20 Fascinating Facts About Humphrey Bogart

There is perhaps no one more synonymous with old Hollywood than legendary actor Humphrey Bogart. Bogart had a tough exterior, playing hard boiled detectives and gin joint owners, but there was a sensitivity to him as well—and it was his ability to embody both of these sentiments that launched him into superstardom, even if he came to it later in life than most actors.

Beyond his acting, Bogart played an important role in pivotal historical events, too, serving in the Navy and later getting caught up with the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Blacklist era. Read on to learn about Bogart’s legacy, with 20 facts that will have you saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Humphrey Bogart was born on Christmas Day.

In what was quite the gift to his parents, Humphrey Bogart was born in New York City on Christmas Day 1899 to Belmont DeForest Bogart and Maud Humphrey. His father was a prominent cardiopulmonary surgeon, while his mother was a successful—and highly paid—illustrator. Despite growing up with wealth, Bogart didn’t have it easy at home: Both of his parents struggled with substance abuse and fought constantly.

Some thought Bogart was the Gerber baby.

Maud found her niche drawing children, and used this skill both as a children’s book illustrator—providing the art for books like Mother Goose—and in the advertising world, with clients like Ivory soap and Mellin’s baby food. In fact, because of this work, rumors persisted that Humphrey Bogart himself was the Gerber baby. However, they were unfounded: Not only did Maud not draw the Gerber baby, but Bogart was nearly in his thirties when the Gerber art debuted. Maud did use Bogart as a model for Mellin baby food, though. (The Gerber baby’s identity was finally revealed in 1978; it was Ann Turner Smith.)

He got kicked out of boarding school.

Bogart attended Trinity in Manhattan, where he was constantly bullied by other students, who called him a “sissy” and often gave him shiners. He was not great at academics or sports. In September 1917, he was sent to boarding school at Phillips Academy (his father’s alma mater), and he didn’t fare better there: After his first semester, the headmaster of his dorm wrote that “he doesn’t even try to maintain a gentleman’s C average” and that he would be nixing his off-campus privileges the following semester. Before long, he was expelled.

Legend has it that he was booted from school because he threw the headmaster into the school’s “Rabbit Pond”; others blame his subpar academic performance and frequent smoking and drinking. According to Darwin Porter’s The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart: The Early Years (1899–1931), he got kicked out after Bogart’s dorm headmaster caught him sneaking back into the window one night and they tussled.

Bogart’s parents wanted him to be a doctor.

While Bogart’s parents hoped that he would attend Yale and follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a surgeon, Bogart instead enlisted in the Navy in 1918, helping to transport U.S. troops. While Bogart was technically in the Navy while World War I was raging, he didn’t go to sea until after the Armistice was signed.

There are several stories about how he got his scar.

While Hollywood executives would later boast that the scar on Bogart’s face—and his resulting lisp—occurred when the ship he was on was attacked during the war, many believe it was due to some kind of argument Bogart found himself in while serving on the USS Leviathan. He was eventually honorably discharged on June 18, 1919.

Apparently he wasn’t much of a writer.

After leaving the Navy, Bogart struggled to find work. He eventually found a job at the film studio belonging to William A. Brady—the father of one of his childhood friends—where Bogart started as an office boy and even got a chance to direct. “I did a fine job,” he would later recall. “There were some beautiful shots of people walking along the streets, with me in the window making wild gestures. There was an automobile chase scene in which a car ran into itself. So Mr. Brady stepped in and directed the rest of it himself.” Bogart then tried his hand at screenwriting, but it also wasn’t his forte: Per one account, the script Bogart wrote was “just about the worst thing” a script reader “had ever seen.” Bogart later got a job as the company manager of a touring production of The Ruined Lady, even stepping in when one of the leads got sick. After that, he searched out more acting work; according to Bogart: A Life in Hollywood, “From 1922 through 1935 Bogart appeared in twenty-one different plays.”

Bogart’s big break came at 36.

It took some time, but Bogart eventually find his niche—and then some—as an actor. When Bogart initially began acting, he was often typecast as upper class figures, likely due to his upper class background. Finally, Bogart got his breakthrough at 36, when he was cast in The Petrified Forest as villain Duke Mantee. The play ran on Broadway in for a few months in 1935. The next year, Bogart reprised his role in the film adaptation, which would then lead to the bigger roles he’s now famous for in films like The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.

He appeared in a feature film with Spencer Tracy just once—but they remained life-long friends.

Bogart appeared in 1930’s Up the River alongside Spencer Tracy, who would become one of his closest friends. Tracy even gave Bogart his famous nickname: Apparently, when Bogart introduced himself to his fellow actor on set by saying “Call me Hump,” Tracy replied, “What kind of nickname is that? From now on and henceforth forevermore you’ll be known as Bogie.”

Bogart protested the Blacklist.

By the late 1940s, Bogart was a Hollywood heavyweight at Warner Bros. But anti-Communist sentiments were growing, and the House of Un-American Activities Committee was beginning to subpoena celebrities to testify before them. While Bogart was not himself a communist, he and other celebrities like Lauren Bacall (whom he had recently married), Rita Hayworth, Groucho Marx, and Gene Kelly were concerned about censorship in Hollywood and formed the Committee for the First Amendment. They flew to Washington, D.C. in a show of support of those who had been subpoenaed; they also broadcast radio programs including one in which Bogart asked, “Is democracy so feeble it can be subverted merely by a look or a line, an inflection, a gesture?” But eventually, because they were being slammed in the press—and due to what some believed was coercion from President Truman—the stars, including Bogart, backed off.

