Humphrey Bogart Read online

  All the servants called him “the little shit,” never Humphrey. It was “the little shit” this, or “the little shit” that. For the rest of his life, Hump would refuse to allow the word “shit” to be uttered in his presence.

  He didn’t understand why Maud always recruited from the lowest class of Irish servants, each of whom received $3.50 a week in pay. They had vile tempers, horrible manners, and terrible language. Without provocation, a servant would suddenly strike either him or one of his sisters. Complaints about the behavior of the staff to his parents went unheeded. They didn’t seem to care.

  When Hump had told Maud that the male servant, Liam Mangam, had taken off his leather belt and had beaten him severely, she’d said, “I’m sure he wouldn’t have done that if you’d been behaving properly.”

  After Maud had ushered him from her studio, Hump wanted to run away or at least escape from their summer house for the rest of the day.

  He stood in the living room, not certain where to go. Over the fireplace mantle Maud had hung a baby picture he hated. It was an idealized portrait she’d painted of him in 1900 when he was only one year old.

  Known as the “Maud Humphrey Baby,” the portrait had been reproduced across the country, becoming the most famous baby picture in the nation. It later appeared on the label of the best-selling brand of baby food of its day, Mellins Baby Food.

  Later in life, the man then known as “Bogie” would say, “There was a period in American history when you couldn’t pick up a God damn magazine without seeing my cute little kisser in it.”

  Maud was a true Victorian illustrator, who believed that babies should be cherubic, their faces round, their cheeks evoking chipmunks. If they also had ruby-red lips, a long white starched dress, curly blond ringlets, large trusting eyes, and a frilly collar, so much the better.

  On a wall overlooking the dining room table hung another Maud portrait of him when he was two years old. He was as chubby cheeked as ever but his slickly combed hair was revealed, no more baby bonnet. He looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy in side-buttoned overalls with rolled-up cuffs and a billowing white shirt, again stiffly starched.

  Hump was determined that, if not today, maybe tomorrow, he was going to grow up to be a man and not some powder puff.

  ***

  Later, on the same day he’d been banished from Maud’s summer studio, Hump wandered alone around the tranquil lake. Except for the turmoil going on in his own home, the setting looked like the fantasy life his Dutch ancestors had sought when they’d come over to help settle New York.

  Hump always felt that it could be a dreamy life for all of the Bogarts if only his parents were different. They were cold and distant and never gave him the love he needed, not even a kiss on the cheek or a warm embrace.

  Even though they were his parents, Hump didn’t know all that much about them, since they rarely mentioned their own childhoods. Both parents traced their lineage to Europe as far back as the early 16th century. Members of royalty were included among both Dr. Bogart’s ancestors and those of Maud.

  Decades later, one royal link would be leaked to the press. It was reported at the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer to Britain’s Prince Charles, that his new princess was the seventh cousin of Humphrey Bogart on his mother’s side.

  Dr. Bogart’s father, Adam Watkins Bogart, had run an inn for summer visitors to the Finger Lakes. Arriving from Holland in the 17th century, his family had farmed in Brooklyn, which until the 20th century had a “Bogart Avenue” in their memory. In 1853 the family moved to the Finger Lakes.

  At Canandaigua, Adam had run a tough tavern, with a jailhouse in the basement. It was called Franklin House, and it was the only inn in Canandaigua, attracting men who smoked cheap stogies and wore muddy boots reeking of manure.

  The woman he’d married, Julia, was considerably better off financially than Adam. After marriage, he moved with her to Jefferson House in the village of Watkins on Lake Seneca. There they ran a small three-story hotel with more than a dozen rooms to rent. It was here they gave birth to their first born, pretentiously naming him Cornelius Edward Bogart. Cornelius was killed at the age of six when he attempted to slide down the banister of stairs that led into the lobby of Jefferson House. He fell on his head on the black and white checkerboard Tuscan tile and died instantly.

  Their second son, Belmont DeForest Bogart, was born in 1866, a year after the death of his brother. Julia was to live only two years after the birth of her second son. She developed a “mysterious” illness and lay in bed for five months, suffering. In her will, she left all her money to Belmont, and none to her husband, Adam.

