THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507200497
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
HALF A CENTURY ago, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were knocking 'em dead, literally and figuratively, in saucy films like ``The Big Sleep.''
He was the hard-boiled hero, tough, savvy, unscrupulous on the surface but a straight-shooter underneath. She was the sultry siren, smart, a knockout but no knockover. They smoked.
Bogie and Baby. Salt and honey. May and December.
They were married in private life, or what private life there is in Hollywood. They had a son, Stephen. Bogart died of throat cancer; Bacall went on to a second career in legitimate theater.
Nobody paid much attention to Stephen, who became a television producer. Until now. He has not only shaken the burden of being offspring to screen legends, he has turned out to be something of a showman himself.
Play It Again (Forge, 239 pp., $19.95) by Stephen Humphrey Bogart is autobiographical but not autobiography. It's about a private eye who happens to be the only son of two movie stars. Dad's long dead; Mom gets that way at the hands of a serial killer.
``But,'' cautions Bogart in his publicity, ``don't draw any parallels - I have a very good relationship with my mother.''
Draw them we will, though; the title (a familiar line from ``Casablanca'') compels us to. And certainly Bogart's choice of subject matter and style is, at least in part, a confrontation with his own past. Certainly it wasn't all stardust, sweetheart.
``I've been alone all my life,'' says protagonist R.J. Brooks, who looks like Bogart but sounds, at times, like Robert Bly. Raised in boarding schools, remote from his mother, he is also a ``self-recovered alcoholic,'' disdaining even the group therapy of A.A. meetings.
Brooks describes himself as a ``matrimonial detective'' - read divorce specialist - in Manhattan. It becomes a metaphor; when his mother, Belle Fontaine, is murdered, he is driven to investigate his own origins, which supply him an involvement far deeper than his rootless literary progenitors. For Brooks is as much the son of Sam Spade as the man who played him:
He knows his way around the upper and lower East Sides, and he could mix with the cream as well as the curd. He was fiercely loyal to his clients, even if he detested their sordid lifestyles. He never betrayed a confidentiality to the police, a judge, a journalist, or anyone else, and he never padded his expense accounts.
Sound familiar?
Philip Marlowe without the office bottle.
Or Oedipus takes a bite out of the Big Apple. Mike Hammer's old turf, which has become, observers will agree, a little brown. Dashiell Hammett supplied the format; Raymond Chandler refined the hero; Ross Macdonald opened the dark domestic door.
Bogart, simply by being Bogart, provides extra irony.
By solving his mother, he might solve himself. . . .
The compulsory final confrontation takes place in Belle Fontaine's bedroom. There are some stock characters here - the good cop, the bad cop, the helpful newsie - but the female lead, wry reporter Casey Wingate, is possessed of refreshing ``moxie'' reminiscent of the real Bacall.
And the killer, an authentic ``Scary Guy'' with an identity problem of his own who allows Brooks to put the personal bogeyman (read Bogie-man) to violent rest, is strange but convincing in today's tabloid world.
Obligatory sex, rampant rough stuff; but Bogart manages to add something new to the form. His dust jacket photo reveals Bacall's eyes and Bogie's brow. But the net effect is rather like Noel Coward at midlife.
Stephen Humphrey Bogart, ex-TV producer, Tinseltown survivor, now resides with his family. Not in New York but New Jersey. He's working on a sequel to Play It Again. His memoir, Bogart: In Search of My Father, will be published this fall.
Whatever would the old man have made of this tart, teetotaling boomer, facing down his demons in fantasy, turning in the dark-alley trenchcoat for suburban L.L. Bean?
Here's looking at you, kid. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Stephen Humphrey Bogart's novel is an autobiographical tale starring
the only son of two movie stars.
by CNB