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Authors: Stephen Humphrey Bogart
Tags: Biography
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desire to be the recipient, so I kept my distance.”
After supper, Leigh was standing in a group that had gathered around the piano. Bogie walked in and stood next to her. Feeling intimidated, but fascinated at the same time, Leigh kept silent. When she was certain that Bogie was not looking, she stole a glance at the legend. She saw that Bogie wore, of all things, a little gold earring. I have no idea why my father was wearing an earring, except maybe to create controversy. An earring on a man was rare in those days, so Leigh tried to look at it, without actually staring. She was mesmerized. Suddenly Bogie turned and caught her looking at him.
“Oh,” he said, “admiring my earring?”
“Well…yes, I guess.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Bogie said. “I’m all man, sweet heart. Who are you?”
Leigh was too flabbergasted to reply. She stuttered.
“What’s the matter with you?” Bogie said. “You afraid of me? I won’t bite you.”
Leigh says, “And he didn’t, perceptively realizing that I was no opponent.”
The stories I like best about my father are those that show me he was not on a star trip. My mother, I think, some times takes her celebrity status seriously, and actually believes that she deserves to be treated better than waiters and barbers. But my father, it seems, had no such pretensions. It’s true, he did divide the world into phonies and non-phonies, but never on the basis of how much money they made or what they did for a living.
Dominick Dunne, for example, is now one of our lead ing novelists and journalists, but he knew Bogie at a time when Dunne was an unknown and Bogie was one of the big gest movie stars in the world.
He says, “Bogie was extremely kind to me. It was 1955 when he and Lauren Bacall were doing The Petrified Forest on television. This was part of a series called Producers Showcase. It was a big deal, an hour and a half of live TV. I was working for NBC as a stage manager. The show was to be televised from Burbank and I was sent out to California. We rehearsed for three weeks, and performed it once. During this time Bogart took a great interest in me and was incredibly nice to me. I had a similar background to his, having gone to prep school. I think he got a big kick out of that.
“I had lunch with him one day and I told him how much I loved movie stars. So he invited me to a party at the Mapleton Drive house one Saturday night. At that party Mr. Bogart introduced me to Judy Garland and Lana Turner, who lived nearby, and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were there. Everybody was there. I can hardly convey what heady stuff this was to a starstruck young man in his twenties, as I was. I think Bogart really got off on how thrilled I was to be there meeting these people.
“Perhaps I didn’t realize it at the time. But since then I lived for twenty-five years in Hollywood and I understand now that Hollywood has a pecking order and a caste system as much as India, and I realize it was incredible for me, the stage manager, to be at that party. For me to be invited was really quite something. That was a great kindness your father did me.
“I have always been a very shy person, but after I went back to New York, I sometimes called Mr. Bogart up just to say hello. And he was so gracious. This man was a major fucking star and yet he was always so goddamn nice to me.”
* * *
My mother walks around the first floor of the house on Mapleton, telling me where pieces of furniture were. But I stare out a window at the trees in the yard and I remember something else:
It is a few days after my father’s funeral. I am alone in the yard looking at the tree where Diane Linkletter and I often play Swiss Family Robinson. I go up into the tree alone. I am a skinny boy, all arms and legs, but now my limbs feel as heavy as the limbs on the tree. I reach my favorite branch. And there, as lost as I have ever been, I scream at God. “Why did my father have to die?” I scream.
After supper, Leigh was standing in a group that had gathered around the piano. Bogie walked in and stood next to her. Feeling intimidated, but fascinated at the same time, Leigh kept silent. When she was certain that Bogie was not looking, she stole a glance at the legend. She saw that Bogie wore, of all things, a little gold earring. I have no idea why my father was wearing an earring, except maybe to create controversy. An earring on a man was rare in those days, so Leigh tried to look at it, without actually staring. She was mesmerized. Suddenly Bogie turned and caught her looking at him.
“Oh,” he said, “admiring my earring?”
“Well…yes, I guess.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Bogie said. “I’m all man, sweet heart. Who are you?”
Leigh was too flabbergasted to reply. She stuttered.
“What’s the matter with you?” Bogie said. “You afraid of me? I won’t bite you.”
Leigh says, “And he didn’t, perceptively realizing that I was no opponent.”
The stories I like best about my father are those that show me he was not on a star trip. My mother, I think, some times takes her celebrity status seriously, and actually believes that she deserves to be treated better than waiters and barbers. But my father, it seems, had no such pretensions. It’s true, he did divide the world into phonies and non-phonies, but never on the basis of how much money they made or what they did for a living.
Dominick Dunne, for example, is now one of our lead ing novelists and journalists, but he knew Bogie at a time when Dunne was an unknown and Bogie was one of the big gest movie stars in the world.
He says, “Bogie was extremely kind to me. It was 1955 when he and Lauren Bacall were doing The Petrified Forest on television. This was part of a series called Producers Showcase. It was a big deal, an hour and a half of live TV. I was working for NBC as a stage manager. The show was to be televised from Burbank and I was sent out to California. We rehearsed for three weeks, and performed it once. During this time Bogart took a great interest in me and was incredibly nice to me. I had a similar background to his, having gone to prep school. I think he got a big kick out of that.
“I had lunch with him one day and I told him how much I loved movie stars. So he invited me to a party at the Mapleton Drive house one Saturday night. At that party Mr. Bogart introduced me to Judy Garland and Lana Turner, who lived nearby, and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were there. Everybody was there. I can hardly convey what heady stuff this was to a starstruck young man in his twenties, as I was. I think Bogart really got off on how thrilled I was to be there meeting these people.
“Perhaps I didn’t realize it at the time. But since then I lived for twenty-five years in Hollywood and I understand now that Hollywood has a pecking order and a caste system as much as India, and I realize it was incredible for me, the stage manager, to be at that party. For me to be invited was really quite something. That was a great kindness your father did me.
“I have always been a very shy person, but after I went back to New York, I sometimes called Mr. Bogart up just to say hello. And he was so gracious. This man was a major fucking star and yet he was always so goddamn nice to me.”
* * *
My mother walks around the first floor of the house on Mapleton, telling me where pieces of furniture were. But I stare out a window at the trees in the yard and I remember something else:
It is a few days after my father’s funeral. I am alone in the yard looking at the tree where Diane Linkletter and I often play Swiss Family Robinson. I go up into the tree alone. I am a skinny boy, all arms and legs, but now my limbs feel as heavy as the limbs on the tree. I reach my favorite branch. And there, as lost as I have ever been, I scream at God. “Why did my father have to die?” I scream.
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