How Humphrey Bogart was Hollywood’s original tough guy from drug addict dad to boozy fights with wife who stabbed him

HUMPHREY BOGART was Hollywood’s original tough guy – playing cold-hearted cops and killers and a world-weary “gin-joint” owner in the most romantic film ever.

But the US star of 1942 movie classic Casablanca, who died in 1957, aged 57, could be just as hard-bitten off-screen with family.

The Oscar winner’s only son Stephen, 75, reveals he rarely saw Bogie — as the actor was known — and that his dad always put his career before his relationships.

It needed a determined woman to make a marriage to the screen legend work and that was Stephen’s mum Lauren Bacall — Bogie’s fourth and last wife, from 1945 until his death.

The no-nonsense Tinseltown siren, who died in 2014 aged 89, was brave enough to have an affair with Bogie while he was wed to his dangerously jealous third wife, Mayo Methot.

Humphrey accused US film and stage actress Mayo, who battled booze troubles, of stabbing him in the shoulder and shooting at him with a pistol.

Stephen, who is in charge of the Humphrey Bogart Estate, tells The Sun: “My mother was pretty ballsy to challenge Mayo, because I’m surprised Mayo didn’t shoot her.”

Humphrey’s rocky relationships with his four wives are the basis of a new documentary from Universal Pictures, now available to download.

‘Functioning alcoholic’

From Belfast director Kathryn Ferguson, Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes is narrated in the actor’s own words and explores his journey from a World War One veteran to the American Film Institute’s greatest-ever screen legend.

Bogart grew up in a wealthy part of New York City with his surgeon dad Belmont and illustrator mum Maud.

But his father was hooked on opium and blew his money on bad investments when Humphrey was a teenager.

Maud also thought her son had “failed” them when he was thrown out of private school for disruptive behaviour.

Bogart joined the US Navy during the spring of 1918 and served as a signalman aboard the USS Leviathan, which carried troops home from Europe after the war ended.

On his return to America, he became a stage manager and met actress Helen Menken, who had been feted as “the youngest leading lady on Broadway”.

Four years later, in 1926, she became his first wife and by now he was getting regular small acting roles.

But the tumultuous marriage lasted just one year and he moved quickly to marry second wife Mary Phillips, a far bigger Broadway star, in 1928.

While Mary’s main source of income was on Broadway, Humphrey fled to Hollywood to pursue major film roles.

Stephen says: “His focus was on his career and his life and his boat — his whole solitary kind of thing.

“He went out to California and Mary came out and he said, ‘Please stay, we’ll have a life together’.

“And she said, ‘I want to go back to New York’. And he said, ‘Alright, see you later’.”

They divorced in 1938, after ten years together.

Humphrey was still struggling to make it in Hollywood after a seemingly endless series of low-budget B-movies and flops.

He said: “I was convinced I would never make it in movies.”

Always a man for the night life, his boozing increased to damaging levels.

Stephen says: “He had a drink all the time.

“He limited himself to an ounce of liquor an hour.

“That’s a lot. But he was functioning.

“You would probably call him an alcoholic these days.”

In Los Angeles, Bogart would go to the same restaurant every day for a two-hour lunch, and start drinking before noon.

Humphrey met next wife Mayo in 1937, on the set of successful gangster film Marked Woman, also starring Bette Davis.

They got hitched the following year.

‘Shooting at people’

But as Humphrey’s star was on the rise, he decided he wanted a stay-at-home wife.

He asked Mayo to give up her burgeoning career and she agreed, becoming a self-described “admirable hausfrau”.

But it did not go as planned, with the couple nicknamed the “battling Bogarts” by the press due to their booze-fuelled fights.

Humphrey said: “I like a jealous wife and I’m a jealous husband too.”

Not as jealous as Mayo, though, who shot at him three times from their home’s window after he arrived home drunk.

Ever the tough guy, Bogart got up from behind his car and shouted: “You missed.”

Another time, he was left with blood seeping out of his shirt after Mayo stabbed him following what he described as a “difference of opinion about politics”.

