Humphrey Bogart Read online

  HUMPHREY BOGART, THE MAKING OF A LEGEND

  Copyright ©2010, Blood Moon Productions, Ltd.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  www.BloodMoonProductions.com

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-936003-14-3

  Cover designs by Richard Leeds (Bigwigdesign.com)

  Videography and Publicity Trailers by Piotr Kajstura

  Distributed in North America and Australia

  through National Book Network (www.NBNbooks.com)

  and in the UK through Turnaround (www.turnaround-uk.com)

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  CHAPTER ONE

  It was an idyllic setting, a picture postcard of Victorian life that still thrived in America before its last vestiges were swept away by the coming of the Great War.

  Ever since the final summer of the nineteenth century, handsome Dr. Belmont DeForest Bogart and his successful artist wife, Maud, with her frizzy red hair and strong jaw, had come to a manicured spot on the shoreline of Lake Canandaigua, one of New York State’s Finger Lakes, to relax and go sailing on his deluxe yacht, Comrade, moored just two hundred feet from their gingerbread-decorated, two-story Victorian manse.

  A local brewer, Jonathan Mulhouse, had built the house in 1871 for his rotund wife and their equally hefty brood of six very fat children. Although Mulhouse himself looked like a lean and mean Abraham Lincoln, his children resembled his blubber wife more than they did himself. The Mulhouse family was the scandal of Seneca Point. The children were ridiculed for their weight and for a physical deformity inherited from Mrs. Mulhouse. None of the brood had a neck. Locals called them the “no-neck Mulhouses.” This genetic flaw also didn’t come from Mr. Mulhouse, who had one of the longest necks east of the Mississippi.

  The ridiculous appearance of the Mulhouses was not the only subject of local gossip. Rumor had it Mrs. Mulhouse allowed all her children to drink beer from her husband’s brewery even though they were underage.

  It had been with a sigh of relief that neighbors learned in 1899 that a New York doctor and his wife had taken over the Mulhouse home. “To judge from the size of Mr. Bogart’s yacht moored on the lake, I think they are rich New Yorkers,” the Mayor, Frank Schmidt, proudly announced at a private dinner of the Chamber of Commerce. “From what I hear, the Bogarts are a most respectable family.”

  The arrival of the Bogarts at Canandaigua and their departure every Labor Day was considered a news event to be reported in The Canandaigua Gazette.

  On the particularly lovely summer afternoon of July 5, 1913, the spire of the tower room of the Bogart home still stood proudly after the Fourth of July fireworks. The lawns sweeping down to the lake were immaculately trimmed.

  The crops were at full bloom in the adjoining farmlands, and cows grazed in the surrounding pasturelands. Even the woods seemed quiet except for a young farmhand sneaking into the darkest part of the forest with one of the local wives whose husband was in New York City on a business trip. From his bedroom window, the teenage son, Humphrey, nicknamed, “Hump,” looked out at the weeping willows that fluttered in the wind so gracefully that their movements seemed to be the work of a choreographer.

  When Maud had first seen the fluttery willows and a bubbling brook running alongside their property, she’d dubbed their new home “Willow Brook.” She set about to furnish it with crystal, tapestries, classical statues, precious china, antiques, and Oriental carpets.

  The Bogarts’ neighbors were invariably from Boston or New York, and they’d come to Seneca Point, a rich community directly south of& ;Canandaigua, to escape from the blistering summer heat of those two cities. Wealthy businessmen hobnobbed with bankers, newspaper columnists, presidents of colleges, and even a well-cared-for clergyman who was said to drink five bottles of wine a day.

  It was at Seneca Point that young Hump first met two men called the Warner Brothers. They were not the brothers who built a powerful Hollywood studio that would bring Hump his greatest fame when he was no longer called “Hump” but “Bogie.” These Warner Brothers, Henry and David, designed and constructed steamboats, including some showboats that sailed up and down the Mississippi.

