Humphrey Bogart Was Hollywood Royalty – And His Final Words Still Touch Fans Today

At the time of his death in January 1957, Bogart’s health had been deteriorating for several years. According to reports, the star had even joked that he’d lose his hair and teeth before a long-term contract was through. Bogart had also drank heavily during his career and was believed to have smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. In fact, his wife Bacall had once named him and his friends The Rat Pack after observing their bedraggled state the morning after a heavy night.

Bacall, for her part, discovered her husband Bogart’s throat cancer in February 1956. And only after this bleak diagnosis did he change his Chesterfield cigarette habit to the filtered variety, according to the Daily Mail. But the actor’s health continued to decline rapidly, and in March that year Bogart had two lymph nodes, a rib and his whole esophagus removed.

Bogart also underwent chemotherapy, and in November 1956 he went through more corrective surgery after the cancer spread further. The actor soon became wheelchair bound, and by the end of the year he struggled to go up and down the stairs in his house. According to his wife’s 1978 book Lauren Bacall by Myself, the actor quipped with his wry humor, “Put me in the dumbwaiter and I’ll ride down to the first floor in style.”

Bogart died at the age of 57 in January 1957 – less than a year after his diagnosis. And at the time of his death, he weighed just 80 pounds. The day before he passed, the star was visited by fellow Tinseltown greats Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra and Katharine Hepburn. According to A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax’s 1997 book Bogart, Hepburn said, “Spence patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘Goodnight, Bogie.’ [He] turned his eyes to Spence very quietly and with a sweet smile covered Spence’s hand with his own and said, ‘Goodbye, Spence.’”

Naturally, the world mourned Bogart’s passing, but his reputation as one of Hollywood’s greatest continues to endure today. Indeed, in 1999 he was hailed as the top male star of classic U.S. cinema by the American Film Institute. It is interesting, then, that despite a promising start to the screen with The Petrified Forest in 1936, he felt that his film career had stalled for quite some time in his later years.

Bogart began life on Christmas Day 1899, although his birthday has also been given as January 23, 1900. Apparently, the movie studio Warner Bros. – with whom Bogart had a somewhat problematic lifelong connection – changed it. The idea was that someone born on Christmas Day couldn’t be as bad as the villains he played.

Bacall, meanwhile, noted in her memoirs that Bogie – as he was known to friends – always celebrated his birthday on Christmas Day. She added in her autobiography that he even joked about missing out on a present every year due to the clash. Nevertheless, public records from 1900 verify that he was indeed born on December 25, 1899.

After starting his career on Broadway, Bogart’s first movie performance was to be in 1930’s Up the River alongside Spencer Tracy – with whom he’d share a lifelong friendship. The Petrified Forest in 1936 saw Bogart in his first outing as a criminal, which was a role that he became synonymous with for the next five years.

The Petrified Forest wasn’t just a hit with audiences and critics, it also helped establish Bogart’s career. But it very nearly never happened; Warner Bros. had apparently been reluctant to cast the star as the lead – having originally chosen Edward G. Robinson.

To Bogart’s disdain, Warner Bros. continued to cast the actor as gangsters in unremarkable heist movies for the next few years. Repeatedly playing “the heavy” was physically exhausting work, and it wasn’t the easy life which Bogart had envisaged. He later told journalist George Frazier, “In the first 34 pictures I was shot in 12, electrocuted or hanged in eight, and was a jailbird in nine.”

In 1941 Bogart took the part of detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, and it saw him finally break away from the gangster typecast. He did, however, retain the brooding demeanor for which he is so remembered. And Bogart was to play this to perfection in Casablanca the following year, where his cynical yet charismatic Rick Blaine is reunited with former flame Isla Lund – played by Ingrid Bergman. Furthermore, the role was to earn him his first Academy Award nomination.

Bogart’s wife at the time, actress Mayo Methot, was said to be wild with jealousy at her husband’s part opposite the beautiful Bergman. Matters were not helped by the latter’s rumoured infidelities with male leads. Nevertheless, Methot needn’t have worried, as the two apparently hardly spoke during filming. According to the book Bogart, Bergman later said, “I kissed him, but I never knew him.”

