Humphrey Bogart and the Oscar Myth

Humphrey Bogart had written an article in "Cosmopolitan" declaring 'It's about time someone stuck a pin in the Oscar Myth and let out all that hot air contained in the Academy Awards'. As he saw it, the only way performances could be weighed against one another was to have all actors play the same part -Hamlet- and for all actresses to play, for example, Mildred Pierce. Lauren Bacall squeezed her husband's hand as the winner was announced: Humphrey Bogart. 'A scream went up from the audience', Lauren remembered, 'I leapt into the air'. Humphrey kissed her, went up onstage, and proceeded to go against everything he had grumbled about to friends and in print, acknowledging the help and generosity of John Huston, Katharine Hepburn, and Sam Spliegel.

Humphrey Bogart (1899 - 1957)

"But it was “Casablanca” (1942) that made Bogart the American film actor of his time. It has been written about extensively, including Aljean Harmetz’s definitive “Round Up the Usual Suspects”, so it suffices to say here that Kanfer provides a satisfying summary of its making and importance in film history. He provides similar summaries for other films, most notably “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), “The African Queen” (1951) and “The Caine Mutiny” (1954).
The value of this book, then, lies in Kanfer’s insights into and analysis of the way that Bogart worked and how it made him “the most perversely attractive actor in the history of cinema.” Source: www.suntimes.com

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with more Hollywood personalities boarding an airplane to Washington, on 28 October 1947

Two page partly printed DS, Warner Brothers' contractual letter signed clearly by Humphrey Bogart relating to a movie speculatively entitled 'Project 7' by Martin Rackin in which Bogart would play the role of Martin Ferguson, the movie would be directed by renowned New York stage director Bretaigne Windust.
The finished movie was called 'The Enforcer' (Murder Inc) and was to be Bogart's last for Warner Brothers in 1951

“Now we have fine leading men such as George Clooney and Brad Pitt but there’s something generic about them, no wounds, no despising death in the manner of Bogie in Casablanca” says Henry Allen in The Wall Street Journal. We’ve seen stars rise up in the 50 years since, but “the post-Bogart guys have so little personal identity that stage impressionists can’t even imitate them.” Even if Bogart fell prey to some vices in his later years, “his best side still drives American psyches.”

Bogart set the tone for a type of character, and actor, we often see today. “He is every bit as diffident and as gruff as any 2010 antihero, and yet his prickly dignity marks him as a timeless American icon.” Source: www.mediaite.com

Humphrey Bogart receives his "Best Actor of 1951" award from actress Greer Garson on stage of the Pantages Theater on 23rd March 1952

"He was devilish if he thought you were a phony," his friend and costar Katharine Hepburn wrote. "Like a cat with a mouse, he'd never let you off."
Still, his characters had about them an essential decency and a kind of reluctant kindness that may have seemed so authentic because it reflected the man, as well as the actor". Source: www.latimes.com

Bogart met John Huston in the legendary Warner’s “green room” named for its apple green walls, Bogart was still a stock actor and the two struck up a conversation. "The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it." -John Huston

Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and James Franco in Vanity Fair (March 2011)

Inside Portraits From Vanity Fair's Stunning Hollywood Issue: "A few weeks ago we saw the star-studded cover of Vanity Fair’s 2011 Hollywood Issue, which featured Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhaal, James Franco and Mila Kunis among others. Now, as we get closer and closer to the Oscars, it’s come to take a look at the Hollywood portfolio inside the magazine!" Source: www.popsugar.com.au

David Fincher, Aaron Sorkin and Jesse Eisenberg
Annette Bening
Natalie Portman
Helena Bonham Carter

"At this moment of awards-giving and back-patting, however, we can all agree to love movies again, for a little while, because we're living within a mirage that exists for only about six or eight weeks around the end of each year. Right now, we can argue that any system that allows David Fincher to plumb the invention of Facebook and the Coen brothers to visit the old West, that lets us spend the holidays gorging on new work by Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell, has got to mean that American filmmaking is in reasonably good health. Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg, co-stars in "The Fighter" (2010) directed by David O. Russell

But the truth is that we'll be back to summer—which seems to come sooner every year—in a heartbeat. And it's hard to hold out much hope when you hear the words that one studio executive, who could have been speaking for all her kin, is ready to chisel onto Hollywood's tombstone: "We don't tell stories anymore." Source: www.gq.comSource URL: https://americanendeavor.blogspot.com/2011/02/humphrey-bogart-and-oscar-myth.html
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