I love Howard Hawks so much that I wont even read his biography; if I read he wasn't as wondrous and nice a spiritual father as I think he was, I might die. But even Joan Crawford deserves to have her films evaluated purely on their own merit, and so Bogey and Bacall need to be judged, purely on their amazing chemistry... in Haws' to films with them: THE BIG SLEEP and TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. Their other films together - DARK PASSAGE, KEY LARGO, are okay movies, but aren't really in the same league. They're not Bogie and Bacall movies. They're movies with Bogie and Bacall in them, made by Hawks.
Poor Bogart died rather early on in Bacall's life and perhaps that's how all May-December romances should end: the elder member dying before becoming old and unsexy. As our country gets more and more repressive and ageist, it's important to remember that May-December romances are awesome if they don't drag on too long, and both parties are in their right mind: Unusually intelligent and soulful men in their forties and girls in their early 20s have a lot in common: they both want to avoid disillusionment, be it growing up or dying, having their ideals crushed by an uncaring corporate world or having their body slowly crushed under the jackboot heel of time. Sensitive women in their 40s and boys in their 20s have a similar bond only in reverse: complete disillusionment and resentment towards the status quo, life's cold-hearted casino dealer on the endless boulevard of broken lights. Men mature later than girls, and don't have to deal with menopause. Early 20s girls don't have to deal with the anxieties of having kids or fretting over the biological hourglass running out, they do have to deal with immature boys more anxious to huff solvents and play air guitar hero than fund vacations or stable family environments, or plumb emotional depth connections; the 40-something men are dealing with wives that have stripped off sex like a wet burlap dress and slipped into fresh-from-the-drier mommy pants right as they--the men--are just beginning to have any sort of sexual self confidence.
When they met, Bogey was married to a drunken jealous psycho type named Mayo Methot and lacked the wherewithal to do much about it except match her drink for drink, nickname her 'Sluggy' and just do his best to not get shot.
Bacall meanwhile was 19 and practicing lowering her speaking voice under Hawks' tutelage. As Hawks later said, 'Bogie fell in love with the character she played and she had to go right on playing it for the rest of their marriage.' See, right there I could almost get disillusioned. I read that in HAWKS ON HAWKS and it was enough for me. Enough to know he's a bit of a cynic. I got to walk away right there.
In the 1940s we should remember, marriage was tough to escape and sex was still a commodity; giving it up before marriage required either an engagement ring, diamond bracelet or double the amount of alcohol it takes now. Consider the times and realize that this couple had the chips cast against them: an ex-wife that used to show up at parties with pistols and drunken claims her man was sleeping around, age differences, cancer, gossip. Yet that stuff just makes it all the more romantic. The tales of how he would walk alongside the road and Bacall would stop to pick him up for brief hand-holding car get-aways is familiar to me through my own past indiscretions and I can assure you it just makes it super-hot. I thought a lot about Bogie and Bacall during that whole period in my life; they were my road map, my validation, like WC Fields had been when I was an practicing drunkard.
The sad part of it all is of course Bogey's cancer in 1957. On the other hand, they went to Africa to film THE AFRICAN QUEEN before that. I love that Bacall tagged along for moral support, hanging out in the wilds of the jungle, smoking and reading Hemingway (I'm guessing) and making sure cocktail hour was ready on time. As for 3-pack unfiltered camel-related cancer, well, we all got to go sometime, and sometimes getting out while you can still get it up is pretty good. Bogey never had to get old and crotchety and watch her take off with Frank Sinatra (who almost married her and took over Bogey's 'rat pack' chairman of the board role) or the pool boy.
I also love that Bacall and Bogart led a staunch anti-blacklist crusade, daring to step up and shout down the ravings of that alcoholic paranoid Joseph McCarthy (above, the picture says it all).
