Bogart: The Definitive Biography of Humphrey ―Hollywood Legend, Warner Brothers Actor, and Lauren Bacall's Love

by Ann M. Sperber

Ann Sperber and Eric Lax offer therevealing, intimate, definitive biography of the legendary Humphrey Bogart,detailing the arc and span of his personal and professional life—a story oftoil, tragedy, and triumph. Sperber and Lax exploreBogie’s abusive childhood and the three unsuccessful marriages that precededthe lasting love he found with Lauren Bacall, and plumb the depths of hisarduous career working as Warner Brothers’ go-to drudge actor for thirteenyears of B-list films before rising to stardom and ultimately achieving hisplace amongst Hollywood royalty. The Los Angeles Times calls Bogart "animmediate triumph . . . so rich in its research, so compelling in its writing, itis an absorbing human story of the motion picture business in the age ofHumphrey Bogart."

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Film, Media Tie In, Biography Memoir, History, Autobiography

704 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Andrewh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am huge fan of Bogart (or, rather, of his films and film persona, the legendary 'Bogie'), but I found this biography to be somewhat plodding and dull. Oddly, it was written by two authors who never met, but who clearly did an extraordinary amount of research (one spent 18 months trawling the Warnes Bros. Archives) and this shows up in the huge level of detail presented here, especially around his dealings with Warners studio boss Jack Warner (always called 'JL' here) and in his dealings with the CFA (Committee for the First Amendment) in the HUAC witch-hunt era. The former battle with the studio is interesting enough, but well-known to anyone who has read about Hollywood. The latter material is presented as the turning point in both Bogart's film career and of his public image as a man of conscience, after he was forced to recant his defence of the Hollywood 19 by Warner, in order to save his career. Overall, though, I found the lack of insight into the great films to be disappointing and the early films (prior to his big break in the Maltese Falcon in 1941, when Bogart finally became Bogie, and stopped being killed in the final reel) were sketched over very briefly, and I would have been interested in more on this and on his early stage career. There is also far too much gossip and tangental anecdote-telling (not always about Bogart even), and though Bogart is presented as a complex man, I felt that the authors did little to increase our understanding of his inner life, in the way Simon Callow's biography does for Orson Welles, for exmaple.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The American Film Institute ranks Humphrey Bogart as the greatest male star of American cinema. How can I NOT agree with this? I think he's the greatest film star of all time, period.

In the 1980s and 1990s I watched Bogart in two theatrical revivals of Casablanca on the big screen that had the most thunderous ovations I have ever heard in a movie house, powerful memories I have always cherished. I remember also my elation watching The Maltese Falcon at the same theater circa 1979 as Bogart's tough, jaded detective, Sam Spade, sends the duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessy to sure death as he cradles the black bird ("the stuff that dreams are made of"). I laughed with other moviegoers at that same theater during The Big Sleep as Bogie portraying another assured detective, Philip Marlowe, flirted with a series of saucy women in ways that deftly defied the censorious Production Code. Bogart was always on television in my youth, ever-present practically weekly. As Fred C. Dobbs, the dirty American in Mexico in Treasure of the Sierra Madre seeing the fleeting results of his greed as his gold dust blows away, laughing maniacally at the absurdity of fate. As Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny slow burning then going completely apeshit over strawberry ice cream. As Charlie Allnut in The African Queen rising from river bum to hero. Masterpiece performances, one after another in stone-cold movie classics. And stalwart and assured in lesser known gems like Sahara, Dead Reckoning and especially the amazing, In a Lonely Place, the movie that probably best captures Bogart's true world-weary sensibility as a man. There's just no getting around the fact that the man's legend was pervasive; an undeniably important part of my life, at least in terms of film.

It would take an extraordinary book to peel back the layers of the icon perpetuated by years of mythical embellishment, and holy crap does this masterpiece biography do it. Bogart by the late Ann Sperber and Eric Lax is as great a biography on Bogie as one could ask for. Absolutely monumental and staggeringly great. The research on this 1997 definitive bio is second-to-none. The late Sperber talked to hundreds of people who knew Bogart, the good, the bad and the ugly Bogart, and as the book points out, Bogart was all of these, a very complex man hurt by the vicissitudes of life, who hit stardom late and carried a grudge about it for the rest of his short life, ended by cancer at the youthful age of 57 in 1957.