  Even more fascinating was another pair of brothers, Frank and Arthur Hamlin, who lived next door to the Bogarts. Their father was the local banker. Ever since Hump rescued Arthur from the lake when the youngster fell off the dock, the Hamlins had told Hump he could consider “our house your second home.”

  Although Hump enjoyed playing games with the boys, he mostly liked coming over to visit their mother, Mary Hamlin, in the afternoons where she gave him rich pastries and told him& of her life in the theater.

  She wrote religious dramas which played across the country. It wasn’t Hump’s type of drama but he loved listening to her stories about life in the theater. She knew all the great actors of her day and confided the most intimate stories about their personal lives.

  “It’s a world of make-believe,” she told Hump. “You can lose yourself in the world of the theater.” Mary urged Hump and his playmates to launch an impromptu theater at the lakeshore near the bandstand, setting up their own summer playhouse.

  Until meeting Mary, Hump had never considered being an actor. When it was first suggested to him, he told Mary that it wasn’t his kind of thing. “Father wants me to be a surgeon, but I’d rather be a sailor.”

  In time, breaking from religious dramas, Mary Hamlin would write Alexander Hamilton, a play that became a hit on Broadway. Warner Brothers, Hump’s future studio, purchased the rights to it and filmed it in 1931. The movie became one of the most successful talkies of that time.

  In his bedroom, a noise distracted Hump, who went to look out the rear of his window, from which he had a good view of the carriage road that ran over a one-lane stone-built bridge at the rear of their manse.

  Their cook was receiving a load of fresh produce from a local farmer. From a horse-pulled carriage, he could see the unloading of the largest, ripest tomatoes he’d ever seen, along with peaches, potatoes, carrots, and grapes so fresh that the aroma of the vineyard rose to his second-floor open window. Maud always insisted that she get “only the best” of the local bounty before it was shipped off to the stifling city markets of New York City or Philadelphia.

  Seneca Point in those days was a staunchly Republican enclave even though only that summer, a young Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had arrived, ostensibly on what he’d told his cronies was a “hunting expedition.” The daughters of the prosperous families of Seneca Point were said to have produced the loveliest single concentration of “female pulchritude” this side of Broadway. Roosevelt became enamored of one young belle, Beth Ferguson, whom he invited every afternoon to the lake for swimming. It was while showing off his prowess as a swimmer that Roosevelt had been stricken with a stomach cramp. When Beth saw his right arm go up into the air and then her boyfriend go under, she thought he was playing another one of& his many tricks on her. Since meeting her, he’d always chided her for being so gullible. At first& she’d thought that he was only pretending to be drowning. When he didn’t surface for a while, she grew panicky and screamed for help.

  The family of Dwight St. Davids was having a picnic nearby along the shores of the lake. Beth screamed to them to rescue Roosevelt. Their youngest son, Peter, was home for the holidays from Princeton. Sensing what was wrong, Peter, an expert swimmer, dived into the cold lake and swam toward Roosevelt. Peter went underwater and emerged with Roosevelt gasping for air. Peter brought the body ashore and called for his other family members to help him carry the body to the nearby Bogart home.

  When Dr. Belmont Bogart came out onto his front verandah, he encountered what he thought was a dead victim of drowning. He rushed to give
the young man medical attention.

  The commotion attracted the rest of the Bogart family. Hump, Maud, and the two daughters, Catherine and Frances, also came out onto the porch. They looked in horror as Belmont seemingly brought life back to the victim. When young Roosevelt was breathing properly once again, Belmont ordered that he be taken upstairs and put in Hump’s bed.

  Laid to rest on the soft bed upstairs, Roosevelt fell into a deep coma-like sleep. Belmont ordered Hump to stay in the room with the recovering victim in case he should experience a turn for the worse. “Make sure that he’s breathing all right,” Belmont said before heading downstairs to join Maud.

  Hump resented spending the rest of the afternoon and evening guarding Roosevelt. A surly Irish maid arrived with a tray of food for his supper. She plopped down the tray telling him, “Eat it if you don’t want to starve.”

  “I don’t like turnips,” Hump protested.

