Humphrey Bogart

“David Thomson is, without doubt, the greatest living film historian.” —Allen Barra, Los Angeles Times

"What Thomson does not know or feel about films is not worth knowing or feeling."—Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian (UK)

“The stars shine bright in this series of brief biographies of four of classic Hollywood's most enduring icons. Eminent film critic Thomson (The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder, 2009, etc.) brings a historian's acumen and poet's sensibility to his portraits of Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper. The author seeks to identify the mythic essence of each of the star's cinematic personae, and the ways in which key films and carefully managed public perceptions shaped those ideas. Davis enjoyed a long reign as Hollywood's top star in the era of great stars, despite and because of her variable looks, peppery temperament and air of starchy New England superiority. Bergman was the 'natural' country girl, beautiful and virtuous, whose selfish passion for her career and compulsive promiscuity both fueled the love fantasies of her audience and ultimately led to international scandal and disgrace. Bogart, the sensitive tough guy, was hounded by insecurity and a host of other personal demons, his upperclass background lending an innate dignity and honor to his fabled menagerie of wisecracking gangsters and gumshoes. Cooper is presented as a hapless, weakwilled adulterer whose lean body, rugged handsomeness and preternatural stillness translated on camera as a quintessentially American rectitude and heroic stoicism. In clean, allusive prose, Thomson assesses the filmographies of these titans, offering surprising judgments and insights—he despises Cooper's beloved Sergeant York (1941) and the Davis classic The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)—and defining the magic of a vanished kind of stardom, an orchestrated mystique that made these men and women dream figures for a mass audience. The books are full of fascinating tidbits of gossip regarding his subjects' sexual peccadilloes, financial maneuverings and studio politicking, and Thomson is wickedly funny and startlingly poetic in his observations . . . Indispensable additions to any American film library.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The author of the standard reference The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (4th ed., 2004) begins the Guest Star series with fact-packed critical briefs on four American movie icons, managing to give each slim volume its own distinctive tone . . . Thomson focuses on how long it took the well-bred and -educated Bogart to develop his trademark style as the rough-hewn, disillusioned, world-weary, wisecracking, fallen romantic of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.He charts Bogart’s progress from New York stage performer to featured player in 1930s Hollywood, where he was often cast as a certain kind of feral street rat, to star. He shows how Bogart developed his distinctive aura—an evolution that took a considerable amount of time—and acquired the directors and fellow actors who became catalysts for the ongoing transformation of his star character, such as John Huston, Howard Hawks, and Lauren Bacall, whom he married.”—Jack Helbig, Booklist (starred review)

“In the initial volumes of this new series, noted film critic/historian Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) brings his opinions to bear on the lives and careers of four stars of the golden age of American cinema, all of whom remained active until their deaths . . . After being frequently cast as the snarling petty crook, Humphrey Bogart played a series of distinguished roles, climaxing with his Oscar-winning triumph in The African Queen . . . Thomson presents little more than a brief overview of each star's career but discusses what he considers their best films in somewhat more detail. His look at the actors' personal lives includes his quirky suppositions about their sex lives, and he often writes as if speaking, sometimes quite disconcertingly, directly to the reader . . . These books seem intended primarily for film buffs with limited knowledge of these particular stars as well as curious general readers.”—Roy Liebman, formerly with California State Univ., Los Angeles, Library Journal