As with so many Hollywood legends, there are a lot of dubious stories about Humphrey Bogart. The New York Times reported a few years ago that he was actually born on January 23, 1899, rather than Christmas Day as Warner Brothers publicity had it. One widely held belief places him as the original model for the Gerber Baby Food infant (his mother, a successful magazine illustrator, actually drew for a far lesser-known company). Many sources credit his trademark scarred, partially paralyzed lip and resulting lisp on a World War I combat mission aboard the vessel "Leviathan," although it's just as likely to have come from being busted in the mouth by a shackled Navy prisoner he was escorting or simply from a large wood splinter at the age of 12. A current furniture company ad even identifies him erroneously with the art deco style of the 30s, when in fact he didn't reach major stardom until the 40s in films that generally placed him in the shadowy world of urban streets and dingy offices.

One thing is certain: the star's background was far from that of the cynical, misfit anti-hero we think of today. The son of a prominent New York surgeon, he grew up in an atmosphere of society privilege, unlike fellow Warners gangsters James Cagney and George Raft. He was sent to Massachusetts' prestigious Phillips Academy to prepare for medical studies at Yale, but he was expelled for disciplinary problems and joined the Navy during the war. After his discharge, he depended on a stage producer who was a family friend to get work in the theater. For much of the 20s, he was usually seen as the callow, upper-class youth, the kind who bounded on stage asking "Tennis, anyone?" Although he worked regularly, his acting showed little signs of the acclaim he would later receive, and he was famously panned by the critic Alexander Woolcott as being "what is usually and mercifully described as inadequate."

With the coming of sound, Bogart went to Hollywood to pursue his fortunes but found himself assigned to a series of bland second leads. Dissatisfied with his film career, he shuttled back and forth between coasts to take roles in stage productions. He got his first break on Broadway - and his first real foray into the indelible image he would acquire - in the 1935 play The Petrified Forest as the deadly escaped killer Duke Mantee, opposite lead Leslie Howard. When Warners acquired the film rights, they wanted to cast Edward G. Robinson in the part, but Howard threatened to quit the production if Bogart wasn't allowed to recreate his stage role. The 1936 film proved a tremendous success, and Bogart expected his career to take off.

Although contracted by the studio and given work in a number of top productions, Bogart was still dissatisfied. Lead roles of multi-dimensional, complex outlaw figures were given to Cagney and Robinson, while Bogart usually played second string parts as shifty underworld villains. Although he attracted serious attention for such parts as the tragically nostalgic gangster Baby Face Martin in Dead End (1937), he more often had to settle for the likes of Frazier, Cagney's double-dealing "pal" in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). The awkward, melodramatic display of cringing cowardice he puts on shortly before being gunned down by Cagney in The Roaring Twenties (1939) shows just how far Bogart still was from his true niche.

It took director Raoul Walsh to begin casting the actor in more suitable roles. The late 30s saw Bogart continuing in the second-rate gangster vein (King of the Underworld, 1939), trying to look convincing in Westerns (The Oklahoma Kid, 1939, with Cagney equally out of his element), and playing sympathetic support to Bette Davis (Dark Victory, 1939, and - another apocryphal story? - dismissed after four days shooting as her love interest in the period tearjerker The Old Maid, 1939). Then Walsh cast him as one of two brothers, wildcat truckers who innocently get involved in murder and shady business deals, in They Drive By Night (1940), a loose remake of the Bette Davis-Paul Muni drama Bordertown (1935). Bogart was fourth-billed (behind George Raft, Ann Sheridan, and Ida Lupino), but his work impressed critics and audiences. More important, it impressed Walsh on their third film together. The following year, after Raft turned down the role assigned by the studio, the director guided Bogart to one of his best performances as the sympathetic gangster Roy "Mad Dog" Earle in High Sierra (1941). Bogart at last had the kind of role he would make his own - cynical, tough, but ultimately "good" in spite of himself and his background - and the actor was well on his way to stardom.

Bogart's rise was cemented later that year as Dashiell Hammett's unforgettable private eye Sam Spade in John Huston's directorial debut The Maltese Falcon (1941). Here was the pitch-perfect character for him - no longer an out-and-out criminal but a misfit living at the edge of the law, without attachments or illusions, reluctant to get involved beyond his own self-interest, who ultimately rises to hero status through a code of loyalty and morality more real and honest than even the law abides by. It was the kind of role he would take to perfection in Casablanca (1942). He played variations on it for the rest of his career, in films as different as The African Queen (1951), Key Largo (1948) - both for Huston - and Passage to Marseille (1944). It was an image and approach so appealing and successful, it turned a movie like To Have and Have Not (1944), based on a Hemingway story more faithfully rendered in The Breaking Point (1950), into a virtual remake of Casablanca.

If anyone noticed, however, they didn't seem to mind. To Have and Have Not was a big hit, not least thanks to director Howard Hawks' inspired teaming of his 45-year-old star with a 19-year-old former model making her film debut, Lauren Bacall. The two not only played brilliantly off each other on screen but became a legendary item in real life as well. Bogart had been rather unhappily married to his third wife, actress Mayo Methot, for some time. The two met while filming the Bette Davis drama Marked Woman (1937) and married in 1938. Known for their hard drinking and often very public fights, the couple had become known as "The Battling Bogarts." Still married to Methot when production on the Hawks picture began, he carried on a clandestine affair with Bacall that eventually led to marriage. They were together for the rest of his life.

With Bacall in this picture and their follow-up, The Big Sleep (1946), Bogart found an even greater ease on screen, aided tremendously by Hawks, masterful at putting sexual/romantic tension and a witty sense of humor at the heart of a thriller. Bogart and Bacall made only two other pictures together (Dark Passage, 1947, and Key Largo, 1948) but their names have become so inextricably linked in motion picture history they seem to have a co-starring career as extensive as Tracy and Hepburn.

Beginning in the late 40s, Bogart's roles took on more dimension and variety. He navigated successfully between crime dramas (The Desperate Hours, 1955, a kind of latter-day take on Duke Mantee), international intrigue (Sirocco, 1951, echoes of Casablanca again), hard-boiled urban drama (The Harder They Fall, 1956), even, most unlikely, romantic comedy (Sabrina, 1954). His long friendship and professional association with John Huston resulted in one of his greatest acting triumphs, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and his biggest box office failure, Beat the Devil (1953), a parody of the kind of international intrigue movies he made in the 40s and the occasion for a major rift between him and Huston. Many, however, consider his greatest work to be in the Nicholas Ray film In a Lonely Place (1950), in which his tough cynicism was penetrated to a core that was at once more frightening than any cold-blooded gangster he played and yet oddly touching.

In March 1956, Bogart underwent an operation for cancer of the esophagus. The illness took his life, in his sleep, on January 14, 1957. His image and appeal, however, continued well past his death, influencing filmmakers from Woody Allen to Jean-Luc Godard. Although his period of major stardom lasted just over 15 years, in 1999 the American Film Institute named Humphrey Bogart the Number One male movie star of all time.

by Rob Nixon