Tough without a gun

Has any leading man ever made women work so hard to get his attention? There he is, just minding his own business when along comes some dame who gets it in her head that they should fall in love. She flirts with him, ­kisses him first, talks back when he tells her off, stays when he buys her a ticket to go. He puts up a fight with all the grim resolve of a guy closing the shutters on a storm that’s about to raze his house. Sooner or later, the dame, who happens to be beautiful, wears him down and he comes around, against his better judgment. Humphrey Bogart’s shell was “a carapace,” as Stefan Kanfer writes about one of his roles, “meant to cover the psychic injuries of a decent man trying to forget the past.”

Kanfer, Stefan. (2011). Tough without a gun: the life and extraordinary afterlife of Humphrey Bogart. Knopf: New York.

Museum of the City of New York/Getty Images - Humphrey Bogart, around 1920.

This is not the Bogey we know.

So strong is the force of Bogart’s presence on screen that his performances induce a kind of double vision: we’re watching Rick, or Sam Spade, or Captain Morgan, and Humphrey Bogart at the same time.

 Indeed.

Bogart filmography.