Maud Humphrey was among the nation’s most sought-after magazine
illustrators in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was
especially known for her portraits of children.
Maud Humphrey was among the nation’s most sought-after magazine illustrators in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was especially known for her portraits of children. An early-day suffragette, she retained her maiden name when she married a prominent Park Avenue physician.
They had two daughters and a son and it was natural that she used them as models for many of the books and advertisements she illustrated. Their features graced the leading publications of the day, and her son remarked years later, “You couldn’t pick up a magazine then without seeing my kisser in it somewhere.”
But Humphrey Bogart’s (his mother insisted on her family name for his first one) fame grew through his portrayal of seamy characters in a medium far removed from his roots of art and medicine.
Bogart had a sharp mind but school bored him. He found an escape by enlisting in the Navy when the United States entered World War I. The young sailor was assigned to escort a naval prisoner to the brig at Newport News.
As they were changing trains, the prisoner asked if he could have a light for his cigarette. Bogart complied and was holding it for him when the prisoner brought up his manacled wrists and struck him in the face. With blood spewing from his split lip, Bogart called for the fleeing prisoner to halt. When he did not, he shot him in the leg. Before he accepted medical aid for himself he saw that the prisoner was properly transferred to another guard.
That injury gave him a lisp that became part of his persona in acting, the profession he decided to follow. Many of his early roles on Broadway were of privileged young men of the wealthy set. One such introduced the famous line, “Tennis, anyone?”
But Bogart was dissatisfied with those and insisted on parts of more substance. The producer of “The Petrified Forest” was so impressed with his audition for killer Duke Mantee that he acknowledged later that Bogart’s interpretation frightened him.
He repeated the role in film but the roles that Hollywood offered him then were unsatisfactory, so Bogart returned to the stage after a year or so. When he did go back to Hollywood it was on a promise he made to himself that he would play only characters for which he felt an affinity.
As Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon,” he delineated the world-weary tough guy with a sense of integrity. Sixty years ago when “Casablanca” was released he brought that persona to its peak as Rick Blaine, the star-crossed owner of Rick’s Cafe Americain who had to decide between love and duty and made the choice in the final scene.
Bogart was also Philip Marlowe, a wisecracking gumshoe in “The Big Sleep,” and played the lead in a number of war movies. His insight into character won sympathy for even such paranoids as Fred C. Dobbs in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutiny.”
His personal life was frequently stormy and he was married four times, the last to a teenage actress named Lauren Bacall. They were devoted to each other and he demonstrated a love for her that showed his legion of fans a far more tender side than most had suspected.
He was in his mid-50s when he contracted cancer. It became apparent early that it was terminal, but Bogart determined to yield it nothing in coin of the spirit.
The few close friends permitted to visit him came away with tears in their eyes, as much for his cheerfulness in adversity as for his emaciated body. He died 46 years ago this week, but his screen presence has been discovered and admired by every generation since.
