Monthly Archives: December 2017

Happy Birthday Humphrey Bogart

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Humphrey Bogart was born on Christmas Day 1899.  He passed away from esophageal cancer on January 14, 1957.

Although he made his name starring in now classic films such as Casablanca (still my favorite), Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep, he started out playing hoodlums in many of his early films.  It’s the tough-guy characters he played, both good guys and villains, for which he is best remembered today.

In spite of his reputation as a star of gangster films and film noir, Bogart starred in a number of other roles.  He was married to Lauren Bacall.  They met on the set of To Have and Have Not.  He was 44, and she was 19.  It was her first and his fourth marriage, and would last until Bogey’s death.

Take a moment from your holiday celebrations and raise a glass to his memory.  Bogey’s films are worth watching, even as many acclaimed pictures made by other actors during his lifetime have faded into obscurity.

Here’s a classic scene between Bogart and Bacall from To Have and Have Not:

 

Happy Birthday, Ross MacDonald

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Kenneth Millar, who wrote under the pen name Ross MacDonald, was born today (December 13) in 1915.  He passed away in 1983.

MacDonald is best remembered as the creator of the Los Angeles based private investigator Lew Archer, although he also wrote stand-alone novels as well.  His early work was somewhat derivative of Raymond Chandler, but he soon established his own take on the lone investigator.

MacDonald has been on my radar a long time.  I read the Lew Archer novel The Galton Case when I was in graduate school.  I liked it enough to pick up copies of his books when I came across them in second hand shops.  Over the last few months, I’ve been dipping into The Archer Files, the collected Lew Archer short fiction.

I’m hoping to read more PI fiction next year, and MacDonald will definitely be in the rotation.