As it turned out, Bogart’s wife had more reason to be jealous of his next romantic co-star. In 1944 the actor then performed alongside Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. The young actress was only 19 years old and Bogart was 44, but they fell deeply in love. Soon after appearing in their second film together the next year – where the latter played detective Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep – he divorced Methot and married Bacall.

And the newlyweds would soon appear in two more movies together: Dark Passage in 1947 and Key Largo the year after. But these were to be the last movies they starred in together before Bogart’s death. Sadly, he had to abandon a movie they had planned to star in together – Melville Goodwin, U.S.A – because of his ill health.

Bogart’s next roles in Western The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in 1948 and film noir In a Lonely Place two years later are thought to be two of his finest. But it was his turn in the World War I flick The African Queen in 1951 which would finally win him a Best Actor Academy Award.

In The African Queen, Bogart plays the bad-tempered skipper of the eponymous boat. Katharine Hepburn, meanwhile, stars as a British Methodist missionary who he falls in love with. And together, they plot to blow up a gunboat in German East Africa as World War I breaks out.

The movie has been described as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress, and it was the only film Bogart won an Academy Award for. His role opposite Hepburn also led to a friendship for the rest of his life, and the two were accompanied by Bogart’s wife Bacall – who had joined the crew for the filming in Africa.

The actor, however was miserable and desperate to return home during shooting. According to the book Bogart, he said afterwards, “All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. Whenever a fly bit Huston [his director friend] or me, it dropped dead.” His co-star and teetotaler Hepburn wrote in her memoir that she was shocked by the amount of Scotch they drank. But while Bogart remained well, the actress contracted dysentry.

Bogart publicly declared that after winning one Academy Award, it would be foolish to try and get another. According to Jeffrey Meyers’ 1997 book Bogart: A Life in Hollywood, the star remarked, “The way to survive an Oscar is to never to try to win another one… too many stars… win it and then figure they have to top themselves… They become afraid to take chances. The result: a lot of dull performances in dull pictures.”

But the accolades continued for Bogart. And in his next movie, 1954’s The Caine Mutiny, the Hollywood legend bagged himself a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his role as a ship’s captain in World War II. Off-screen, however, his health was beginning to fail, and the next few movies would be his last ones.

As fitting with his already established Hollywood status, Bogart’s final roles would be starring alongside some of the great movie actresses of the time. In 1954’s Sabrina, Bogart plays the older brother of a man in love with Audrey Hepburn’s titular character. And he, in turn, competes for her hand.

What sounded like a dream onscreen pairing, however, was actually far from it. Bogart had wanted his wife for the role of Sabrina, while he himself had only been a last-minute replacement for Cary Grant. According to reports, the star said that Hepburn couldn’t act and when asked what it was like to work with her, allegedly said, “It’s Okay, if you don’t mind [doing] a dozen takes.”

But it wasn’t just Hepburn who was in Bogart’s crosshairs. The Hollywood legend also disliked his co-star and screen brother, William Holden – who incidentally become involved in a romance with Hepburn off-set. He also had a beef with director, Billy Wilder, who in his eyes compared unfavorably to his preferred man: John Huston.

According to Jeffrey Meyers’ book Bogart: A Life in Hollywood, the actor described the director as “the kind of Prussian German with a riding crop” and said the movie was “a crock of crap.” And by the time filming had wrapped up, he said, “I got sick and tired of who gets Sabrina.” The movie was a commercial success, however, and Bogart would eventually say sorry to Wilder – blaming personal issues.

Bogart went on to star with Ava Gardner in one of his last films – 1954’s The Barefoot Contessa. However, there was again some discomfort between him and his leading lady. Gardner was the soon-to-be ex-wife of Bogart’s close friend, Frank Sinatra, and Bogart was reportedly unhappy to be acting alongside her. In addition, he apparently claimed that her performance was unpolished.