  “Then throw the bloody things out the window,” the maid said before going out and slamming the door.

  With those turnips still uneaten on his plate, Hump had fallen asleep somewhere during the middle of the night. Before nodding off, he’d checked on Roosevelt. The young man was snoring loudly.

  The following morning, it had been Roosevelt who awakened Hump. The doctor and Maud had departed on a shopping expedition, and had left Hump to have breakfast alone with Roosevelt after the doctor had examined him and had pronounced him fit.

  Roosevelt appeared to be in his late twenties or even early thirties. It had been over the breakfast table where Hump finally got his favorite dish—ham and eggs—that he’d begun to learn who their mysterious guest was.

  Even though innocent at the time, Hump soon realized that Roosevelt, who had quickly become “Franklin” to him, was not supposed to be at Seneca Point but had told his wife, Eleanor, that he was in Philadelphia on business. “Being an attorney allows me to go out of town on occasion,” Franklin said,& “and seize the opportunity.”

  “Are you related to Theodore Roosevelt?” Hump asked.

  “Actually, he’s my fifth cousin,” Roosevelt said, “but we’re not particularly close. In fact, I married one of my cousins, Eleanor. A fine woman but a bit plain. Perhaps you’ll meet her one day. If you do, please keep my visit to Seneca Point a secret.”

  Hump promised that he would.

  After thanking Hump for the hospitality and leaving a note for Dr. Bogart, whom he claimed “saved my life,” Franklin departed, planning to return to New York City. He told Hump he was heading for Washington, where he was going to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. “Cousin Theodore held that post before moving on to become governor of New York and later president of the United States. Who knows? I might follow his trail.” Before leaving, Franklin said, “Since we share a dark secret, young man, I want to invite you to come and visit me in Washington when you grow up a bit more. Washington may not have as many beautiful young girls as Seneca Point, but I’m sure to find a suitable debutante for you.”

  “That’s a promise I’ll hold you to,” Hump said before shaking the young politician’s hand.

  “This is not good-bye,” Franklin said. “It’s just a temporary farewell until we meet again. Hopefully, under far better circumstances.”

  The strange visit of Franklin Roosevelt to Seneca Point had been the highlight of Hump’s summer there. Otherwise, he found the days long, lazy, and slow. He craved action and wasn’t getting any excitement from anywhere except from books. He loved to read.

  Back in his upstairs bedroom following a big lunch, he felt bloated. He liked to lie down after eating to digest his food.

  Maud always preferred to go with his father to sit on their large front verandah overlooking the lake. Over the lunch table, Hump had gotten mad at the mean family cook. Although the meal had consisted of two roasts, and a selection of seven fresh vegetables from the field, there was no ham& on the table. He always complained when he saw no ham.

  Going downstairs for a glass of cold water, Hump looked out through the French doors onto the porch where his parents were resting in a large swing. He wondered if he’d ever grow to be as tall as his father, all six feet of him with shoulders so broad he could have been a football player. Even on the hottest days, Belmont never appeared outside the house unless he was dressed in a heavy suit of dark blue wool along with a white shirt and a stiff collar. He always ordered the maid to “make my collars extra stiff.”

  Almost as tall as her husband, Maud was an Edwardian beauty. She invariably wore only mauve, lavender, or gray—mostly graceful silks that seemed to flow in the wind, or else heavily starched cotton dresses that were immaculately tailored. She had thirty pairs of high-heeled, high-button shoes, always with a lavender ribbon. The tiny shoes were like those of a little girl’s. Almost daily, Maud commented on her size two and a half feet. “They’re so tiny I don’t know how they carry me around. Some six-year-old girls have feet larger than mine.”

  Remarks such as that always brought a compliment from Belmont. “In China I hear they bind women’s feet to make them as small, tender, and beautiful as yours. I don’t dare get you near a Chinaman because he’d kidnap you for his harem and make love to your feet all night.”

  Returning with his cold water to take upstairs, where he was reading Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus, Hump paused once again to look out at the bucolic scene of his parents sitting in the swing on their verandah on this perfect summer day.

