Stephen Bogart, son of the late actor Humphrey Bogart, had seen many films about his famous father, but none resembled the documentary that director Kathryn Ferguson proposed.
“I was hesitant to do another doc if it was going to be the same old, same old,” he told Yahoo Entertainment. “I didn’t want it to be a movie, movie, movie, movie. Oh, it says here they got married, blah, blah, he died. That wasn’t what I was looking for.”
When Ferguson said she was going to frame the documentary, Bogart: Life comes in flashes, around the women in the Casablanca the actor’s life, including Humphrey’s mother and four wives — the last being Stephen’s mother, Lauren Bacall — changed the writer-producer and reluctant son’s mind.
“I thought, well, maybe it’ll be a bit boring and blah, blah, blah – but it was anything but that,” he said.
The arc involving the various women in his father’s life was something Stephen said he “never thought about,” and he mentioned Ferguson, director of the 2022 documentary Nothing compares about singer Sinead O’Connor, with the unique perspective. There was no hesitation after that, he said.
Bogart: Life comes in flashes explains how the New York-born Humphrey was influenced not only by his mother – a magazine illustrator and suffragette – but also by the actresses he married during his surprisingly unstable rise to the big screen, starting with Broadway actress Helen Menken and ending with Bacall. whom he met in the 1944 film To have and not to have.
‘The whole thing surprised me because I had never really looked at that aspect of his life, about how marrying Helen or Mary went [Philips] or Mayo [Methot] affect his life?” said Stephen. “Everything about it was a surprise, or almost everything about it was a surprise.”
Besides diving in The African Queen the star’s personal relationships and the ups and downs of his acting career, Ferguson and writer Eleanor Emptage weighed in on Stephen’s stance on his famous father.
“He was distant, but he died when I was eight, and before that he was ill for a year. So I didn’t really know him,” said Stephen, whose voice sounds vaguely like Humphrey’s. “He went to work, and he came home, and he wanted to eat alone with my mother, so the kids were put to bed.”
Referring to himself and his younger sister, Leslie, he added: “Back then it was, you know, that children should be seen and not heard.”
On weekends, his father “went to the boat alone, so he wasn’t there as much,” he said. Stephen explained that he “didn’t have time to think about it [the distance] because I was actually raised by a nanny and my mother when she was there, but she was with him a lot too. So it was just part of my life.”
While voice actor Kerry Shale mimics Humphrey’s words in the documentary, Stephen’s voice also acts as a kind of echo throughout the film – although he says he can’t hear the similarities between him and his father.
“Some people tell me that, but I don’t know because I don’t hear myself,” he said. “To me, I sound like me and he sounds like him.”
The film, much of which is taken from Bogart’s own words through archival interviews and letters, depicts the actor’s relationships with fellow actors and his friction with studios, especially Warner Bros. studio head Jack Warner.
Calling his father “an activist before his time,” Stephen recalls that his father “didn’t want to play a role” without Lena Horne involved because Hollywood “blackened her for being black.”
Humphrey died in 1957 at the age of 57. Stephen said people probably knew more about his mother, who died in 2014 at the age of 89 and whom he affectionately called “a tough old bird.”
When it comes to which parent he most resembles, Stephen says people tell him he looks more like Bacall than Bogart, something he hasn’t always been thrilled about.
“I actually didn’t like that that much. When I was growing up, when I was twenty, [people would say]“Oh, you look like your mother,” he explained. ‘That’s just as bad as someone coming up and saying how beautiful my mother was. You know, it’s like, no, she’s not. She’s my mother. You can’t say that about her.”
As for his father, Stephen said he hopes so Bogart: Life comes in flashes will be the last word on the actor, at least when it comes to documentaries.
“How much more can you actually do?” he asked. “The story has been told again and again, but it has never been told this way. And if this is the last one, it would really be a great way to end it.”
Bogart: Life comes in flashes now playing in select theaters.
