“The best way to survive an Oscar is to never try to
win another one. You’ve seen what happens to some
Oscar winners. They spend the rest of their lives
turning down scripts while searching for the great
role to win another one. Hell, I hope I’m never even
nominated again. It’s meat-and-potato roles for me
from now on." (quoted in 1951, following his Best
Actor Academy Award win for The African Queen)
“The only thing you owe the public is a good
performance.”
“Ah, nuts. I’m an actor. I just do what comes
naturally." (when asked if he followed any specific
acting method)
“I’m a professional. I’ve done pretty well, don’t
you think? I’ve survived in a pretty rough
business.”
“…when he [Arthur Hopkins] was getting ready to
produce The Petrified Forest, he sent for me. When I
dropped into his office, Robert E. Sherwood – who
wrote the play and was a friend of mine – was there.
Hopkins said to me, ‘I’ve got a good role for you. A
gangster role." (discussing how he was cast as Duke
Mantee)
“I didn’t do anything I’ve never done before. But
when the camera moves in on that Bergman’s face, and
she’s saying she loves you, it would make anybody
look romantic." (on his captivating love scenes with
Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca)
“After me, he’s the best." (joking about close
friend, Spencer Tracy)
“I went on the stage the first time as a gag. I’d
been kidding Neil Hamilton about the soft life of an
actor. ‘Acting doesn’t look very hard to me,’ I’d
said. The funny thing was that that was what I
actually thought. The last night of the play, he
dared me to go on in his place. I took the dare, and
it was all a horrible fiasco. In one scene, an actor
was supposed to be mad at me, and I thought he was
really mad; he scared the hell out of me. It was the
first time I had been face to face with actors at
work. I didn’t realize how convincing they could be.
After that experience, I thought, ‘Never again.’”
“Hemingway tells me you’re not a good writer."
(to author John Steinbeck, upon meeting him for the
first time)
Quotes About Humphrey Bogart ..."He is the
only man I have ever known who truly and completely
belonged to himself…. His convictions about life,
work and people were so strong they were
unshakeable. Nothing – no one – could make him lower
his standards, lessen his character…. He had the
greatest gifts a man could have: respect for
himself, for his craft; integrity about life as well
as work." (actress and fourth wife Betty “Lauren”
Bacall)
“Bogart was quite alarming to meet, for the first
time, with his sardonic humor and his snarl that
passed for a smile. It took me a little while to
realize that he had perfected an elaborate
camouflage to cover up one of the kindest and most
generous of hearts." (actor and close friend David
Niven)
“She [Betty Bacall] and Bogie seemed to have the
most enormous opinion of each other’s charms, and
when they fought, it was with the utter confidence
of two cats locked deliciously in the same cage."
(actress and The African Queen co-star,
Katharine Hepburn)
“Bogart is a first-class person with an obsessive
compulsion to behave like a second-class person."
(friend and owner of the popular restaurant
Romanoff’s, Mike “Prince” Romanoff)
“Himself, he never took too seriously – his work,
most seriously. He regarded the somewhat gaudy
figure of Bogart, the star, with amused cynicism;
Bogart, the actor, he held in deep respect."
(producer/director John Huston)
“Bogie was never wrong about people. If he
thought a person was all right, the person was all
right. And if he thought a person was a phony, the
person was a phony." (friend and long time agent,
Sam Jaffe)
“I kissed him, but I never really knew him."
(actress and Casablanca co-star Ingrid Bergman)
“She [Betty Bacall] matched his insolence. Betty
came along at exactly the right time for Bogie. He
was mature and she was a kid, and I think he had a
ball showing her what life was all about." (friend
and actress Bette Davis)
“Bogart thought of himself as Scaramouch, the
mischievous scamp who sets off the fireworks, then
nips out." (writer and producer Nunnally Johnson)
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