Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302130091
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LINDA SUNSHINE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BOGART AND BACALL
To millions of moviegoers, Humphrey Bogart represented the perfect image of a man.But Bogie was a most unlikely hero. His looks were less than classic. He was short, had a scrawny body, beady eyes and a receding hairline.
Because of a World War I wound, which paralyzed his upper lip, Bogie's face was molded into a perpetual scowl and he spoke with a lisp.
In "Dark Passage" (1947) a plastic surgeon gives Bogie the once-over and says, "You look as if you've lived." It was as apt a description of Bogart as any ever written.
He looked like a hood and was cast as one on stage in "The Petrified Forest" in 1935.
The movie version of that play launched his career at Warner Bros., where he played a succession of gangsters.
"In my first 34 pictures," Bogart told writer George Frazier. "I was shot 12 times, electrocuted or hanged in eight and I was a jailbird in nine. . . . I played more scenes writhing around on the floor than I did standing up."
The typecasting grated on Bogie's nerves. "I'm sick to death of being a one-dimensional character," he told another reporter. "I'm just a guy in a tight suit and a snap-brim hat. I have no function except to carry the plot and get killed."
On the Warner Bros. lot Bogie had to compete with other tough-guy actors such as Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney and Paul Muni. Bogie often was assigned the movies they rejected.
His break came in 1941, when he was cast in "High Sierra" after both Muni and George Raft turned down the role. Bogart gave one of his best performances as a weary, aging gangster who wanted to retire.
That same year he played Sam Spade in the "Maltese Falcon."
In 1942, after Raft had turned down the role, Bogart was cast opposite Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca," cementing his reputation as one of the best actors in American movies.
But it wasn't until Bogart met Lauren Bacall that he also became one of Hollywood's most popular sex symbols.
Bacall was discovered on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in March 1943 by the wife of director Howard Hawks, who was looking for a new girl to play opposite Bogart in "To Have and Have Not" (1944).
Although Bacall was only 19 and totally inexperienced, a screen test proved her highly photogenic. The tall, slim, sultry blonde had a certain look.
Before she had ever appeared on-screen, Hawks signed her to a personal contract and then sold 50 percent to Warner Bros., so the studio would finance "To Have and Have Not."
Bogie and Bacall met while filming "To Have and Have Not" and the interaction between them set a new precedent in films.
Though he plays his typical character, a tough guy who has a way with the dames, she's all sensual innocence and sexual sophistication, something decidedly different for the big screen.
Film critic James Agee wrote that Bacall had "cinema personality to burn . . . a javelinlike vitality, a born dancer's eloquence of movement, a fierce female shrewdness and a special sweet-sourness."
"With these faculties, plus a stone-crushing self-confidence and a trombone voice, she manages to get across the toughest girl Hollywood has dreamed of in a long, long while."
Hawks directed Bacall to her best advantage, not demanding too much and focusing on her stunning good looks.
She plays a classy-looking blonde with a dubious background. She's a pickpocket, but she's no tramp. She just does what needs to be done.
And from those baby-doll lips came the most suggestive lines. "You know you don't have to act with me," Bacall says in a memorable scene with Bogart. "You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."
These last two lines became their trademark, sealing their fate as a screen couple. Forever after she would say the come-on lines and he would react - as only Bogie could - with astonishment and pleasure at his own good fortune in running into "this dame."
In truth, "To Have and Have Not," a thriller set in Martinique, was a second-rate "Casablanca" and looks like a cheap attempt to cash in on Bogie's fame.
In fact, of Bogie and Bacall's four films together - "To Have and Have Not," "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947) and "Key Largo" (1948) - none was more than adequate. But, as in all their collaborations, this movie is interesting for those moments when they are making eyes at each other.
When she boldly kisses him in "To Have and Have Not," he asks: "Why'd you do that?" She shrugs those padded shoulders and says: "Been wondering if I'd like it." "What's the decision?" Bogart, baited and hooked, inquires. She coolly but knowingly replies: "It's even better when you help."
In real life, he did more than help. He divorced his third wife, Mayo Methot, and on May 21, 1945, married Bacall. She was 20, he was 45. The press went berserk, and Bogie's reputation soared.
In addition to being one of the biggest wartime actors, he had become a partner in one of Hollywood's most popular screen couples.
Their next film together was "The Big Sleep," an adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel.
Here Bacall is several notches up the social ladder from Slim, her character in "To Have and Have Not," but she's basically the same type.
Sophisticated and savvy, she meets her match in Bogie, who lays down the rules when she complains about the way he talks to her.
"I don't mind if you don't like my manners," he scowls. "I don't like them myself; they're pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings. And I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a bottle, but don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."
In most of his movies, Bogart's characters tended to treat women with both courtesy and contempt. He rarely smiled; his world-weary demeanor and ever-present cigarette suggested complete indifference.
But on-screen dames felt safe around him and for good reason. He could always handle himself - and anyone else. He'd outsmart everyone in the joint. Two steps ahead of the bad guys, he'd pursue them with dogged determination.
As critic Kenneth Tynan wrote: "We trusted him because he was a wary loner who belonged to nobody."
Offscreen, Bacall changed Bogart's public image as a man adrift by himself. A loner herself - and by choice - they seemed to belong together.
She didn't smooth out his rough edges so much as she cushioned them a little, adding a touch of refinement and tenderness to his tough demeanor.
Here, at last, was a woman who could keep up with him, on-screen and off.
Photographed in all the right restaurants and nightclubs, Bogart and Bacall were the idyllic romantic couple offscreen. Theirs was a fairy-tale romance.
She helped obliterate his reputation as a boozer and womanizer. She seemed to transform him into a happily married man and made him a father for the first time.
By the late 1940s, Bogart and Bacall were the most imitated couple in Hollywood. Men held their cigarettes like Bogie and women tried to copy Bacall's voice and "the look."
In 1947 Bogie formed his own production company and the following year he appeared in one of his most memorable movies, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
That same year he made "Key Largo," his last film with Bacall, helping re-establish her then-sagging career. She bought her contract back from Warner Bros. after being suspended a dozen times for refusing parts.
Bogart continued working, performing in some of his best movies, including "The African Queen" (1951), "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), "Sabrina" (1954) and "The Barefoot Contessa" (1954).
In 1956 he had an operation for throat cancer and died the next year, at the age of 57.
In his casket Bacall placed a silver-plated whistle inscribed: "If you need me, whistle."
After Bogie died, Bacall returned to New York and had a successful career on the Broadway stage, including winning two Tonys, for her work in "Applause" (1970) and "Woman of the Year" (1981).
She married actor Jason Robards, with whom she had another child. They divorced after eight years.
Her 1978 autobiography, "Lauren Bacall by Myself" (Knopf) was a national best seller. Bacall continues to work on both the big and small screens. 1992 Turner Publishing Inc.