Bogart's early life and career all the way into middle age hardly suggested he'd ever amount to much, certainly not a legend or the envy of every man and the desirous object of women. He did not have conventional good looks, and yet there was something about his granitic bearing that was attractive.

Bogart did not come from the streets, like many of his gangster/detective/working class characters. He was born a Christmas baby, Dec. 25, 1899, into relative luxury in New York state. His family lived in a mansion on a lake built by a 19th-century robber baron; his father, Belmont DeForest Bogart, a well-off physician and his mother a very famous commercial artist who painted babies seen in publications everywhere. Maud Humphrey was sort of the Anne Geddes of her day. She made more money than her husband. Bogart grew up in a house with servants and was expected to behave according to his station. All this, though, was a facade. Bogart's parents were both drug addicts, often either cruel or neglectful of him and his siblings, and the sadistic servants were even worse. Bogart's adoption of sailing was the one thing his father lauded -- the avocation of a gentleman, after all -- but the young Bogie did it mainly to get away from the horror of his household. Bogart quickly became an expert sailor and just as in childhood, those moments of respite on lakes or on the sea became his balm during the many trials of his life.

Bogart was an intelligent and capable boy but already had a rebellious streak in him. He did poorly in school and was often punished. The grit seen in his later screen heroes was already evident at a young age. Whenever he was beaten by his father, the boy would clench his teeth and hold back tears. A pattern throughout his life would be to keep his cards close to the vest, rarely letting others into his thoughts, eschewing vulnerability.

After a stint in the Navy at the end of World War I, and with no apparent ambitions, Bogart drifted into acting, partly with the help of family contacts in the theater known by his father. His ascent up the Broadway ladder was slow but by the end of the 1920s he was respected by critics and earned steady work. During his theater days, Bogart's tics became well known, his heavy drinking, his professionalism at work and his gruffness after a few drinks after a show, and his propensity to marry and divorce. He had a personal code, never (or rarely) having affairs (until his famous one in the 1940s), but also being a difficult husband who often married difficult women. His star-making turn on the stage in New York in 1935 was the play, The Petrified Forest, with a cast headed by the then-famous British actor, Leslie Howard and then made into a film with Howard and Bogart. It was this breakthrough that earned Bogart's 18-year contract at Warner Brothers, which turned out to be both the boon and bane of his existence. It also, because of the gangster element, threatened to consign him to typecasting

The book covers in great detail the savage tug of war that Bogart waged with studio mogul Jack L. Warner though the years of Bogart's seemingly endless string of bad movies and into the era of his great classics. Bogart's struggle to emerge from the shadows of Warner studio stars such as James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and George Raft was one he never got over and remained ever bitter about, even as he finally emerged in the mid-1940s as the highest-paid actor in Hollywood.

It also covers in great depth the bittersweet, sad marriage between Bogart and his third wife, actress Mayo Methot and their titanic struggles through alcohol-fueled verbal and physical brawls. Each gave as good as each got. There were not good and bad guys, and, to the book's credit, Mayo Methot is portrayed fairly, as is Bogart's obvious devotion and love for her. These were two people who existed to fight each other, and when the fighting was done they'd retire to their bed and bang. The book tells us that every Christmas, Bogart would screen the 1937 film, A Star is Born, a tale of a rising and falling star like that of his wife and himself, and Bogart would cry. When his friends would ask why, he would clam up.

On the set of Howard Hawks', To Have and Have Not in 1944, fireworks sparked between the middle-aged Bogart and the 19-year-old neophyte screen actress and New York model, Lauren Bacall, and the marriage to Methot was over. Even as he became more of a family man and a financial success and an Academy Award winner, Bogart never shed the demons that haunted him. The fear of failure, cynicism about his life achievement, the bitterness over years of career stagnation never left him. There are many Bogarts talked about in this book, the man who was the consummate professional, the trusted friend, and also the nasty man who'd insult you for no reason. Bogart's run-in with the Right-Wing HUAC committee over his Leftist leanings left him even more embittered and untrustful of the world.

The book is supremely well written, with a novelistic pace and flow, a collaboration between an author, Sperber, who had done years of impeccable research and died before she could complete a full draft, and Eric Lax, who whipped it all into shape. There will never be a more complete biography of Bogart; it would simply be impossible. This is the definitive one, which is pretty much universally acknowledged.