But while Bogart was a faithful friend and undoubtedly a loving husband to Bacall, the actor was not without his infidelities. According to his studio assistant Verita Bouvaire-Thompson, she had an affair with Bogart for over a decade. And while filming The Barefoot Contessa, Bacall turned up on set and allegedly caught the two together.

But Bacall was reportedly sanguine after discovering that Bogart was having an affair. Indeed, she herself would begin a discreet relationship of her own with none other than the actor’s Rat Pack buddy Frank Sinatra. Bacall later confirmed that it began after the Casablanca legend’s cancer diagnosis and was prompted in part by the demise of the couple’s once active physical relationship.

Sinatra had come to visit Bogart frequently as the latter’s health had declined. The Daily Mail later reported Bacall as saying, “It wasn’t easy for him. I don’t think he could bear to see Bogie that way or face the possibility of his death. Yet he cheered [Bogart] up when he was with him – made him laugh – kept the ring-a-ding in high gear for him.”

While no doubt upset over the ailing health of his friend, Sinatra was also hiding a secret – he was falling in love with his wife. According to the U.K. newspaper, playwright Ketti Frings said afterwards, “It was no secret to any of us. Everybody knew about [Bacall] and [Sinatra]. We just hoped Bogie wouldn’t find out. That would have been more killing than throat cancer.”

Sinatra, though, wasn’t the only star to visit Bogart in the last year of his life. Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Billy Wilder, Dean Martin and Kirk Douglas were all said to have paid social calls to visit the Hollywood legend.

Bogart finally died the day after his final visit from Sinatra, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Tragically, it was only a year since his diagnosis and just a few weeks after his 57th birthday. While Bacall and Sinatra were to come out publicly as a couple after his death, there is no doubting the devastation that they both felt at his passing.

Bogart’s funeral took place at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills. Many of the great and good of Hollywood’s Golden Age were in attendance: including Marlene Dietrich, Joan Fontaine, James Cagney, Erroll Flyn, Gregory Peck and James Mason. Even fellow actor and later President of the United States Ronald Reagan was there to pay his respects.

Tracy had been asked by Bacall to give the eulogy, but, overwhelmed by grief, he found that he couldn’t do it. As a result, Bogart’s beloved friend John Huston gave a moving address to the crowd of assembled mourners.

At the funeral, Huston said, “Himself, he never took too seriously – his work most seriously. He regarded the somewhat gaudy figure of Bogart, the star, with an amused cynicism; Bogart, the actor, he held in deep respect… In each of the fountains of Versailles there is a pike which keeps all the carp active; otherwise they would grow [fat] and die.”

“Bogie took rare delight in performing a similar duty in the fountains of Hollywood,” Huston continued. “Yet his victims seldom bore him and malice, and when they did, [it wasn’t] for long. His shafts were fashioned only to stick into the outer layer of complacency, and not to penetrate through to the regions of the spirit where real injuries are done…”

Huston finished his speech with the words, “[Bogart] is quite irreplaceable. There will never be another one like him.” It was, no doubt, an incredibly emotional moment for the hordes of Hollywood actors present. As for Bogart’s own final words, though, there has been some cause for dispute.

Bogart has been widely quoted as saying, ‘I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.’ Given the actor’s propensity for heavy drinking and dry wit, one could almost believe these as the final utterances of the screen legend. However, they are believed to be more of a cute soundbite than the reality.

According to Bacall, Bogart’s final words to the mother of his two children were, “Goodbye, kid. Hurry back.” The star said this because his wife had needed to leave in order to pick up their son and daughter. Stephen Humphrey Bogart had recently turned eight when his father died, and his daughter, Leslie Howard, was just four.

On returning to hospital, Bacall found that Bogart had slipped into a coma from which he never recovered. Nevertheless, over sixty years after his death, the actor is, of course, remembered as a Hollywood legend. And from his undeniable presence onscreen to his dry wit, Bogart’s legacy will surely remain for decades to come.