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Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2007 > February > 02 > Entry
50 years after his death, Bogie still the best
If you’re a movie fan (and who isn’t?), January was a big month, whether you knew it or not: The 14th was the 50th anniversary of Humphrey Bogart’s death.
I wasn’t aware of that, myself, until a big, beautiful book landed in my mailbox commemorating the man. Bogie: A Celebration of the Life and Films of Humphrey Bogart even sports an official-looking Bogart 50th seal that strongly suggests this might just be the first of many such books and tributes we’ll get this year.
Fine with me. I don’t think it’s possible to get too much Bogart. In fact, the movie world could use a whole bunch of it these days.
Now, I’m not one of those misty-eyed nostalics who reflexively thinks that the good old days were all better than what we’ve got today. And I don’t necessarily buy into the idea that movie stars from the 1940s all had some special quality that’s lacking in today’s actors and actresses. Tom Hanks would have been a big deal any time he’d come along. Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Cate Blanchett and Charlize Theron would have done as well for themselves in the black-and-white era as they do now, I’m guessing.
Rather, my praise for and interest in Bogart is quite Humphrey-specific. It took me years to fully understand this, but he’s the greatest Hollywood star of all time, bar none. There are two classes: Bogart and everybody else.
No, don’t tell me Clark Gable is the one. He had one great role in one great movie (I’ll let you guess which one) and did a sly, sexy turn in It Happened One Night. But the guy was all looks. Don’t make an argument for Cary Grant, either. If he hadn’t been that handsome, you never would’ve heard of him. Jimmy Stewart was a great actor, sure, but his knack was mainly for elevating character roles into starring parts. And besides, did anybody ever really buy him as a serious romantic lead?
When I was a kid, I was a big John Wayne fan and watched all of his movies that I could find on late-night TV, back in the pre-DVD era. I still think he’s under-rated as an actor, but he’s no Bogart. Bogart’s star power seems more luminous because it’s so hard to explain. He wasn’t handsome like Gable, but he was undeniably charismatic. He shouldn’t have been a lady-killer like Grant, but he managed to convey a sort of smoldering, barely repressed sensuality that appears to have worked on more women than Lauren Bacall.
He wasn’t a big fellow like Wayne, but he filled the center of many an action picture with a kind of coiled-spring energy that implied explosive potential. He may not have been as chameleonic as Stewart, but did he need to be? You went to see Bogart be Bogart — the tough guy with the tender heart, the complicated heavy with the hooded gaze that conveyed threat, fury, cockiness, lust or wariness in quick, firm measure. The guy who embodied cool before anybody knew what that meant.
Think of the movies, more than 75 in all: The bad-guy cragginess of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the slick-operator snap of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. The cowardly breakdown of Angels with Dirty Faces. The rainy seduction of Key Largo.
And each time you see him, there’s the essential mystery at work: How such an ordinary-seeming, unpretentious guy could become to iconic. What was it, that thing he had? I think it was loss. Bogart’s best work has loss at its center — a reserved, sad loneliness that is never far off, even when things seem to be going well. It’s something we all identify with, or a fear we have — and he had it worse than any of us. Dying fairly young, at 56, as he did, just brought it into real life.
Yup. Bogart and everyone else. It’s not even close.
Comments
By jeanh
February 5, 2007 3:04 PM | Link to this
Ron: About Bogart: I have always thought that his WWII movie “Sahara” has been wantonly over looked. The acting was terrific, the cinematography was stark, the writing was excellent and Bogart was superb. Another of my Bogart favorites is “We’re No Angels” in which he shows a flare for comedic timing. He made so many great pictures and I fell in love with him the first time that I saw “To have and have not”. I don’t know what he had but he really had it. Thanks, jeanhBy mike
February 3, 2007 10:12 AM | Link to this
when are you going to update your lead belly blog? no update since october?