He stood up for Lena Horne.

Lena Horne, a trailblazer and Hollywood legend in her own right, came to California in 1941 to sing at the newly opened Trocadero. At the time, Black people weren’t permitted to rent or buy homes in Hollywood, so Felix Young, the operator of the Trocadero, signed for the house on Horne’s behalf. “When the neighbors found out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived right across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing around a petition to get rid of me,” Horne would later recall, adding that Bogart “sent word over to the house that if anybody bothered me, please let him know.”

Bogart was married four times.

While Bogart’s romance with his fourth and final wife, Lauren Bacall, is now widely considered to be one of Hollywood’s most classic love stories, Bacall was actually Bogart’s fourth wife. Bogart first marriage, to Broadway actress Helen Menken, lasted for less than a year. Next was actress Mary Philips—but with him in Hollywood and her working onstage in New York, their marriage crumbled, and they divorced in 1937. The next year, Bogart married again, this time to actress Mayo Methot.

His third wife stabbed him.

If Bogart’s marriage to Bacall was his happiest, then his years with Methot were seemingly the most eventful. Known as the “Battling Bogarts” because of their fighting, the pair once reportedly spent a World War II USO Event “drunkenly firing guns in the middle of the night,” according to Portland Monthly. Methot reportedly set their house on fire, threatened to shoot him in another incident, and once even stabbed Bogart in the back. (He was patched up without alerting the police because of the morality clause in his studio contract.) Despite their volatile relationship, Methot was still devastated when they divorced and Bogart, 45, married 20-year-old Bacall two weeks later.

Sparks flew between Bogart and Bacall on the set of To Have and Have Not.

When Bogart and Bacall were cast as onscreen love interests in 1944’s To Have and Have Not, it was pretty clear to everyone that a match had been made offscreen as well. As actor Dan Seymour said of the now-famous “You know how to whistle, don’t you” scene: “The way they did that scene, we knew things were happening. He had that sort of smile you can still see on the screen.” Per other on-set reports, “Bogie was more serious. Betty was pretty giggly—and silly. But cute. And funny. And Bogie got a little more giggly because of her.” But it wasn’t until after they reunited for The Big Sleep that Bogart left Methot.

Bogart and Ingrid Bergman apparently didn’t like each other.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Casablanca is one of the most romantic movies of all time, with Rick Blaine (Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) breaking new hearts whenever the film is screened. But apparently where Blaine and Lund sparkled, Bogart and Bergman fizzled. Later, Pia Lindstrom, one of Bergman’s daughters, told Bogart’s son Stephen that “She didn’t really get on with your father.” Isabella Rossellini—also Bergman’s daughter—added, “they weren’t even friends.”

He was the “spiritual leader” of the Rat Pack.

When he wasn’t acting, Bogart liked having a good time, and he surrounded himself with those who endeavored to do the same. This included friends Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Swifty Lazar, and other celebrities. Bacall was the one who famously told the group “You look like a goddamn Rat Pack” after she saw them at their most debauched. They had a coat of arms, a motto, and even specific roles they each fulfilled. Sinatra was  the “Pack Master,” and per Bogart’s son Stephen, Bogart was the group’s “spiritual leader.”

Bogart suffered for his Oscar.

In the early 1950s, Bogart traveled to the Congo to make John Huston’s The African Queen with Katherine Hepburn. It wasn’t an easy set for many reasons, perhaps most of all because of the leeches. “My father didn’t like leeches,” Stephen Bogart said in 2019.  “And when you’re in the water, in the Congo, you’re gonna get leeches. They put some on him in strategic places, but he was really walking through the bulrushes. You only saw them from the waist up.” But his brush with leeches would pay off: Bogart won his only Oscar for his work in The African Queen, nabbing the Best Actor statuette.

He had kids later in life.

Bogart’s marriage with Bacall was the only one that produced any children. Bogart was 49 when their son, Stephen, was born; next came their daughter Leslie, who was born in 1952 and named after Bogart’s friend, British actor and filmmaker Leslie Howard. It was Howard who insisted Bogart play Duke Mantee in the film reprisal of The Petrified Forest.

He wasn’t as tough as he appeared onscreen.

Part of Bogart’s appeal was his tough guy persona—but by all accounts, it was just that, a persona. James Cagney said that when the cameras weren’t rolling, Bogart was “as tough as Shirley Temple.” According to Bogart himself, he was “Democrat in politics, Episcopalian by upbringing, dissenter by disposition.”

Bogart is reportedly buried with a very sentimental item.

Sadly, Bogart succumbed to esophageal cancer in 1957, two weeks before his 57th birthday. His cremated remains were reportedly buried with a gift Bacall had given him years before his death: A golden whistle engraved with the phrase if you need anything, just whistle—a nod to the famous line uttered in To Have and Have Not. Fans of Bogart’s can today pay tribute to him by visiting Humphrey Bogart Place on 103rd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue, where Bogart grew up. “Bogie would never have believed it,” Bacall said at the unveiling of the sign in 2006.

His name became a verb.

Bogart’s name had the rare honor of becoming a verb—thanks to his predilection for keeping his cigarette at the corner of his mouth rather than smoking it. The phrase was first coined in a 1968 song by the band Fraternity of Man, but rose to popularity when the song was included in the 1969 counterculture classic Easy Rider.

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