  In 1871, Adam sued her estate, eventually winning control of the money and his son. Julia had asked that Belmont be taken away from his father and placed in the care of either of her sisters.

  After her death, Adam never remarried. Using Julia’s money, he grew rich when he created a method of lithographing on tin plates, a technique later used extensively in advertisements.

  Maud had been born about a year before her husband on March 30, 1865, the daughter of a rich shoe manufacturer, John Perkins Humphrey, in Rochester, New York.

  Her family was wealthy enough to finance her artistic career, sending her to the Art Students’ League in New York from 1886 to 1894 and later to the Académie Julian in Paris where she’d studied with James McNeill Whistler. There were rumors that she’d had an affair with the fabled American painter, who was in his 50s when he first met Maud. Throughout her life, Maud never confirmed nor denied the rumor, saying, “It’s for damn sure I didn’t pose for Whistler’s Mother.”

  It was in Paris that she’d painted her first nude. The model was the well-built former prizefighter, Rodolphe Julian, who frequently modeled in the nude at the Académie he’d founded. Some of the art students jokingly said that Rodolphe had founded the art school only so he could “show off his ample assets” before the art classes, as he’d often confess that he himself “knew nothing about art. I know what I like—and that’s that.”

  Even though aging when Maud had met him, Rodolphe still kept his body as neat and trim as that of an Olympic athlete. In those days, only male artists were allowed to paint male nudes. Most art schools didn’t even encourage female painters and, if they allowed them entrance, did not let them paint nude models either male or female.

  At his Académie, Rodolphe changed all that. It was said that many young women signed up for his classes just to see what a man looked like in the nude. Many women at the time saw a naked man for the first time on their wedding night, with virtually no prior knowledge of the male anatomy.

  “After looking at Rodolphe, and painting him, it’s probably inevitable that we’ll be disappointed with our husbands,” Maud confided to a fellow art student, Mary Fielding, from Charleston, South Carolina.

  Maud was known for her razor-tongued wit, and she found a perfect match in the equally sharp-tongued Belmont. Each could take the other down with biting sarcasm. Both of them passed this dubious characteristic onto their son, Humphrey.

  Bogie’s future director, John Huston, said the actor was known throughout his life for needling people, or “sticking in the saber,” as Huston put it.

  What his parents didn’t pass on to their son was their political conservatism. Belmont was a Republican and a Presbyterian, Maud a Tory and an Episcopalian. Humphrey would grow up to become a liberal Democrat.

  Born on Christmas Day, 1899, “a Christmas gift to his parents,” as later reported by publicists at Warner Brothers, Humphrey DeForest Bogart came into the world at Sloane’s Hospital in New York, weighing eight pounds and seven ounces. He’d been born six days before the end of the 19th century, and in later life always referred to himself as a “man of the last century.”

  He’d had an elongated foreskin, and his doctor father had recommended circumcision. Maud had been adamantly opposed, claiming that “was a barbaric Jewish custom.”

  Until he’d gone into the Navy at the end of Wor
ld War I, Humphrey had lived with this extended foreskin. After his military service, when he ran into his former classmate, Doug Storer, at a tavern, he confided, “I had a doctor trim it a bit, but he left enough for me to still have fun.”

  Belmont himself in 1901 delivered his second child, a girl named Frances Bogart. Because she was chubby as an infant, Hump nicknamed her “Fat.” When she grew up and lost her excess weight, she was called Pat. Two years later, another sister, Catherine, was born.

  In his early years Maud and Belmont had big plans and high hopes for Hump. Belmont, dining at Luchow’s, his favorite German restaurant on 14th Street in New York, boasted that his adolescent son would one day go to Yale and become a world-famous surgeon. “My wife says Columbia, but I definitely see the boy as a Yale man.”

