Humphrey Bogart

Early life

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born on Christmas Day 1899 in Manhattan, New York City, the eldest child of Belmont DeForest Bogart and Maud Humphrey. Belmont was the only child of the unhappy marriage of Adam Welty Bogart (a Canandaigua, New York, innkeeper) and Julia Augusta Stiles, a wealthy heiress. The name "Bogart" derives from the Dutch surname "Bogaert", meaning "orchard". Belmont and Maud married in June 1898. He was a Presbyterian, of English and Dutch descent, and a descendant of Sarah Rapelje (the first European Christian girl born in New Netherland). Maud was an Episcopalian of English heritage and a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland. Humphrey was raised Episcopalian but was non-practicing for most of his adult life.

The date of Bogart's birth has been disputed. Clifford McCarty wrote that Warner Bros.' publicity department had altered it to January 23, 1900, "to foster the view that a man born on Christmas Day couldn't be as villainous as he appeared to be on screen". The "corrected" January birth date subsequently appeared—and in some cases, remains—in many otherwise-authoritative sources. According to biographers Ann M. Sperber and Eric Lax, Bogart always celebrated his birthday on December 25 and listed it on official records (including his marriage license).

Lauren Bacall wrote in her autobiography that Bogart's birthday was always celebrated on Christmas Day, saying that he joked about being cheated out of a present every year. Sperber and Lax noted that a birth announcement in the Ontario County Times of January 10, 1900, rules out the possibility of a January 23 birth date; state and federal census records from 1900 also report a Christmas 1899 birth date. Bogart's birth record confirms he was actually born on December 25, 1899.

Belmont, Bogart's father, was a cardiopulmonary surgeon. Maud was a commercial illustrator who received her art training in New York and France, including study with James Abbott McNeill Whistler. She later became art director of the fashion magazine The Delineator and a militant suffragette. Maud used a drawing of baby Humphrey in an advertising campaign for Mellins Baby Food. She earned over $50,000 a year at the peak of her career – a very large sum of money at the time, and considerably more than her husband's $20,000. The Bogarts lived in an Upper West Side apartment and had a cottage on a 55-acre estate on Canandaigua Lake in upstate New York. When he was young, Bogart's group of friends at the lake would put on plays.

Navy

With no viable career options, Bogart enlisted in the United States Navy in the spring of 1918, during World War I. He recalled later, "At 18, war was great stuff. Paris! Sexy French girls! Hot damn!" Bogart was recorded as a model sailor, who spent most of his sea time after the armistice ferrying troops back from Europe. Bogart left the service on June 18, 1919, at the rank of Petty Officer 2nd Class. During World War II, Bogart attempted to re-enlist in the Navy but was rejected due to his age. He then volunteered for the Coastal Picket Force in 1944, patrolling the California coastline in his yacht, the Santana.

He may have received his trademark scar and developed his characteristic lisp during his naval stint. There are several conflicting stories. In one, his lip was cut by shrapnel when his ship (the USS Leviathan) was shelled. The ship was never shelled, however, and Bogart may not have been at sea before the armistice. Another story, held by longtime friend Nathaniel Benchley, was that Bogart was injured while taking a prisoner to Portsmouth Naval Prison in Kittery, Maine. While changing trains in Boston, the handcuffed prisoner reportedly asked Bogart for a cigarette. When Bogart looked for a match, the prisoner smashed him across the mouth with the cuffs (cutting Bogart's lip) and fled before being recaptured and imprisoned. In an alternative version, Bogart was struck in the mouth by a handcuff loosened while freeing his charge; the other handcuff was still around the prisoner's wrist. By the time Bogart was treated by a doctor, a scar had formed. David Niven said that when he first asked Bogart about his scar, however, he said that it was caused by a childhood accident. "Goddamn doctor", Bogart later told Niven. "Instead of stitching it up, he screwed it up." According to Niven, the stories that Bogart got the scar during wartime were made up by the studios. His post-service physical did not mention the lip scar, although it noted many smaller scars. When actress Louise Brooks met Bogart in 1924, he had scar tissue on his upper lip, which Brooks said Bogart may have had partially repaired before entering the film industry in 1930. Brooks said that his "lip wound gave him no speech impediment, either before or after it was mended."