This was quite an epic journey, a fully dimensional portrait of a multi-layered man who left an immortal mark on culture, something that Bogart himself never believed would happen. Highest recommendation!

c. 2025 EG/K

[ger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a big biography reader and I had no special interest in Bogart other than "How the hell did he get Bacall ?" But I really enjoyed it. Interesting character with a life full of baggage. Smart, sarcastic, kind, talented and insecure. He was professional, a heavy drinker and acerbic . I did get a good sense of him and that's all I need from a biography .well worth the time .

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good bio that avoids the usual Hollywood gossip. Bogie is revealed as a shy, reserved guy who happened to make a good movie tough guy. The sections on the production of his greatest movies and the story of his romance of Lauren Bacall are great fun to read. Long for a star bio but worth it.

[Nancy Loe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply brilliant. Well researched and written - a definitive movie biography.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this hard to put down - a compelling and well-written account of Bogart's often turbulent life. Just a shame there isn't more detail about some of the earlier movies.

[Stan Prager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early in 2022, I saw Casablanca on the big screen for the first time, the 80th anniversary of its premiere. Although over the years I have watched it in excess of two dozen times, this was a stunning, even mesmerizing experience for me, not least because I consider Casablanca the finest film of Old Hollywood—this over the objections of some of my film-geek friends who would lobby for Citizen Kane in its stead. Even so, most would concur with me that its star, Humphrey Bogart, was indeed the greatest actor of that era.
Attendance was sparse, diminished by a resurgence of COVID, but I sat transfixed in that nearly empty theater as Bogie’s distraught, drunken Rick Blaine famously raged that "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine!" He is, of course, lamenting his earlier unexpected encounter with old flame Ilsa Lund, splendidly portrayed with a sadness indelibly etched upon her beautiful countenance by Ingrid Bergman, who with Bogart led the credits of a magnificent ensemble cast that also included Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. But Bogie remains the central object of that universe; the plot and the players in orbit about him. There’s no doubt that without Bogart, there could never have been a Casablanca as we know it. Such a movie might have been made, but it could hardly have achieved a greatness on this order of magnitude.
Bogie never actually uttered the signature line “Play it again, Sam,” so closely identified with the production (and later whimsically poached by Woody Allen for the title of his iconic 1972 comedy peppered with clips from Casablanca). And although the film won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as in almost every other major category, Bogart was nominated but missed out on the Oscar, which instead went to Paul Lukas—does anyone still remember Paul Lukas?—for his role in Watch on the Rhine. This turns out to be a familiar story for Bogart, who struggled with a lifelong frustration at typecasting, miscasting, studio manipulation, lousy roles, inadequate compensation, missed opportunities, and repeated snubs—public recognition of his talent and star-quality came only late in life and even still frequently eluded him, as on that Oscar night. He didn’t really expect to win, but we can yet only wonder at what Bogart must have been thinking . . . He was already forty-four years old on that disappointing evening when the Academy passed him over. There was no way he could have known that most of his greatest performances would lie ahead, that after multiple failed marriages (one still unraveling that very night) a young starlet he had only just met would come to be the love of his life and mother of his children, and that he would at last achieve not only the rare brand of stardom reserved for just a tiny slice of the top tier in his profession, but that he would go on become a legend in his own lifetime and well beyond it: the epitome of the cool, tough, cynical guy who wears a thin veneer of apathy over an incorruptible moral center, women swooning over him as he stares down villains, an unlikely hero that every real man would seek to emulate.
My appreciation of Casablanca and its star in this grand cinema setting was enhanced by the fact that I was at the time reading Bogart (1997), by A.M. Sperber & Eric Lax, which is certainly the definitive biography of his life. I was also engaged in a self-appointed effort to watch as many key Bogie films in roughly chronological order as I could while reading the bio, which eventually turned out to be a total of twenty movies, from his first big break in The Petrified Forest (1936) to The Harder They Fall (1956), his final role prior to his tragic, untimely death at fifty-seven from esophageal cancer.
Bogie’s story is told brilliantly in this unusual collaboration by two authors who had never actually met. Ann Sperber, who wrote a celebrated biography of journalist Edward R. Murrow, spent seven years researching Bogart’s life and conducted nearly two hundred interviews with those who knew him most intimately before her sudden death in 1994. Biographer Eric Lax stepped in and shaped her draft manuscript into a coherent finished product that reads seamlessly like a single voice. I frequently read biographies of American presidents not only to study the figure that is profiled, but because the very best ones serve double duty as chronicles of United States history, the respective president as the focal point. I looked to the Bogart book for something similar, in this case a study of Old Hollywood with Bogie in the starring role. I was not to be disappointed.
