50 Fun Facts About Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart's real birthday, long doubted because reference books gave a January date, fell on which holiday in 1899?

Christmas Day. A rival date of January 23 circulated for decades, but a newspaper birth notice printed on January 10, 1900 rules it out, and Bogart always kept December 25.

Bogart's mother Maud used a drawing of her son in a national advertising campaign for which brand?

Mellins Baby Food. The ads made the infant Bogart briefly famous: he later said there was a time you couldn't pick up a magazine 'without seeing my kisser in it'.

Which elite Massachusetts boarding school did Bogart leave in 1918 with failing grades?

Phillips Academy, Andover. Accounts differ on the exit: in one he was expelled for throwing a member of staff into the campus pond, in another his father pulled him out over his marks.

In which branch of the military did Bogart serve at the end of World War I?

US Navy. He enlisted weeks after leaving school, recalling later that at that age war seemed 'great stuff', and spent most of his sea time after the armistice ferrying troops home.

In one famous story of Bogart's lip scar, who struck him in the mouth during military service?

A handcuffed prisoner. As the tale goes, the man asked his escort for a cigarette and swung his cuffs when Bogart reached for a match; other accounts differ, so the scar's origin is unsettled.

Before he made money acting, Bogart hustled players at which game in New York parks and at Coney Island?

Chess. He played seriously all his life: during the war he took on servicemen by post until the FBI, reading his mail, mistook the move notation for secret code and made him stop.

Bogart is reportedly the first actor to say which line on stage?

'Tennis, anyone?' The legend grew from his 1920s parts as a well-bred juvenile with a racquet; Bogart told it both ways, owning up in 1948 to 'Tennis anybody?' and later swearing he never had to say the line.

The slang verb 'to bogart', inspired by Bogart's ever-dangling cigarette, means what?

To hog something. It began as 1960s drug slang for keeping a joint dangling from your lip, as he did his cigarettes, instead of passing it on, as in the 1968 song 'Don't Bogart That Joint'.

Which escaped-killer role in The Petrified Forest made Bogart a star?

Duke Mantee. He had created the gangster on Broadway, a shock after a decade of playing well-bred young men in drawing-room comedies, and repeated it in the film.

Which star cabled Jack Warner 'No Bogart No Deal', winning him his part in The Petrified Forest?

Leslie Howard. Bogart never forgot the favour, and named his daughter Leslie Howard Bogart in his honour.

Casablanca ends with Bogart telling Captain Renault this is 'the beginning of a beautiful' what?

Friendship. Producer Hal Wallis chose the line weeks after the cameras stopped, so Bogart had to be called back to dub it over the final shot.

Which 'hillbilly musical', with Bogart as a wrestling promoter, did he reportedly consider his worst film?

Swing Your Lady. In the 1938 comedy his wrestler falls for the woman blacksmith he is meant to fight and refuses to go through with the bout.

What did the press call Bogart and his third wife, Mayo Methot, whose fights once left him with a stab wound?

The Battling Bogarts. Both drank heavily; he nicknamed her Sluggy for her temper, then gave the same name to his motor boat.

Which actress was billed above Bogart in the 1941 gangster film High Sierra?

Ida Lupino. Her name ran above his in the credits, but the film made Bogart a star, and top billing soon followed.

Which better-known actor turned down Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon because his contract excused remakes?

George Raft. He made Manpower instead, having already passed on High Sierra, and both of the parts he refused went to Bogart and made him a star.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) was the directorial debut of which friend and drinking partner of Bogart?

John Huston. He chose Dashiell Hammett's thriller for his first job as a director, kept casting Bogart for the next twelve years, and finally spoke the eulogy at his funeral.

What is the name of Bogart's nightclub owner in Casablanca?

Rick Blaine. Ingrid Bergman was taller, so Bogart was raised on blocks for some of their scenes; the AFI later ranked Rick fourth among the screen's greatest heroes.

Which song does Ilsa ask the pianist Sam to play in Casablanca, after Bogart's character has banned it from his café?

As Time Goes By. The film's composer, Max Steiner, wanted to swap it for a tune of his own, but Ingrid Bergman had already cut her hair for her next role, so the scenes could not be reshot.

Bogart lost Best Actor for Casablanca, but the film won three Oscars, including which?

Best Picture. It also won for its director and its screenplay, and although Bogart went home empty-handed the film made him one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Bogart, 44, and Bacall, 19, fell in love while making which film, her screen debut?

To Have and Have Not. He was still married to his third wife when shooting began; he and Bacall wed the following spring, less than two weeks after his divorce came through.

Howard Hawks told which novelist that he could make a good film of the writer's worst book, then cast Bogart in it?

Ernest Hemingway. He agreed which of his novels was the weakest, and William Faulkner then reworked the script, making it the only film story shaped by two Nobel laureates.

Whom did Hawks and Bogart telegraph, in vain, to ask who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep?

Raymond Chandler. He had written the novel, yet later admitted in a letter: 'They sent me a wire … asking me, and dammit I didn't know either.'

Bogart married Lauren Bacall in May 1945 at Malabar Farm, the home of novelist Louis Bromfield, in which state?

Ohio. Bromfield, a Pulitzer-winning friend of the groom, was best man, and the wedding made his farm famous; it is now a state park.

Which film was Bogart and Bacall's last together?

Key Largo. In the 1948 thriller, set in a hotel during a hurricane, Edward G. Robinson, once billed above Bogart in their gangster films, played the villain to his hero.

What was the name of Bogart's beloved sailing yacht?

Santana. He named his own film company after the boat in 1948; its pictures went out through Columbia, which bought his stake seven years later.

Which veteran actor won an Oscar as the old prospector alongside Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre?

Walter Huston. Bogart said he was probably the only performer in Hollywood to whom he would gladly lose a scene.