  Hump’s one and only attempt at performing surgery had ended in disaster when he’d attempted it when he was eight years old. His sister Catherine had developed a large boil with a pus-filled head. She begged her brother to puncture it, since Belmont was away on a hunting trip. Retrieving his father’s first-aid kit, with its scalpel, needles, and cotton, he attempted to lance the boil with a needle. When it didn’t work, he used his pocket knife. Immediately, a mixture of pus and blood shot with high velocity into his face. His screaming sister had to be rushed to the nearest hospital before she bled to death.

  One afternoon, about a month later, Hump found Maud terribly depressed, revealing that she’d learned some “very bad news.” She told him that she’d visited an itinerant fortune teller who was passing through the Finger Lakes that summer. “Your son will grow up to enjoy fabulous wealth and will know many loves,” the gypsy had told her. “But both of your daughters are destined for tragic lives.”

  ***

  Hump was heartbroken to learn that Maud and Belmont had placed Willow Brook up for sale in August of 1913. If a buyer could be found, their summer home and their days at the lake would be over. Maud promised the children a summer cottage on Fire Island for the coming year.

  She’d taken a position as an illustrator on the magazine, Delineator, and needed to be close to New York City, the magazine’s base of operations. “The pay is fabulous,” she told Hump. “Fifty-thousand dollars a year.”

  Walking down by the lake, Hump recalled his happiest times here when Belmont took him sailing on his champion yacht, Comrade. It was on that very lake that Belmont had taught Hump how to sail, a passion his son would enjoy until the day of his death.

  In time, Belmont purchased a one-cylinder motor boat, which Hump had called Desire, and he went out, putt-putting around the lake all by himself. In later life, Bogie would tell friends that sailing on the lake by himself was “the only time in my life I’ve ever felt free.”

  His sister, Pat, later told friends that her brother went through a typical adolescent period when he developed crushes on males. “It was just a period,” Pat said, “and in no time at all he grew out of it. He certainly didn’t grow up to be a homosexual, as many of his leading ladies can testify.”

  That summer Hump made Belmont the focus of his attention. Belmont was tall and good looking, a strong man and avid hunter, a real outdoors type, everything that Hump wanted to be, but wasn’t. When his father would invite him sailing, Hump was thrilled to have Belmont to himself and not have to share him with family or patients.

  But after Belmont met his neighbor, Mrs. Harry Lansing, he no longer invited Hump sailing. Although a bit hefty, Mrs. Lansing was extremely beautiful to Belmont. He pursued the married woman when Maud wasn’t present. Her husband, Harry, the son of a railroad tycoon, was never at home. Rumors were that he was an alcoholic. When not drinking, he was said to chase after other women.

  Sometimes Belmont would announce to his family that he was taking Hump sailing with him. But when they got to the lake, Mrs. Lansing would be waiting for the doctor. Belmont always gave Hump money to spend in town while he sailed away with Mrs. Lansing.

  Out there alone on the lake, Belmont was surely making love to Mrs. Lansing, or so Hump suspected. They’d be gone for hours. Instead of going to town, Hump would often wait for him beside the pier, no matter how long it took.

  Perhaps Maud learned that summer of her husband’s affair, or maybe she didn’t. All Hump knew was that during those final days on the lake, before they returned to the city, Maud moved out of the master bedroom she shared with her husband and took a smaller bedroom on the top floor.

  “I’m still going to be married to your father,” she told Hump, “but one phase of our relationship is definitely over. You’ll have no more brothers or sisters.”

  That bitter rejection by his father was eased when Hump was introduced to Mrs. Lansing’s daughter, Grace. Hump felt that she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, even more stunning than Franklin Roosevelt’s young mistress.

  They’d met when Mary Hamlin had organized the resort’s young people into the Seneca Point Players. Over his protests, she’d named Hump the producer and director and had cast& him as the lead in the players’ first production, Sunset in the Old West. Mary had cast the Lansing daughter, Grace, as Hump’s romantic female lead.

  Before leaving for Seneca Point that summer, Hump had met a patient of his father’s, William Brady Sr., a handsome showman and promoter and the son of Irish immigrants. Living next door, Brady had called on Belmont, claiming that “my cook has given me ptomaine poisoning.”

