Bogart and Huston by Nat Segaloff
'Bogart and Huston: Their Lives, Their Adventures, and the Classic Movies They Made Together' by Nat Segaloff
There have been enough books written on Humphrey Bogart and on John Huston “to fill a library,” Nat Segaloff readily admits. His twist on the well covered actor and director from ‘40s-‘50s Hollywood is coupling them for a dual biography. And why not, he adds—they made six movies together, five of them excellent and the sixth? We can excuse Across the Pacific (1942), a potboiler completed in Pearl Harbor’s aftermath after Huston joined the Signal Corps.
Both men shared a rebellious streak, mavericks within the Hollywood system, and their stories have been told many times before. Segaloff reminds us that their first film together, The Maltese Falcon (1941), was the spark that lifted both of their careers into the pantheon of cinema. Fortunately, the one-dimensional George Raft turned down the role that fell to Bogart, Sam Spade. Before Maltese Falcon, Bogart played a succession of B-picture tough guys, criminals often as not. Huston, a screenwriter, had never directed a movie before.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, albeit, Segaloff adds, one conducted largely during the movies they made together. Otherwise, they were seldom in touch.
“Huston’s mastery of style in this first film is already apparent,” Segaloff writes. So much so that The Maltese Falcon is usually credited as the first film noir “The Maltese Falcon allowed Bogart to be as tough as he had always been as a gangster but without having to chicken out, die, or end on some other Code-mandated fate.”
Bogart made several of his best films without Huston, including Casablanca and In a Lonely Place, but their on-again, off-again collaboration netted Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Key Largo. Segaloff does good work describing and advocating for their less remembered film together, Beat the Devil. While some have dubbed it a cult movie, Segaloff shows that Beat the Devil “was born in compromise and released in desperation.” The signals were mixed throughout the tortured writing process. Was this a serious tale of intrigue or a spoof? No one seemed certain, certainly not Truman Capote who completed the final draft. Perhaps many lines were adlibbed?
Interesting anecdote: During the production, Bogart and Capote resorted to fisticuffs, with Bogie the loser. “This was the great contradiction in Bogart’s persona: although he played tough guys, he was not one in real life.”
Bogart and Huston: Their Lives, Their Adventures, and the Classic Movies they Made Together is published by Pegasus.