Acting

First performances

Bogart returned home to find his father in poor health, his medical practice faltering, and much of the family's wealth lost in bad timber investments. His character and values developed separately from his family during his navy days, and he began to rebel. Bogart became a liberal who disliked pretension, phonies, and snobs, sometimes defying conventional behavior and authority; he was also well-mannered, articulate, punctual, self-effacing, and standoffish. After his naval service, he worked as a shipper and a bond salesman, joining the Coast Guard Reserve.

Frank Kelly Rich writes that Bogart "dove headfirst into the Jazz Age lifestyle, always up for late night revels... When his meager wages were exhausted, he'd play chess against all comers in arcades for a dollar a match (he was a brilliant player) to fund his outings." Mike Doyle of Chess.com writes that "Before he made any money from acting, he would hustle players for dimes and quarters, playing in New York parks and at Coney Island." Bogart resumed his friendship with Bill Brady Jr. (whose father had show-business connections), and obtained an office job with William A. Brady's new World Films company. Although he wanted to try his hand at screenwriting, directing, and production, he excelled at none. Bogart was stage manager for Brady's daughter Alice's play A Ruined Lady. He made his stage debut a few months later as a Japanese butler in Alice's 1921 play Drifting (nervously delivering one line of dialogue), and appeared in several of her subsequent plays.

Although Bogart had been raised to believe that acting was a lowly profession, he liked the late hours actors kept and the attention they received: "I was born to be indolent and this was the softest of rackets." He spent much of his free time in speakeasies, drinking heavily. A bar-room brawl at this time was also a purported cause of Bogart's lip damage, dovetailing with Louise Brooks's account.

Preferring to learn by doing, he never took acting lessons. Bogart was persistent and worked steadily at his craft, appearing in at least 18 Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935, 11 of which were comedies. He played juveniles or romantic supporting roles in drawing-room comedies and is reportedly the first actor to say, "Tennis, anyone?" on stage. According to Alexander Woollcott, Bogart "is what is usually and mercifully described as inadequate." Other critics were kinder. Heywood Broun, reviewing Nerves, wrote: "Humphrey Bogart gives the most effective performance ... both dry and fresh, if that be possible". He played a juvenile lead (reporter Gregory Brown) in Lynn Starling's comedy Meet the Wife, which had a successful 232-performance run at the Klaw Theatre from November 1923 through July 1924. Bogart disliked his trivial, effeminate early-career roles, calling them "White Pants Willie" roles.

Broadway to Hollywood

Bogart signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation for $750 a week (about $13,933 in 2025). There he met Spencer Tracy, a Broadway actor whom Bogart liked and admired, and the two men became close friends and drinking companions. In 1930, Tracy first called him "Bogie". Tracy made his feature film debut in his only movie with Bogart, John Ford's early sound film Up the River (1930), in which their leading roles were as inmates. Tracy received top billing, but Bogart's picture appeared on the film's posters. He was billed fourth behind Tracy, Claire Luce, and Warren Hymer, but his role was almost as large as Tracy's and much larger than Luce's or Hymer's. A quarter of a century later, the two men planned to make The Desperate Hours together. Both insisted upon top billing, however; Tracy dropped out, and was replaced by Fredric March.

Bogart then had a supporting role in Bad Sister (1931) with Bette Davis. Bogart shuttled back and forth between Hollywood and the New York stage from 1930 to 1935, out of work for long periods. His parents had separated; his father died in 1934 in debt, which Bogart eventually paid off. He inherited his father's gold ring, which he wore in many of his films. At his father's deathbed, Bogart finally told him how much he loved him. Bogart's second marriage was rocky; dissatisfied with his acting career, depressed and irritable, he drank heavily.

In Hollywood permanently: The Petrified Forest

In 1934, Bogart starred in the Broadway play Invitation to a Murder at the Theatre Masque (renamed the John Golden Theatre in 1937). Its producer, Arthur Hopkins, heard the play from offstage; he sent for Bogart and offered him the role of escaped murderer Duke Mantee in Robert E. Sherwood's forthcoming play, The Petrified Forest. Hopkins later recalled:

When I saw the actor I was somewhat taken aback, for [I realized] he was the one I never much admired. He was an antiquated juvenile who spent most of his stage life in white pants swinging a tennis racquet. He seemed as far from a cold-blooded killer as one could get, but the voice[,] dry and tired[,] persisted, and the voice was Mantee's.