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born on Christmas Day 1899 in New York City to wealth and privilege, with a father who was a cardiopulmonary surgeon and a mother who was a commercial illustrator. Both parents were distant and unaffectionate. They had an apartment on the Upper West side and a vast estate on Canandaigua Lake in upstate New York, where Bogie began his lifelong love affair with boating. Indifferent to higher education, he eventually flunked out of boarding school and joined the navy. There seems nothing noteworthy about his early life.
His acting career began almost accidentally, and he spent several years on the stage before making his first full-length feature in 1930, Up the River, with his drinking buddy Spencer Tracy, who called him “Bogie.” He was already thirty years old. What followed were largely lackluster roles on both coasts, alternating between Broadway theaters and Hollywood studios. He was frequently broke, drank heavily, and his second marriage was crumbling. Then he won rave reviews as escaped murderer Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, playing opposite Leslie Howard on the stage. The studio bought the rights, but characteristically for Bogie, they did not want to cast him to reprise his role, looking instead for an established actor, with Edward G. Robinson at the top of the list. Then Howard, who had production rights, stepped in to demand Bogart get the part. The 1936 film adaptation of the play, which also featured a young Bette Davis, channeled Bogart’s dark and chillingly realistic portrayal of a psychopathic killer—in an era when gangsters like Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd dominated the headlines—and made Bogie a star.
But again he faced a series of let-downs. This was the era of the studio system, with actors used and abused by big shots like Jack Warner, who locked Bogart into a low-paid contract that tightly controlled his professional life, casting him repeatedly in virtually interchangeable gangster roles in a string of B-movies. It wasn’t until 1941, when he played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon—quintessential film noir as well as John Huston’s directorial debut—that Bogie joined the ranks of undisputed A-list stars and began the process of taking revenge on the studio system by commanding greater compensation and demanding greater control of his screen destiny. But in those days, despite his celebrity, that remained an uphill battle.
I began watching his films while reading the bio as a lark, but it turned out to be an essential assignment: you can’t read about Bogie without watching him. Many of the twenty that I screened I had seen before, some multiple times, but others were new to me. I was raised by my grandparents in the 1960s with a little help from a console TV in the livingroom and all of seven channels delivered via rooftop antenna. When cartoons, soaps, and prime time westerns and sitcoms weren’t broadcasting, the remaining airtime was devoted to movies. All kinds of movies, from the dreadful to the superlative and everything in-between, often on repeat. Much of it was classic Hollywood and Bogart made the rounds. One of my grandfather’s favorite flicks was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and I can recall as a boy watching it with him multiple times. In general, he was a lousy parent, but I am grateful for that gift; it remains among my top Bogie films. We tend to most often think of Bogart as Rick Blaine or Philip Marlowe, but it is as Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Charlie Allnutt in The African Queen and Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny that the full range of his talent is revealed.
It was hardly his finest role or his finest film, but it was while starring as Harry Morgan in To Have and Have Not (1944) that Bogie met and fell for his co-star, the gorgeous, statuesque, nineteen-year-old Lauren Bacall—twenty-five years younger than him—spawning one of Hollywood’s greatest on-screen, off-screen romances. They would be soulmates for the remainder of his life, and it was she who brought out the very best of him. Despite his tough guy screen persona, the real-life Bogie tended to be a brooding intellectual who played chess, was well-read, and had a deeply analytical mind. An expert sailor, he preferred boating on the open sea to carousing in bars, although he managed to do plenty of both. During crackdowns on alleged communist influence in Hollywood, Bogart and Bacall together took controversial and sometimes courageous stands against emerging blacklists and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). But he also had his flaws. He could be cheap. He could be a mean drunk. He sometimes wore a chip on his shoulder carved out of years of frustration at what was after all a very slow rise to the top of his profession. But warts and all, far more of his peers loved him than not.
Bogart is a massive tome, and the first section is rather slow-going because Bogie’s early life was just so unremarkable. But it holds the reader’s interest because it is extremely well-written, and it goes on to succeed masterfully in spotlighting Bogart’s life against the rich fabric that forms the backdrop of that distant era of Old Hollywood before the curtains fell for all time. If you are curious about either, I highly recommend this book. If you are too busy for that, at the very least carve out some hours of screen time and watch Bogie’s films. You will not regret the time spent. Although his name never gets dropped in the lyrics by Ray Davies for the familiar Kinks tune, if there were indeed Celluloid Heroes, the greatest among them was certainly Humphrey Bogart.