Stephen says: “She would be in jail today, but it was just a different time.

“Somehow they just blew it off — and the whole gun thing, shooting at people.”

Meanwhile, despite his turbulent home life and heavy drinking, Humphrey was finally getting top-billing.

During the peak years of his career he played gumshoe detective Sam Spade in 1941’s The Maltese Falcon and sharp-suited romantic Rick Blaine in Oscar-winning Casablanca with Ingrid Bergman.

Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, is considered one of the greatest movies of all time — with Bogart’s famous line: “Here’s looking at you, kid”.

But his career saw to the end of his third marriage, when he met then 19-year-old Bacall on the set of To Have And Have Not in 1943.

She was a model and fledgling actress and he was a 44-year-old star at the top of his game.

Director Howard Hawks disapproved of their relationship, going as far as to threaten to ruin Lauren’s career if they carried on.

Despite their blossoming romance, Humphrey reportedly returned to Mayo a few times, but realised the marriage could not be saved in 1945 — and married Bacall.

I thought it was kind of a weird reason to want to have children.

Stephen Bogart

It was a tragic end for Mayo, whose heavy drinking worsened in the years after their divorce.

She died in 1951 from acute alcoholism, aged 47.

Meanwhile, Humphrey had told Bacall she had to do things his way if they were to marry, which they then did.

Stephen says: “He said to my mother, ‘I want to be with you.

“If you want to continue your career I’ll help you’.

“But there were conditions.”

As it turned out, Lauren went on to appear in three more films with her husband and enjoyed a stellar career.

She won a Golden Globe Award in 1997 for The Mirror Has Two Faces, and two Tony Awards for her work on Broadway.

Stephen thinks his mum appreciated having a father figure, in the shape of older partner Humphrey.

Born in New York, she was raised by her mum after her dad left when she was little.

Happiness and grace

So Stephen says of Bogart: “She had a male in her life, which she never had growing up.”

Strong-willed Lauren managed to convince Humphrey to become a father even though he had insisted he did not want children.

In the end, he only agreed so that his wife would have someone to remember him by when he died.

Stephen says: “I thought it was kind of a weird reason to want to have children.

“But my mother said, ‘I wanted to give Bogie a child of his own’.

“It’s not that she said, ‘Oh, I always wanted to have children and now I’m with the man that I love and I can’t wait’.

Stephen adds: “I have three kids.

“I wanted to have kids because I wanted to have kids.”

When Bogart had to go to Uganda with co-star Katharine Hepburn in 1951 to film The African Queen, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar, Lauren joined him on set while Stephen stayed at home in the States.

A year later, Bogie and Lauren had their second child, daughter Leslie.

Forty-five weekends a year, he’d go to the boat. So I didn’t really see him that much

Stephen Bogart

But rather than give up partying in his fifties, Bogart co-founded the Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra and continued his trips on his beloved sailing yacht the Santana.

Stephen recalls: “He’d be on set all day and he’d come home and he’d want to have dinner with my mother alone, not with the kids.

“Forty-five weekends a year, he’d go to the boat.

“So I didn’t really see him that much, as far as interacting with him during those first years.”

By the time the father and son had started to bond over sailing, heavy smoker Bogart had developed oesophageal cancer.

He had surgery to remove his oesophagus then chemotherapy, but the cancer spread.

The star’s death at just 57 was tough on Lauren, a widow after just 12 years of marriage.

Stephen, who had just turned eight, says: “You have the kids and it’s all happiness and grace and then he dies.”

Among those at Bogart’s funeral were Bergman, Bing Crosby and Henry Fonda.

Afterwards, Stephen lived in New York with his mum.

Lauren went on to have son Sam with second husband Jason Robards.

Other Golden Age actors have been largely forgotten — but not Bogart, thanks to Casablanca.

For Stephen, his legacy is something else.

He says: “He was a guy who wasn’t fake.

“When you knew him, that’s who you got.

“He was a very loyal friend.

“He wasn’t perfect, everybody has their flaws.

“But he was a wonderful actor, a true movie star.”

• Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes is available now on digital download across all popular platforms.