When Humphrey Bogart was attending the prestigious prep school, Phillips Academy-Andover, he was
expelled for drinking and smoking. And while it's likely the school regretted not being able to
call the future star a graduate once he was one of the most famous names in the world, they at
least tried to stop him from giving into unhealthy vices. Sadly, Bogart fell victim to the addiction,
dangers, and cancers that can come from a lifetime of smoking.
And that's what ultimately killed him. Join Facts Verse, as we look
at how Humphrey Bogart smoked in every scene, but it came back to haunt him!
Bogart was born on December 25th, 1899. His parents were wealthy (she was an heiress and
commercial illustrator, while he was a surgeon) but their marriage was tumultuous and fairly
terrible. Bogart still grew up in luxury, living in a fancy apartment in Manhattan. After his brief
stint at Andover, where he was expelled for drinking and smoking, Bogart decided he give
the Navy a try. In later years, he was known for having a prominent scar on his lip. Bogart
claimed it was from an incident during his time serving his country. He was reportedly walking
a prisoner of the Navy somewhere, when the prisoner asked for a cigarette.
Bogart also looked around for a match, and while his eyes were averted, the prisoner tried
to escape by hitting him across the mouth and running. And perhaps this incident that changed
his life at least a little was foreshadowing his later death that resulted after years of smoking.
Early Career After his time in the Navy,
Bogart began seeking out part on Broadway, which he was able to secure by the age of 21. However,
they weren’t particularly big parts, and Bogart wasn’t finding a ton of success. Eventually,
he made his way to Hollywood to try his luck there. It took a few years, but by 1935,
he was a bona fide star. By then he was showing up in up to 10 movies every year.
Bogart was married a few times over the course of his life, and his first prominent marriage
was to actress Mayo Methot. It was during this unhappy marriage that Bogart likely increased
his drinking and smoking habits even more than he had previously. The method was an alcoholic
herself and had a fiery temper. She would (rightfully) accuse him of cheating on her,
and when she’d get mad, she take drastic measures. She threw kitchen objects at Bogart, stabbed him,
and even set the house on fire. She also tried to take her own life by slitting her wrists.
Bogart's reaction to all of this behavior was to double down on his own vices,
so drinking and cigarettes quickly became a more and more prominent component of his life.
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Alcohol and cigarettes Bogart might have had a
flourishing career and fairly decent health in the first half of the 20th century,
but his lifestyle of excess quickly added up and came back to haunt him.
By the beginning of the 1950s, Bogart was reportedly in failing health,
despite only being in his 50s. He generally smoked two packs of cigarettes every day.
One clear sign of this was that he was constantly coughing. He also would quickly get out of breath
at even basic movements. But it wasn’t just the smoking that hurt him. Apparently, he had been
drinking so much and for so long, that his liver had begun to deteriorate. Among other things, this
made him tired constantly. Also, his brain had been damaged and caused him to have memory loss.
Bogart was also stubborn. He kept putting off a trip to the doctor until 1956,
long after his symptoms had been apparent. But when he finally did, the prognosis was
dire. Bogart had developed esophageal cancer, most likely due to his years of drinking and smoking.
Doctors tried to save his life In March of 1956, Bogart’s doctors
set out to see if they could manage to save his life. By then his esophagus had become cancerous.
They ended up having to remove all of it. They found that two of his lymph nodes were cancerous
as well, as was a rib, so they removed those too. In all, it was a grueling nine-hour surgery.
After the surgery, Bogart received rounds of chemotherapy. But sadly,
that didn’t help him. Doctor tried another surgery after that, will little to no effect.
By that point, it was 1957, and Bogart was a shell of a man.
He couldn’t eat, nor talk. He had shriveled to only 80 pounds and was basically either coughing
or gasping for breath at every moment. This was even with the oxygen tank he had strapped to him.
Amazingly, even this horrible health situation didn’t deter Bogart from smoking cigarettes. He
merely switch to filtered cigarettes, instead of the Chesterfields he smoked for most of his
life. On January 14th, 1957, Bogart went into a coma. He died the following day.
Lifestyle and cancer Esophageal cancer is a nasty disease,
and a lifestyle of smoking, drinking, and even consuming a lot of red meats is known to be
linked directly to it. Bogart was known to eat a lot of red meat, as well as other processed meats
every day. And as we already established, his two-pack-a-day smoking habit and years of heavy
drinking likely were large contributors to his cancer. In addition to his esophagus,
Bogart also had cancerous cells in his throat and his voice box.
These are usually caused by years of smoking. They can also be caused by HPV,
a sexually transmitted disease. While it’s not known if Bogart had HPV, he was known to
be very sexually active, so that’s a distinct possibility as well. Regardless, his lifestyle
played a huge part in his rapidly deteriorating health by the time the 1950s rolled around.
Why Bogart smoked so much on camera Humphrey Bogart was seen smoking cigarettes on
camera and he became basically linked with smoking in the eyes of audiences, critics, and studios.
In fact, a slang term for cigarettes was coined – Bogeys – simply because of how iconic a smoker
he was. Of course, at the beginning of his career, during the 1930s, smoking was incredibly
commonplace, both on and off the screen. One big reason that Bogart and other actors of that
time used a cigarette as a prop was because many screenplays didn’t have many stage directions in
them. Or at least, they had a tendency to have long monologues for the characters without any
action in the middle of them. Actors found it hard to keep audiences engaged for that long,
so they’d include a cigarette in their performance to have some action they could take in the middle.
That way the monologues would feel broken up nicely and were more easily digested.
The action of pulling out, lighting, and taking a drag of a cigarette
as a character talked would ensure the audience not only didn’t get bored but that they also kept
focusing on the mouth of the person talking. Bogart reportedly utilized this method during
a long monologue in an early film he was in. But before that, Bogart voiced his frustration to the
director that the scene was intensely boring. He remarked that the only way to keep it interesting
would be to have two camels fornicating in the background. Of course, the director wasn’t
about to try that, so he instead suggested to Bogart that he try smoking in the scene instead.
Bogart’s image Because of the success of this
method of acting, Bogart continued smoking during all of his movies. And another of his beliefs was
that he didn’t have to stray too far from the types of characters that had made him famous.
So while some actors are always looking to branch out and not be typecast, Bogart didn’t feel a need
for that. So since his most successful characters to that point had been mostly playing guys who
were tough but somehow detached. As such, he never saw the need to stop playing this type.
And since cigarette smoking went hand in hand with his acting choices when playing them, he continued
to smoke in every film. It’s been said that his cigarettes were almost like a replacement for his
characters carrying a gun. And his attitude of sitting back and smoking, rather than engaging
in the world, gave his performances a laid back level of cool that audiences absolutely loved.
In the end, Bogart’s lifestyle of excess, and the way he chose to smoke in every film
and on every set eventually caught up from him. It’s sad that we were robbed
of a chance to see him acting into his later years,. It would have been great
to see the type of performances he turned in during his later years. But unfortunately,
the choices he made in his early and mid-life quickly added up, and he died far too young.
Now it’s time to hear from you. Do you think Bogart regretted smoking throughout his life,
or did he enjoy the habit enough to make his untimely death worthwhile? Let us know in the
comments section below. And before you go, be sure to give this video a like, and subscribe to Facts
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