But so what? In a way, Hawks was something like the Dog Whisperer, in telling his characters what he needed from them he also gave his actors a way to live. The codes of ethics these people have is clear-cut, admirable, and yet leaves room for plenty of improvisation, drinks, cigarettes, sex and fun. The censors even let Hawks get away with stuff they'd never let pass in other directors' films, because, as Hawks says: "they liked my pictures." And you can see why: Hawks' characters operate on much higher principles than even the censors would hope for in cinema. His principles are high enough that he can kick aside conventional morality and its gossipy, sexually-frustrated pinchedness, like a card table at a saloon-side brawl, and no one's going to dare say a word about it. No amount of money or danger, pain or pressure, can stop a Hawksian hero from doing what he feels is right; he wants his women to know there are no strings attached to him, and he wants them the same way, even if he has to unearth all their darkest family secrets. He'll risk his life with a grin and a shrug if it means helping a friend. We can also find this level of ethics in Chandler, which is why THE BIG SLEEP was such a good fit all around:
Ms. Rutledge: Why are you doing this?
Marlowe: Maybe I'm in love with you, too.
Mrs. Rutledge: You know whether you're in love with me or not.
Bogart: Maybe I do.
Baby, he did. More than 50 years after his death, Bogart is still going strong, a benchmark of masculine honor that all men still turn to for dating advice, like Woody Allen in HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU KID. Bacall is still going strong, on Broadway and in gutsy films like DOGVILLE. She went on to marry and divorce no less a coolio than Jason Robards. But of course, you can feel the spirit of Bogey still coursing through her being. If she had to stay in character all through their marriage, let's not forget he stayed in character as well, and has continued to do so even from the grave. He's more than an actor to those who love him. He's the wellspring from which much of what is cool today flows - be in Jean Paul Belmondo mirroring his movie poster in BREATHLESS or Sinatra's own reinterpretation in his re-imagined post-war tough guy persona (pre-war let's not forget, Sinatra was a beanpole wop from Hoboken who'd show up on Jack Benny and suffer through being regularly blown away by strong winds or auditioning for the role of a broom handle.)
On a personal note, when I went through some rough single in the city stretches in the mid 90s, my friend Max instructed me to adopt the mantra: 'Be like Bogey... be like the Bogey,' which wasn't some sleazy bit of base-running advice, it was a deeply honorable and resonant way to not lose track of who I was. A whole wealth of soul-grooming advice is packed into the word Bogey: it means 'become a self-sustaining honorable tough but compassionate, cynical but sincere, unflinching but sensitive, hero who doesn't live and die by whether or not some broad calls him back.'
All I ever have to remember when I'm losing my shit is: 'be like Bogey,' my rudders are magically righted. All I ever have to see is Bacall's way of slinking into a scene with her chin down asking for a match and I know there's a perfect inner Bacall for my inner Bogey out there, or in here, and history repeats itself so here she comes... as inexorably as time. That said, there'll only ever be one Bogey and Bacall; their love was our love, they had enough to share, and in sharing they helped a nation dealing with war and noir disillusionment refashion their sense of self in such a way as to allow numerous antithetical attitudes to exist simultaneously; they were two tough cases who loved each other with a love that mixed lust and respect in equal measure and they could soften around each other yet be twice as tough at the same time. Just look at the above pictures. Whenever they're gazing into each other's eyes you can feel, even in the photos, their love - even when neither is smiling, when they're just acting. Audiences felt and feel it too. Even today those two movies they made with Hawks give us hope, confidence, trust, a renewed sense of honor, and a need to smoke and tell the truth, whatever the consequences. If modernism is the cause of stripping away arts' illusion to reveal death too suddenly and in disguise to allow our senses to mask it, if only for a second, then Bogey was the man for whom it was never masked at all. Being on LSD can be like that too, which is why Bogey's films were so popular at 60s and 70s college campuses. Bogey helped you navigate your way out of bad trips. As Bazin and Truffaut wrote in Cahiers du Cinema, Bogey was, I paraphrase, a walking corpse who's smile was the smile of death, of laughing at it even as it eats you. Bazin goes on to say Bogey represented 'the immanence of death, its imminence as well.'
Here's lookin' at you, kid.
And hurrah for the next who dies.
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