In 1947 Bogart flew to Washington with which group to protest the HUAC hearings?

Committee for the First Amendment. Stung by the backlash, Bogart soon distanced himself from the Hollywood Ten in a magazine piece headed 'I'm No Communist'.

Which 1950 film noir, made by Bogart's own company, cast him as a hot-tempered screenwriter suspected of murder?

In a Lonely Place. The actress Louise Brooks, who knew him, thought its proud, hard-drinking, sometimes violent writer the closest any part came to the real Bogart.

Which writer co-wrote the screenplay of Beat the Devil (1953), Bogart's caper comedy?

Truman Capote. He was hired early in 1953, and the script he helped write turned the picture into a loose send-up of The Maltese Falcon.

On The African Queen's location shoot, Bogart claimed he stayed healthy by drinking what instead of the local water?

Scotch whisky. Most of the unit fell sick, co-star Katharine Hepburn among them, while Bogart lived on tinned food and Scotch and joked that any fly that bit him dropped dead.

What was the name of Bogart's cantankerous steam-launch skipper in The African Queen?

Charlie Allnut. In the novel he is a Cockney, but Bogart would not attempt the accent, so the script was rewritten to make him Canadian; the part won him his only Oscar.

Accepting his African Queen Oscar, Bogart said it was 'a very long way' to the stage from the heart of where?

The Belgian Congo. Much of the film was shot there; he added that the theatre was 'a little nicer', then broke his vow to thank nobody by crediting his director and his co-star.

Which paranoid naval commander did Bogart play in The Caine Mutiny (1954)?

Queeg. The captain's frantic hunt for a quart of missing strawberries helps convince his officers he is unfit to command; the part brought Bogart his last Oscar nomination.

Whom did Billy Wilder originally want for Bogart's role in Sabrina (1954)?

Cary Grant. He declined, so the screen's best-known tough guy was cast against type as a tycoon who falls in love, and spent the shoot feuding with a director he called 'overbearing'.

The flamenco dancer made a star in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) is often said to be modelled on whom?

Rita Hayworth. Like the heroine she was a dancer turned star who married into the nobility, in her case Prince Aly Khan, though one biographer counts her as only one of several models; Ava Gardner played the part.

Which struggling co-star did Bogart quietly feed lines to on The Left Hand of God (1955)?

Gene Tierney. He knew the signs from his own sister's illness, so he coached her through her scenes and urged her to get help; she entered a clinic soon afterwards.

What was Bogart's final film, a boxing drama with Rod Steiger?

The Harder They Fall. Its tale of a hopeless heavyweight steered to a title shot through fixed fights was inspired by the real Primo Carnera scandal; Bogart fell gravely ill the year it came out.

A cartoon Bogart, spoofing his panhandler from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, pesters which Looney Tunes star?

Bugs Bunny. In 8 Ball Bunny the cartoon Bogart asks him to 'help out a fellow American who's down on his luck', echoing the plea his drifter makes again and again to one stranger in the film.

After a long night out in 1955, Lauren Bacall reportedly told Bogart and friends they looked like 'a goddamn' what?

Rat pack. The name stuck: the friends made it a mock club with Sinatra at its head and Bogart in charge of public relations, and Sinatra's later Las Vegas circle inherited it.

At the end of The Maltese Falcon, Bogart's detective calls the black bird 'the stuff that' what 'are made of'?

Dreams. The line is borrowed from Shakespeare: in The Tempest, Prospero says 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on'.

From what illness did Bogart die in January 1957?

Oesophageal cancer. A heavy smoker and drinker, he put off seeing a doctor until early 1956, and the surgery that followed came too late; he died the next January, aged 57.

On the night before he died, Bogart answered 'goodnight' with a quiet 'goodbye' to which old friend at his bedside?

Spencer Tracy. 'Goodnight, Bogie,' he said, patting his shoulder; Bogart covered the hand with his own and answered 'Goodbye, Spence.'

What was inscribed on the small gold keepsake Lauren Bacall laid to rest with Bogart?

'If you want anything, just whistle', it read; the keepsake was itself a tiny whistle, recalling the line she spoke to him in their first film: 'You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?'

A 'Bogie cult' took hold in the late 1950s at a cinema that screened his films during exam week at which university?

Harvard. The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge ran his films every finals week, and students came in costume and recited the dialogue along with the screen.

In which 1960 Jean-Luc Godard film does the hero, a petty crook, model himself on Bogart?

Breathless. Jean-Paul Belmondo's car thief idolises American movie gangsters, and stops in the street to mimic the star's pose in a cinema display for one of his films.

In which Woody Allen comedy does Bogart's ghost advise a film critic having trouble with women?

Play It Again, Sam. The title is the famous misquotation of Casablanca, since nobody in that film says those exact words; an impressionist, Jerry Lacy, plays Bogart's ghost.

Which 1976 Al Stewart hit, begun after he watched Casablanca on television, opens by setting its scene in a Bogart movie?

Year of the Cat. Stewart was fitting new words to the tune of an older, unrecorded song when the film gave him his opening couplet; the single went on to reach number eight in America.

In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Bogart first on which list?

Male screen legends. His standing kept rising after his death: a 1960s 'Bogart boom' of revivals made him a cult figure, and Entertainment Weekly named him its number-one movie legend in 1997.

Which film beat Bogart's Casablanca to top the AFI's 1998 list?

Citizen Kane. It led the AFI's 100 greatest American movies, yet it lost the top Oscar for 1941, as Bogart's The Maltese Falcon did, to How Green Was My Valley.

Casablanca, the city that gave Bogart's most famous film its name, is in which country?

Morocco. In the film's wartime setting the city was under Vichy French control and crowded with refugees from occupied Europe waiting for exit visas, the predicament that drives the plot.