  From his black leather satchel, Belmont removed a syringe. Maud was wearing a long-sleeved dress in soft tones of mauve with gray accessories. She unbuttoned the pearl buttons on her left arm and rolled up her sleeve. With his wife’s forearm exposed in all its porcelain beauty, Belmont very gently inserted a needle into her arm. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the swing as if enjoying a respite from the hot summer afternoon by a cooling breeze blowing in from the lake.

  After having injected his wife, Belmont removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his white shirt. He then injected the needle into his own arm.

  Hump had seen enough. He didn’t know exactly what was happening, only that his parents were injecting morphine into their arms. Morphine, he’d heard, was to be injected only into sick people. His parents weren’t sick. They’d never looked better and healthier.

  Placing the glass of water on a nearby antique, Hump quietly tiptoed upstairs. He didn’t want his parents to know he’d been spying on them in a secret moment.

  Back in his bedroom, he was deeply disturbed by that scene he’d just witnessed on the porch. He picked up his book and tried to resume reading it on his bed.

  Somehow he knew that what his father was doing was not right, but he didn’t exactly understand why it was wrong. From the safety of his bedroom, he tried to think this out rationally. His father was a surgeon and a leading heart and lung specialist, earning $20,000 a year, so Hump figured his father must have a valid reason to shoot morphine into himself and into Maud.

  An awful reality dawned. His parents weren’t healthy at all. They were sick and that’s why they needed the morphine, perhaps to prevent some incurable illness.

  He dropped his Conrad book to the floor and sat up in his bed. This idyllic summer home, and their grand life in New York City would surely come to an end if his parents died. Who would raise him and his sisters?

  A paralyzing fear swept over him. He had to find out what was the matter with them.

  His world as he’d known it was now in jeopardy.

  ***

  Two days after Hump had seen his father shooting morphine into his mother’s arm and his own arm, he went to Maud’s studio and knocked on her door. When working, she’d left instructions not to disturb her for any reason, “even if someone is dying.” Showing her displeasure, she threw open the door. “What is it?”

  “I saw the needles going into your arms,” he blurted out.

  She pulled him inside. “You’re to tell no one, especially your sisters. C
ertainly none of the neighbors.”

  “If you’re sick, I want to know,” he protested.

  Very patiently Maud sat him down and told him that three years before he was born, his father had been in a dreadful accident after he’d earned his degree at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

  “Your father was an intern being driven in a horse-drawn ambulance going at top speed. The vehicle accidentally overturned when it hit an enormous pothole. Belmont fell out of the ambulance onto the cobblestones. The ambulance turned over on him, breaking five of his ribs and his left leg. The leg was not set properly. It had to be broken again and reset by more competent surgeons. Ever since that day, your father’s health has declined, and he constantly suffers unbearable pain. He doesn’t want you children to know the extent of his pain. He puts up a brave front for all of us.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Hump said. “That tells me a lot about father. But what’s the matter with you? Why do you need morphine?”

  “I don’t suffer as much as Belmont does, but I have this skin disease. The words won’t mean anything to you. It’s called erysipelas, a streptococcal inflammation. That means fiery hot, red skin that burns me so badly at times it’s like putting my skin on a hot stove. Sometimes when I’m in here retreating from the world, it’s because I can’t show my face. Either my left or right eye will close completely. A whole side of my face will burst into flames. The condition will even spread to my breasts. Morphine is the only thing to cure it. Belmont thinks that the condition is so severe, the pain so unbearable, that I will be driven crazy if I don’t take drugs.”

  “But won’t morphine turn you and father into drug addicts?”

  Enraged, Maud grabbed the back of Hump’s stiff shirt and ushered him toward the door. As he stepped into the hallway, she said, “Don’t you ever come into my studio again.” She slammed the door in his face.

  Humiliated, Hump rushed down the hall, colliding into one of the Irish maids, Jane Byrne, “Watch where in the hell you’re going, you little shit,” she cried out at him. She used the word “shit” all the time.