Humphrey Bogart Biography

(born Dec. 25, 1899, New York, New York, U.S.—died Jan. 14, 1957, Hollywood, California) American actor who became a preeminent motion picture “tough guy” and was a top box office attraction during the 1940s and '50s. In his performances he projected the image of a worldly wise, individualistic adventurer with a touch of idealism hidden beneath a hardened exterior. Offscreen he gave the carefully crafted appearance of being a cynical loner, granting only minimal concessions to Hollywood conventions. He became a cult hero of the American cinema.

Bogart was the son of a prominent surgeon and a commercial artist. He served in the United States Navy at the end of World War I, and after the war he began a stage career in New York City playing juvenile roles in drawing-room and country-house comedies. By the mid-1920s he had won a leading role in the comedy Cradle Snatchers (1925) and other plays, and the young actor with the distinctive lisp began receiving good notices from critics. He often played the ascot-wearing playboy or country-club fixture who seemingly frolicked through life in dinner jacket and tails, which is the ultimate irony in light of his later screen persona as the hard-bitten, world-weary man of few words. He is reported to have originated the classic line of the mindless society fellow: “Tennis, anyone?”

Bogart's Broadway success led to roles in two film shorts—The Dancing Town (1928) and Broadway's Like That (1930)—and a contract with the Fox Film Corporation. His supporting roles in some 10 films made between 1930 and 1934 failed to make an impact, and the disillusioned Bogart returned to the Broadway stage. He scored his biggest triumph to date as the ruthless killer Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood's The Petrified Forest (1935). He finally garnered some serious attention in Hollywood when Warner Bros. adapted the play for the screen the following year. Bogart spent the next five years playing numerous supporting roles—mostly gangster types—and occasional leading roles in B-films. His best pictures of this period are such films as Black Legion (1936), Marked Woman (1937), Dead End (1937), The Roaring Twenties (1939), and They Drive by Night (1940).

Two films in 1941 marked the turning point of Bogart's career. In High Sierra he played a killer with a tortured soul and a sense of morality—a departure from the one-dimensional thugs he had portrayed earlier. His performance as detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), John Huston's adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett detective thriller, helped make the film a classic. He followed this with leading roles in such well-regarded films as All Through the Night and Across the Pacific (both 1942) before he was cast in what is perhaps his quintessential screen characterization, that of cabaret owner Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942). Despite its hurried, chaotic production, begun when the script was only half-finished, Casablanca is one of the best in moviemaking history; it ranked second only to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) on the American Film Institute's 1999 list of the top 100 American films. Released just after America's entrance into World War II, Casablanca's topicality and sentimental cynicism helped to make it an enormous success. The film won the Oscar for best picture, and Bogart's Oscar-nominated performance secured his newfound status as Warners' top male star.