — possibly linked to years of heavy smoking and drinking. Still, the legendary actor pushed on with his movie career.

Bogart made a final film noir in 1956, about boxing, called The Harder They Fall. According to a 2009 book by David Fantle and Tom Johnson, Bogie’s co-star Rod Steiger recalled how the star had been called back to reshoot his close-ups, due to his eyes looking watery. “Then it struck me,” said Steiger. “His eyes were watery because he was in pain with the cancer. I thought, ‘How dumb can you be, Rodney’!”

The silver-screen icon sadly succumbed to his illness in January 1957, coincidentally, not long after he turned 57. At that age it was an untimely passing, but Bogart had at least lived a very full life up to then. After all, he had cemented his status as one of Hollywood’s greats. And he had played an important part in both world wars. Now, not many people could say that.