Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957)
[Ontario County Times birth announcement, 10 January 1900.][Birthday of Reckoning.] was an American actor.
After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in
Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the
stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in
The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster in
B-movies. His breakthrough came in 1941, with
High Sierra (1941) and
The Maltese Falcon (1941). The next year, his performance as Rick Blaine in
Casablanca (1942) raised him to the peak of his profession and at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including
To Have and Have Not (1944),
The Big Sleep (1946),
Dark Passage (1947), and
Key Largo (1948), with his wife
Lauren Bacall;
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948);
The African Queen (1951), for which he won his only
Academy Award;
Sabrina (1954), and
The Caine Mutiny (1954). During a film career of almost thirty years, he appeared in 75 feature films.
At the time of his death from cancer in 1957, Bogart was one of the most respected figures in American cinema. Since his death, his persona and film performances have been considered as having a lasting impact and have led to him being described as a
cultural icon.
In 1997,
Entertainment Weekly magazine named him the number one movie legend of all time. In 1999, the
American Film Institute ranked him the
Greatest Male Star of All Time.