The play had 197 performances at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York in 1935. Although Leslie Howard was the star, The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson said that the play was "a peach ... a roaring Western melodrama ... Humphrey Bogart does the best work of his career as an actor." Bogart said that the play "marked my deliverance from the ranks of the sleek, sybaritic, stiff-shirted, swallow-tailed 'smoothies' to which I seemed condemned to life." However, he still felt insecure. Warner Bros. bought the screen rights to The Petrified Forest in 1935. The play seemed ideal for the studio, which was known for its socially-realistic pictures for a public entranced by real-life criminals such as John Dillinger and Dutch Schultz. Bette Davis and Leslie Howard were cast. Howard, who held the production rights, made it clear that he wanted Bogart to star with him.

The studio tested several Hollywood veterans for the Duke Mantee role and chose Edward G. Robinson, who had star appeal and was due to make a film to fulfill his contract. Bogart cabled news of this development to Howard in Scotland, who replied: "Att: Jack Warner Insist Bogart Play Mantee No Bogart No Deal L.H.". When Warner Bros. saw that Howard would not budge, they gave in and cast Bogart. Jack Warner wanted Bogart to use a stage name but Bogart declined, having built a reputation with his name in Broadway theater. The film version of The Petrified Forest was released in 1936. According to Variety, "Bogart's menace leaves nothing wanting". Frank S. Nugent wrote for The New York Times that the actor "can be a psychopathic gangster more like Dillinger than the outlaw himself". The film was successful at the box office, earning $500,000 in rentals ($11,427,014 in 2025), and made Bogart a star. He never forgot Howard's favor and named his only daughter, Leslie Howard Bogart, after him in 1952.

Supporting gangster and villain roles

Despite his success in The Petrified Forest (an "A movie"), Bogart signed a tepid 26-week contract at $550 ($12,570 in 2025) per week and was typecast as a gangster in a series of B movie crime dramas. Although he was proud of his success, the fact that it derived from gangster roles weighed on him: "I can't get in a mild discussion without turning it into an argument. There must be something in my tone of voice, or this arrogant face—something that antagonizes everybody. Nobody likes me on sight. I suppose that's why I'm cast as the heavy."

In spite of his success, Warner Bros. had no interest in raising Bogart's profile. His roles were repetitive and physically demanding; studios were not yet air-conditioned, and his tightly scheduled job at Warners was anything but the indolent and "peachy" actor's life he hoped for. Although Bogart disliked the roles chosen for him, he worked steadily. "In the first 34 pictures" for Warners, he told journalist George Frazier, "I was shot in 12, electrocuted or hanged in 8, and was a jailbird in 9". He averaged a film every two months between 1936 and 1940, sometimes working on two films at the same time. Bogart used these years to begin developing his film persona: a wounded, stoical, cynical, charming, vulnerable, self-mocking loner with a code of honor.

Amenities at Warners were few, compared to the prestigious Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Bogart thought that the Warners wardrobe department was cheap, and often wore his own suits in his films. He chose his own dog, named Zero, to play Pard (his character's dog) in High Sierra. His disputes with Warner Bros. over roles and money were similar to those waged by the studio with more established and less malleable stars such as Bette Davis and James Cagney.

Leading men at Warner Bros. included George Raft, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Most of the studio's better scripts went to them or others, leaving Bogart with what was left: films such as San Quentin (1937), Racket Busters (1938), and You Can't Get Away with Murder (1939). His only leading role during this period was in Dead End (1937, on loan to Samuel Goldwyn), as a gangster modeled after Baby Face Nelson.

Bogart played violent roles so often that in Nevil Shute's 1939 novel, What Happened to the Corbetts, the protagonist replies "I've seen Humphrey Bogart with one often enough" when asked if he knows how to operate an automatic weapon. Although he played a variety of supporting roles in films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Bogart's roles were either rivals of characters played by Cagney and Robinson or a secondary member of their gang. In Black Legion (1937), a movie Graham Greene described as "intelligent and exciting, if rather earnest", he played a good man who was caught up with (and destroyed by) a racist organization.

Early stardom

High Sierra (1941, directed by Raoul Walsh) featured a screenplay written by John Huston, Bogart's friend and drinking partner, adapted from a novel by W. R. Burnett, author of the novel on which Little Caesar was based. Paul Muni, George Raft, Cagney and Robinson turned down the lead role, giving Bogart the opportunity to play a character with some depth. Walsh initially opposed Bogart's casting, preferring Raft for the part. It was Bogart's last major film as a gangster; a supporting role followed in The Big Shot, released in 1942. He worked well with Ida Lupino, sparking jealousy from Mayo Methot.