Review of: Bogart, by A.M. Sperber & Eric Lax https://regarp.com/2022/08/31/review-...

[Gary Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monumental biography, for a man who deserved it. Like most, not a perfect man, but an exceptional one, who rose above his personal feelings to be exceptional at his trade even in extremely difficult times and circumstances. In fact, the worse the conditions, the better his work ethic held.

Bogart was an extremely interesting person, and the authors made this long, fact filled, minutia laden, work still very interesting to read. It's extremely readable and I have a hunch, even Bogart would have approved.

[Brett T · Rating 4 out of 5]

April 1997 saw dueling biographies of a famous move icon, as celebrity biographer Jeffrey Meyers' Bogart: A Life in Hollywood arrived almost the same day as Eric Lax's completion of A. M. Sperber's Bogart.

The Lax-Sperber Humphrey Bogart bio was by far the more detailed and almost twice the size of its competitor, drawing on the 200 interviews Sperber conducted with Bogie associates, friends and family before her 1994 death. Lax finished the manuscript and had Bogart ready for publication during the year marking the 40th anniversary of the actor's death.

Bogart details the actor's early life as the son of a well-to-do surgeon and commerical illustrator who did not show much affection to their three children and whose own indifferent academic and naval career didn't promise much. Beginning onstage in New York City, he found himself drawn to the fun of acting and the late-night lifestyle of show business. He drifted to Hollywood after the stock market crash diminished theater work in New York. His depression over a stalled career, a bad second marriage and the loss of his father eventually fueled his switch to heavier and darker roles, culminating as Duke Mantee in the play The Petrified Forest. When the play hit the screen, star Leslie Howard insisted Bogart play the role there as well, providing him the break his career had needed.

Sperber and Lax then detail how Bogie worked through a ream of B-movies until 1941's one-two punch of High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, followed in 1942 by Casablanca. Professional success didn't translate to personal happiness, as Bogie's third wife was an alcoholic whose jealousy of his leading ladies often reached paranoia levels. It wasn't until meeting the 19-year-old Lauren Bacall in 1944 that he was able to find a home life as good as his professional one; they wed three months after Bogie filed for divorce.

Bogart also describes Bogie's relationship with the House Un-American Activities Committee and its single-minded pursuit of Communists working in Hollywood. A liberal Democrat, he opposed what he saw as the harassment of people for their points of view even though he disagreed with many of the things they believed and said.

Lax, working with the Pulitzer-nominated Sperber's interviews and outline, writes clearly and efficiently, and the pair "collaborate" across time to create the definitive biography of the man who many have been America's most unique movie star.

Original available here.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love old film biographies and really wanted to learn more about this fascinating actor but this book is just to weighty in its approach. Very wordy with a lot of minute detail, almost scholarly - honestly just not an engaging read.

[Alex Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is exactly what you expect - a long and thorough biography of one of the greatest Hollywood stars to ever live, filled with behind the scenes anecdotes and details pulled from interviews with an enormous number of film professionals and others who knew the man personally. It's really great this work was done while all these people were still alive - I can only imagine that few of them are still around today. As a book, well you'll probably know in your heart if you have the stamina for this kind of thing. The writing is perfectly fine, although it gets a little bogged down in detail and isn't able to keep things clipping along compared to the way the Buster Keaton biography I read earlier this year did with an even bigger tome. Still, Bogart lived an incredible life and it makes quite a story, and following that story creates a fascinating time capsule, showing how way America transformed over the first 50 some years of 20th century.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid bio of one of Hollywood's original tough guys. Bogie's remarkable career evolved from nondescript supporting roles to being the bad guy knocked off by the final reel to starring in such film classics as "The Maltese Falcon," "Casablanca," "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" and "The African Queen" and becoming America's No. 1 movie star. He also was an insecure and temperamental alcoholic who engaged in endless contract battles with Warner Brothers and had three unhappy and sometimes violent marriages before finding true love with Lauren Bacall, a woman half his age. Sperber and Lax cover it all in this sympathetic but frank and detailed account. Good read for fans of Hollywood's golden age.