  Hump had also been in his father’s office that day, and had found Brady a fascinating man. He regaled Hump with stories of his former life when he’d gone from shoeshine boy to newsboy, from stage manager to actor, and from comedian to play director. “Now I’m a producer,” Brady said. “I also manage boxers, none of whom know how to throw a punch. That is, except for two winners, both heavyweight title holders, Jim Corbett and Jim Jeffries. I have luck with boxers named Jim.”

  Before Brady had been called into Belmont’s office, the producer turned to Hump. “I have a son about your age, William Brady Jr. I’ll introduce you to him. I’m sure you’ll hit it off real swell.”

  Hump had to go to Seneca Point for the summer, but he eagerly looked forward to seeing young Brady when he came back to New York. Hump was in dire need of a male best friend.

  When Brady Sr. learned that a local theater troupe was being formed at Seneca Point, he sent some discarded Broadway costumes to the Bogart family. Brady had just closed down a show on Broadway, The Girl of the Golden West, and he had plenty of outfits to spare, including chaps, boots, and western garb.

  Hump tried on a ten-gallon hat that practically drowned his head, but he wore it in his first play anyway. He played the star, a role that depicted him as a “good man gone wrong.” He’d become a gun-slinging bandit—that is, until he met the heroine of the play who “sets him on the straight and narrow path once again.”

  Grace, the female lead, won his heart in the play and also won his heart in real life. The audience around the bandstand peacefully watched this farce. They’d paid five cents each for tickets, plus another one penny for a glass of cold lemonade.

  Throughout the rehearsals, thoughts of Grace had consumed Hump. The day after the play closed, he bribed one of the Irish maids to pack a picnic lunch for him. He’d invited Grace to go hiking in the nearby woods, and she’d accepted.

  After their picnic on a blanket, he leaned over and kissed her. Decades later, Grace said she kissed him back, even though she’d never let a boy kiss her before. “He was handsome and charming, and I genuinely liked him. But he got carried away when I kissed him. He wanted to go farther.”

  As a summer rain fell across the meadow, Hump jumped up and begged her to strip off her clothing with him. Even though she remained fully dressed, he pulled off his trousers, shirts, and underwear and danced around her in the nude, urging her to take off her clothes too. “I’d never seen a boy’s penis before,” Grace said, much less one erect, and I was terrified. I started running across the slippery meadow heading for home, leaving him
standing nude with his erection on the wet blanket.”

  He later told his friend, Peter St. Davids, “I’m not much of a lover, I guess.& I got the gal at the end of that stupid play, but not in real life.”

  Later when Grace Lansing had become Mrs. Gerald Lambert of Princeton, New Jersey and Palm Beach, Florida, she became friends with Bogie’s first wife, Helen Menken, telling her of that summer on the lake with Humphrey. “I always regretted we didn’t fool around that day,” Grace said, “especially when he became a world famous screen actor. I could have claimed to be Humphrey Bogart’s first love. But, alas, it was not to be.”

  ***

  With no buyer was found for Willow Brook, the Bogarts returned to New York City, where Belmont resumed his practice, and Maud took up her job as an illustrator for the magazine, Delineator, a position she would hold for twenty years. The sole purpose of the magazine was to sell dress-sewing patterns manufactured by its parent company, the Butterick Pattern Company, in an era when many women sewed their own clothing at home.

  The magazine was one of the first to publish pictures of females in nightgowns, bathing suits, and underwear. Mainly, it featured women appearing in fashionable clothing. Its backers hoped that America’s women readers would fall in love with the illustration, then go out and purchase the Butterick dress pattern.

  In spite of its focus on sewing patterns, the magazine also had pages devoted to serious fiction. Its editor was the novelist Theodore Dreiser, who printed pieces by such famous journalists as H.L. Mencken. Maud was especially proud of the magazine because it published articles about her favorite cause, women’s suffrage.

  One afternoon, Hump’s mother invited her boss, Theodore Dreiser, and the famously caustic visiting writer from Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, back to her townhouse for afternoon tea. Both men were ostensibly there to meet the “Maud Humphrey baby,” even though Hump was a growing adolescent at that time.