The film cemented a strong personal and professional connection between Bogart and Huston. Bogart admired (and somewhat envied) Huston for his skill as a writer; a poor student, Bogart was a lifelong reader. He could quote Plato, Alexander Pope, Ralph Waldo Emerson and over a thousand lines of Shakespeare, and subscribed to the Harvard Law Review. Bogart admired writers; some of his best friends were screenwriters, including Louis Bromfield, Nathaniel Benchley, and Nunnally Johnson. He enjoyed intense, provocative conversation (accompanied by stiff drinks), as did Huston. Both were rebellious and enjoyed playing childish pranks. Huston was reportedly easily bored during production and admired Bogart (also bored easily off-camera) for his acting talent and his intense concentration on-set.

Now regarded as a classic film noir, The Maltese Falcon (1941) was John Huston's directorial debut. Based on the Dashiell Hammett novel, it was first serialized in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1929 and was the basis of two earlier film versions; the second was Satan Met a Lady (1936), starring Bette Davis. Producer Hal B. Wallis initially offered to cast George Raft as the leading man, but Raft (then better known than Bogart) had a contract stipulating he was not required to appear in remakes. Fearing that it would be nothing more than a sanitized version of the pre-Production Code The Maltese Falcon (1931), Raft turned down the role to make Manpower with director Raoul Walsh, with whom he had worked on The Bowery in 1933. Huston then eagerly accepted Bogart as his Sam Spade.

Complementing Bogart were co-stars Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr., and Mary Astor as the treacherous female foil. Bogart's sharp timing and facial expressions were praised by the cast and director as vital to the film's quick action and rapid-fire dialogue. It was a commercial hit, and a major triumph for Huston. Bogart was unusually happy with the film: "It is practically a masterpiece. I don't have many things I'm proud of ... but that's one".

Bogie and Bacall

Howard Hawks introduced Bogart and Lauren Bacall while Bogart was filming Passage to Marseille (1944). The three subsequently collaborated on To Have and Have Not (1944), a loose adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel, and Bacall's film debut. It has several similarities to Casablanca: the same kind of hero and enemies, and a piano player (portrayed this time by Hoagy Carmichael) as a supporting character. When they met, Bacall was 19 and Bogart 44; he nicknamed her "Baby". A model since age 16, she had appeared in two failed plays. Bogart was attracted by Bacall's high cheekbones, green eyes, tawny blond hair, lean body, maturity, poise and earthy, outspoken honesty; he reportedly said, "I just saw your test. We'll have a lot of fun together".

Their emotional bond was strong from the start; their difference in age and acting-experience encouraged a mentor-student dynamic. In contrast to the Hollywood norm, their affair was Bogart's first with a leading lady. His early meetings with Bacall were discreet and brief, their separations bridged by love letters. The relationship made it easier for Bacall to make her first film, and Bogart did his best to put her at ease with jokes and quiet coaching. He encouraged her to steal scenes; Howard Hawks also did his best to highlight her role, and found Bogart easy to direct.

However, Hawks began to disapprove of the relationship. He considered himself Bacall's protector and mentor, and Bogart was usurping that role. Not usually drawn to his starlets, the married director also fell for Bacall; he told her that she meant nothing to Bogart and threatened to send her to the poverty-row studio Monogram Pictures. Bogart calmed her down, and then went after Hawks; Jack Warner settled the dispute, and filming resumed. Hawks said about Bacall, "Bogie fell in love with the character she played, so she had to keep playing it the rest of her life." However, Bacall wrote in her memoir about the love she and Bogart shared, "No one has ever written a romance better than we lived it." and she said regarding Bogart's personality, "He was a very gentle soul. He was very strong, and very sure about what he believed in and what he thought was important and not important. He couldn't be pushed around. But he was a gentle man. I was very, very lucky to have even met him, much less have been married to him. He had extraordinary gifts. He was much more of a complete individual than most people are. He had the kind of standards my mother had. Their values were very much the same. It was very interesting. He had tremendous character and a great sense of honor and would not tolerate lies, even if they asked him what he thought of a movie."

