Munson Tales: Humphrey Bogart

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Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born in 1899 in Manhattan to Belmont D. Bogart, MD and Maude Humphreys, 7th great granddaughter of Thomas Munson. He was raised at homes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and at their lake home Canandaigua Lake in Upstate New York. It was there he and his friends put on plays. Never interested in academics, he attended two prestigious prep schools, but dropped out and with no other options, he joined the Navy, where he excelled. 

His post-Navy life led him to the New York stage, where his career was launched. There, he met and divorced his first twife and married his second. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 sent many actors to Hollywood, Bogart included. Starting at $750 per week at Fox Studios, Spencer Tracy become one of his best friends. He went back and forth from Broadway to Hollywood much of the early 1930s, but by the mid-1930s, he was in Hollywood permanently, playing mostly gangster roles at Warner Brothers for $550 per week. 

His wife Mary and he divorced in 1937. Bogart met his third wife, Mayo Methot. This 1938 union was tumultuous, including Mayo setting the house on fire, stabbing Bogart, and throwing crockery. Insanely jealous and a hard drinker, Methot would ultimately die of acute alcoholism, but not before she and Bogartdivorced in 1945. Bogart’s career was on high by the 1940s with outstanding leading man roles such as Maltese Falcon,Casablanca, and To Have and Have Not. 

On set of the latter movie, he met 19-year-old actress Lauren Bacall and started an affair. They married as soon as his divorce was final in 1945. The couple had two children. The marriage was a committed one if not always faithful. Bogart developed cancer in late 1954 and died in 1957. Bogart had a complex and interesting life and legend.

Recommended reading: 

Tough Guy Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart 

First published in The Munson Founcation Newsletter, Volume XXV, Issue 3, Dec 2023, by Lori Hahn

Death of a Dad

My father passed away on Jan 7, 2024 about 3 in the morning. I wasn't there. I had intended to spend his final moments with him, but death played a trick on us. We had been sliding with rapidity towards the end, but it all came sooner than predicted. I immediately got out of bed and drove to see him and be there for the funeral home. There was a sense of surrealness about his passing. I had been with him the previous day for some time - but I knew something was horribly wrong. He was trying to eat his oatmeal and he was struggling. I fed him a few bites and he fell asleep mid-bite. Once I made sure he had no food in his mouth, I tucked him in and went out to report his condition to the nurse. He couldn't speak. 

I've talked before about the complex relationship we shared. Though terribly sad for both he and my half-brother, his wife died five years previously. Soon after, my sister and I saw that he could not stay in his house and needed to move. We talked him into moving to our town (where he grew up) and into an independent living facility. After grousing for some little time, he began to love it there. He was the "Homecoming King," participated in a lot of activities, and flirted with all the women. Just the way he liked it. He always thought he was a charmer, and to those not too deeply in the know, he was. He loved to make people laugh. Yet, there was a darkness in him. A bitterness that never left him. An inability to see that the challenges in his life were most often of his own making. Just like it is for all of us.

It was tragic when he transitioned from his independent facility to the skilled nursing care.  He couldn't do what he wanted when he wanted. He hated the food. He went to all his rehab appointments down the hall and then did none of his part of the rehab job between appointments. He wanted out so badly, but he was the one who controlled his outcome and he just didn't do it. Finally, he became one with watching TV 18 hours a day. That was his sole activity. He had no strength left to stand or walk or bathe himself. He started to like the same, vile food. Slowly, whatever shred of dignity and self-determination he had went. And, he no longer cared.

There was one shining light in this horrible, awful outcome for my dad. He got right with all of his children. That was no mean feat. We all felt we were given the time with him we needed to ask the right questions, strip the armour from our hearts, gain the insight we needed to forgive, accept, and at last understand the core of who he was and how his own emotional pain drove so much of his life. 

So much of the past few years of my life were wrapped in dad things, I was at a loss for a while in what to do. Thankfully, I had estate things to manage that took some time. Then, there was nothing left to do. 

I think of him more often than I thought I would.