Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart (January 23 1899 - January 14 1957) was an American actor.

Famous roles include Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Angels With Dirty Faces, The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, The African Queen (For which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor), The Caine Mutiny, and many more.

Bogart's father was a successful doctor and his mother, Maud Humphrey, was a popular illustrator. Indeed, she used a drawing of her baby Humphrey Bogart in a well-known ad campaign for Mellin baby food. But she was a very distant woman, her husband was not well-suitedf to her and the Bogart's marriage was a troubled one.

From his childhood, Bogart learned to stage manage appearances, to hate hypocrisy, and to channel his pain into caustic wit. All of these things played a part in his movie image.

Bogart was at first a stage actor in New York. In his early films with Warner Brothers in the 1930s, he was almost always cast as a tough guy with little complexity or range in film noir thrillers.

Starting with "The Maltese Falcon," directed by John Huston, audiences saw Bogart play leading characters with more complexity.

His success led him to get the romantic lead in "Casablanca" (1942) which remains, almost 60 years later, a fresh, riveting performance. Bogart brought a natural intensity and humor to the role. He had learned how to convey pain in his eyes, and how to show emotion with subtle shadings of his voice. With a superb cast around him that included Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains and Peter Lorre, his work was not wasted. "Casablanca" is ranked by many the greatest Hollywood movie ever, and Bogart is at its center.

Bogart was married four times, but only the fourth marriage, to Lauren Bacall, was happy. They met while making "To Have and Have Not" and their collaboration in "The Big Sleep" is a Hollywood classic.