Later career

Riding high in 1947 with a new 15-year contract with Warners which provided limited script refusal and the right to form his own production company, Bogart starred with Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs. Carrolls, and later Bogart rejoined with John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: a stark tale of greed among three gold prospectors in Mexico. Lacking a love interest or a happy ending, it was considered a risky project. Bogart later said about co-star (and John Huston's father) Walter Huston, "He's probably the only performer in Hollywood to whom I'd gladly lose a scene."

The film was shot in the heat of summer for greater realism and atmosphere and was grueling to make. James Agee wrote, "Bogart does a wonderful job with this character ... miles ahead of the very good work he has done before." Although John Huston won the Academy Award for Best Director and screenplay and his father won the Best Supporting Actor award, the film had mediocre box-office results. Bogart complained, "An intelligent script, beautifully directed—something different—and the public turned a cold shoulder on it."

Bogart, a liberal Democrat, organized the Committee for the First Amendment (a delegation to Washington, D.C.) opposing what he saw as the House Un-American Activities Committee's harassment of Hollywood screenwriters and actors. He later wrote an article, "I'm No Communist", for the March 1948 issue of Photoplay magazine distancing himself from the Hollywood Ten to counter negative publicity resulting from his appearance. Bogart wrote, "The ten men cited for contempt by the House Un-American Activities Committee were not defended by us."

Bogart created his film company, Santana Productions (named after his yacht and the cabin cruiser in Key Largo), in 1948. The right to create his own company had left Jack Warner furious, fearful that other stars would do the same and further erode the major studios' power. In addition to pressure from freelancing actors such as Bogart, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, they were beginning to buckle from the impact of television and the enforcement of antitrust laws which broke up theater chains. Bogart's new contract with Warners had required him to make one film a year for Warners but he only made Chain Lightning (1950) and The Enforcer (1951) for them during the contract period. In 1953, his contract with Warners was dissolved by mutual consent.

Except for Beat the Devil (1953), originally distributed in the United States by United Artists, Santana released its films through Columbia Pictures; Columbia re-released Beat the Devil a decade later. In quick succession, Bogart starred in Knock on Any Door (1949), Tokyo Joe (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), and Sirocco (1951). Santana also made two films without him: And Baby Makes Three (1949) and The Family Secret (1951).

Personal life

Children

Bogart became a father at age 49, when Bacall gave birth to their son Stephen Humphrey Bogart on January 6, 1949, during the filming of Tokyo Joe. The name was taken from Steve, Bogart's character's nickname in To Have and Have Not. Stephen became an author and biographer and hosted a television special about his father on Turner Classic Movies. The couple's second child, Leslie Howard Bogart, was born on August 23, 1952. Her first and middle names honor Leslie Howard, Bogart's friend and co-star in The Petrified Forest.

Rat Pack

Bogart was a founding member and the original leader of the Hollywood Rat Pack. In the spring of 1955, after a long party in Las Vegas attended by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and her husband Sidney Luft, Michael Romanoff and his wife Gloria, David Niven, Angie Dickinson and others, Bacall surveyed the wreckage and said: "You look like a goddamn rat pack."

The name stuck and was made official at Romanoff's in Beverly Hills. Sinatra was dubbed pack president; Bacall den mother; Bogart director of public relations, and Sid Luft acting cage manager. Asked by columnist Earl Wilson what the group's purpose was, Bacall replied: "To drink a lot of bourbon and stay up late."

Extended family and ancestors

Bogart is descended from Mayflower passengers John Tilley, Joan (Hurst) Rogers, Elizabeth Tilley, and John Howland.

Illness and death

After signing a long-term deal with Warner Bros., Bogart predicted with glee that his teeth and hair would fall out before the contract ended. By 1955, however, his health was failing. In the wake of Santana, Bogart had formed a new company and had plans for a film (Melville Goodwin, U.S.A.) in which he would play a general and Bacall a press magnate. His persistent cough and difficulty eating became too serious to ignore, though, and he dropped the project. The film was re-tooled as Top Secret Affair and released just two weeks after Bogart's death in 1957, with Kirk Douglas and Susan Hayward replacing Bogart and Bacall.

