Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 - January 14, 1957) was an iconic American film actor of his day, and remains a legend almost 50 years after his death.
Bogart typically played smart, playful, courageous, tough, occasionally reckless characters who
lived in a corrupt world, anchored by a hidden moral code. His most notable films include
Casablanca (1942), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), The Maltese Falcon (1941), To Have and
Have Not (1945), The Big Sleep(1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo
(1948), The African Queen (1951) (for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor), and The
Caine Mutiny (1954). He appeared in 75 feature films in all.
Bogart is something of a cult figure overseas. French actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo were
deeply influenced by his work and image. In Breathless, perhaps the best-known work of French
director Jean-Luc Godard, the main character, Michel, worships the persona of Humphrey Bogart,
and mimes some of Bogart's best-known gestures in a way that's both absurd and touching.
Francois Truffaut, another French director of the "New Wave," directed Shoot the Piano Player,
another homage to Bogart. In India, the greatest national film star, Ashok Kumar, listed
Bogart as a major influence on his "natural" acting style. When Bogart reached Leopoldville,
Africa, to film The African Queen, his plane was met by the American consul and the Congolese
press.
Bogart is no less an icon in America. One of Woody Allen's most popular comic films, Play It
Again, Sam, is about a young man in love with Bogart's aura and intimidated by it. The title
refers to a frequent misquote of Casablanca; Richard Blaine (Bogart's character) actually says
"Play it, Sam".
In 1997, the US Postal Service featured Bogart in its "Legends of Hollywood" series. And
Entertainment Weekly magazine has named Bogart the number one movie legend of all time.
Bogart's exalted standing in the Hollywood pantheon would have astonished most of the agents,
casting directors and studio bosses who knew him in the 1920s and '30s as a good but hardly
great New York stage actor and a B-movie player in Hollywood.
(You can read the rest of this
article at http://www.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Humprey_Bogart)
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