[Jeevan Chyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Bogey, why aren't you reading this book already? If you want to see behind the curtain, this is probably the one to buy. As complex and fascinating a character as you might imagine, this book shows you everything that is possible. His upbringing, comfortable but unhappy. The early struggling actor years, the stardom late in life. The highs and the lows - Bogey was as sad offscreen as on. His is a compelling story (if you are a fan), and even if you know nothing of the man there is much to recommend. For a Bogart fan...it's the stuff dreams are made of.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very in depth look at Bogart especially his time at Warner Brothers. This tells of his battles with Jack Warner from first being signed to his long term contract they ended up breaking about half way through. It also looks in depth at his personal life and his four marriages. His third marriage was more a war than a loving relationship. His fourth marriage was his best effort to Lauren Bacall 25 years his junior. She was his one true love. He was not much different than the tough guy image he created onscreen. Definitely recommended.

[Craig Moorhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bacall named the Rat Pack???

Spoiler alert on that one - my apologies.

But look, I'm a complete sucker for this kind of book, walking me through show business in the early part of the 1900s, looking over the shoulder of one of its brightest stars. Loved it. The only reason it doesn't have all five stars is that I would've loved more about the productions of the different movies. There's plenty, don't get me wrong. I just wish there'd been more. If you're into Bogart or Hollywood, definitely worth the read.

[Grindy Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have seen a half-dozen Bogart films, and they're all top-shelf classics. I didn't think he could carry a 500-page biography on the basis of that, but he does. What the authors get across very well is the industrialized film-making process and stifling morals of Bogart's day that let him make thos classics. Imagine what his career would have looked like if Scorsese or Coppola had him in the Seventies.

[Robin Bailes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading biographies is always a mixed bag and can be a dangerous thing to do - you might read about a person whose work you like and find out they're a dick. This book was brilliantly written and only made me more interested in and better disposed toward an actor I already liked and respected. It's hard to imagine this being done better.

[Phil Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

As many dull tomes can attest, there is an art to writing a good autobiography or biography: be extensive but not repetitive; give detail to add colour but not so over much that it is blinding, and have understanding but avoid being an sycophantic. This excellent biography of the great Humphrey Bogart achieves that.

[Abraham O'Coffey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The man, the myth, the legend. The third biography I’ve read of Bogart and the most in depth. I think I would have liked him. He was probably an enneagram 8. He was definitely a kind, talented, and challenging man. He lived a great life and loved well. I loved reading and re-reading the story of the greatest actor of all time.

[Peter M. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fabulous book on the life and career of one of the most important Hollywood figures of the 20th century. The book is heavily weighted towards his nearly twenty years with Warner Bros. years, due to the extensive research done in the WB archives. That is understandable given the importance of those years and the films made in that period. The other parts of his life are certainly not neglected. I can’t recommend this strongly enough for anyone interested in the classic Hollywood era.

[Neil Alcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must for Bogie fans, but also a fascinating lesson in the studio system and the ups and downs of a golden age Hollywood contract player. Also long and meaty enough that when the inevitable happens at the end, you feel you've lost someone you knew.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough and, whilst served with a fair dollop of bias for the subject, even-handed biography. There's a lot in there to chew on, and I'm not sure I'd like to go for a pint with Bogart quite so much as I did before picking this up. But I'd DEFINITELY buy Betty a pint.

[Kristina]

*read for library reading challenge*

This wasn't the most meaty autobiography I've ever read, nor was it exciting. It did add dimension to the grand stature (for such a small man) that was Humphrey Bogart.

[Colette · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the obsessive Bogart fan or researcher, a must read.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

#60 of 120 books pledged to read during 2018

[Perry Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great novelistic biography of my favorite actor.

[Helen Magee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book that has made me want to watch some of his films. Learned lots!

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great bio of one of my favorite actors

[Debbie Barber-Eaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juicy. Dishy. The Golden Age of Hollywood and the studio system in all its sordid glory seen through the prism of Bogart's life and career. Highly recommended!

[Mike Macchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book so far.....100 pages in.....