A heavy smoker and drinker, Bogart had developed esophageal cancer by 1955. He did not talk about his health, and visited a doctor in January 1956 after considerable persuasion from Bacall. The disease worsened and several weeks later, on March 1, Bogart had surgery to remove his esophagus, two lymph nodes and a rib. The surgery was unsuccessful, and chemotherapy followed. He had additional surgery in November 1956, when the cancer had metastasized. Although he became too weak to walk up and down stairs, he joked despite the pain: "Put me in the dumbwaiter and I'll ride down to the first floor in style." It was then altered to accommodate his wheelchair. Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy visited him on January 13, 1957. In an interview, Hepburn said:

Spence patted him on the shoulder and said, "Goodnight, Bogie." Bogie turned his eyes to Spence very quietly and with a sweet smile covered Spence's hand with his own and said, "Goodbye, Spence." Spence's heart stood still. He understood.

Bogart lapsed into a coma and died the following day; at the time of his death, he weighed only 80 pounds (36 kg). A simple funeral was held at All Saints Episcopal Church, with music by Bogart's favorite composers: Johann Sebastian Bach and Claude Debussy. Among those who attended Bogart's funeral were Mary Astor, Ingrid Bergman, James Cagney, Harry Cohn, Bing Crosby, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, Henry Fonda, James Mason, Gregory Peck, David O. Selznick and Jack L. Warner. Bacall asked Tracy to give the eulogy; he was too upset, however, and John Huston spoke instead:

Himself, he never took his work too seriously. He regarded the somewhat gaudy figure of Bogart, the star, with an amused cynicism; Bogart, the actor, he held in deep respect ... In each of the fountains at Versailles there is a pike which keeps all the carp active; otherwise they would grow over-fat and die. Bogie took rare delight in performing a similar duty in the fountains of Hollywood. Yet his victims seldom bore him any malice, and when they did, not for long. His shafts were fashioned only to stick into the outer layer of complacency, and not to penetrate through to the regions of the spirit where real injuries are done ... He is quite irreplaceable. There will never be another like him.

Reception

Raymond Chandler, in a 1946 letter, wrote that "Like Edward G. Robinson when he was younger, all he has to do to dominate a scene is to enter it."

Regarding her husband's enduring popularity, Bacall later said, "There was something that made him able to be a man of his own, and it showed through his work. There was also a purity, which is amazing considering the parts he played. Something solid, too. I think as time goes by, we all believe less and less. Here was someone who believed in something." His character Blaine in Casablanca was ranked as the fourth greatest hero of American cinema by the American Film Institute, and Blaine and Lund's romance the greatest love story in American cinema, also by the American Film Institute.

Awards and honors

On August 21, 1946, he recorded his hand- and footprints in cement in a ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. On February 8, 1960, Bogart was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion-picture star at 6322 Hollywood Boulevard. There is a street named after Bogart in San Antonio, Texas.

Legacy and tributes

After his death, a "Bogie cult" formed at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Greenwich Village, and in France; this contributed to his increased popularity during the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1997, Entertainment Weekly magazine ranked Bogart the number-one movie legend of all time; two years later, the American Film Institute rated him the greatest male screen legend.

Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) was the first film to pay tribute to Bogart. Over a decade later, in Woody Allen's comic paean Play It Again, Sam (1972), Bogart's ghost aids Allen's character: a film critic having difficulties with women who says that his "sex life has turned into the 'Petrified Forest'".

The United States Postal Service honored Bogart with a stamp in its "Legends of Hollywood" series in 1997, the third figure recognized. At a ceremony attended by Lauren Bacall and the Bogart children, Stephen and Leslie, USPS governing-board chair Tirso del Junco delivered a tribute:

"Today, we mark another chapter in the Bogart legacy. With an image that is small and yet as powerful as the ones he left in celluloid, we will begin today to bring his artistry, his power, his unique star quality, to the messages that travel the world."

On June 24, 2006, 103rd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue in New York City was renamed Humphrey Bogart Place. Lauren Bacall and her son, Stephen Bogart, attended the ceremony. "Bogie would never have believed it", she said to the assembled city officials and onlookers.

In popular culture

Bogart has inspired multiple artists.

Two Bugs Bunny cartoons featured impersonations of the actor: Slick Hare (1947) and 8 Ball Bunny (1950, based on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre).

The Man with Bogart's Face (1980, starring Bogart lookalike Robert Sacchi) was an homage to the actor.

Al Stewart's 1976 song "Year of the Cat" was influenced by Casablanca and begins with the line "In a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time..."

The lyrics of Bertie Higgins' 1981 song "Key Largo" refer to two of Bogart's films, Key Largo and Casablanca.

In 2023, notable artist William Kentridge included a drawing of Bogart in his solo museum exhibition at The Broad in Los Angeles.