1 Bogey, Cary, Duke–Ch. 1–Background (Social Class), Childhood, Family, and Career Beginnings (Up to 1930)

June 7, 2025–5667 words

Research in progress

Please add to Grant Jewish

Please place Bogart’s lisp in other chapters

Grant on stand up comic

Grant on women

Please add to Wayne’s late 20s bits

Belmont was the only child of the unhappy marriage of Adam Welty Bogart (a Canandaigua, New York, innkeeper) and Julia Augusta Stiles, a wealthy heiress. The name “Bogart” derives from the Dutch surname, “Bogaert.” Belmont was Presbyterian, of English and Dutch descent, and a descendant of Sarah Rapelje (the first European child born in New Netherland). Maud was an Episcopalian of English heritage, and a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland.  Bogey was raised Episcopalian, but he was a non-practicing for most of his adult life.

The date of Bogart’s birth has been disputed. Some claim that Warner’s publicity department had altered it to January 23, 1900 “to foster the view that a man born on Christmas Day couldn’t really be as villainous as he appeared to be on screen.” (more about this later).

The “corrected” January birthdate subsequently appeared—and in some cases remained—in several authoritative sources. Biographers Ann M. Sperber and Eric Lax claim that Bogart always celebrated his birthday on December 25, and that he listed it on official records (including his marriage licenses).

Lauren Bacall, Bogart’s fourth wife, wrote in her memoirs that Bogart’s birthday was always celebrated on Christmas Day, and that he used to joke about being cheated out of a present every year.

Sperber and Lax noted that a birth announcement in the Ontario County Times of January 10, 1900 rules out the possibility of a January 23 birthdate; state and federal census records also report a Christmas 1899 birthdate.

Belmont, Bogart’s father, was a cardiopulmonary surgeon. His wife Maud was a commercial illustrator who received her art training in New York and France, including study with James Abbott McNeill Whistler. She later became an art director of the fashion magazine “The Delineator” and a militant suffragette.

Maud used a drawing of her baby Humphrey in an ad campaign for Mellins Baby Food. She earned over $50,000 a year at the peak of her career, considerably more than her husband’s salary at the time, about $20,000.

The Bogarts lived in an Upper West Side apartment, on West 104th Street?  They also had a cottage on a 55-acre estate on Canandaigua Lake in Upstate New York. When he was young, Bogart’s group of friends at the lake would put on plays, in which he often participated.

Bogart’s had two younger sisters: Frances (“Pat”) and Catherine Elizabeth (“Kay”).  His parents were busy in their respective careers, and they frequently argued and fought.  Both were rather formal in their daily conduct, showing little, if any, overt emotion towards their children.

Maud told her offsprings to call her “Maud” instead of “Mother,” and she showed little physical affection. When she was pleased, she “clapped you on the shoulder, almost the way a man does,” Bogart later recalled. “I was brought up very unsentimentally but very straightforwardly. A kiss, in our family, was an event. Our mother and father didn’t glug over my two sisters and me.”

Bogart was teased as a boy for his curls, for his tidiness, and for the “cute” pictures he posed for, the Little Lord Fauntleroy clothes in which his mom dressed him, and, of course, for his first name.

Over the years, he inherited from his father various traits and activities, such as the tendency to needle, fondness for fishing, lifelong love of boating, and attraction to strong-willed women.

Bogart attended the private Delancey School until the fifth grade, and then went to the prestigious Trinity School. He was an indifferent, sullen student with no interest in after-school activities.

Bogart later attended the Phillips Academy, a boarding school to which he was admitted based on family connections. Although his parents hoped he would go on to Yale University, in 1918 Bogart left Phillips. Was he expelled for throwing the headmaster (or a groundskeeper) into the Rabbit Pond on campus, as some say? Or perhaps it was the underage smoking and drinking, poor academic performance, and inappropriate (borderline rude) comments made to the staff.

Bogart was withdrawn by his father for failing to improve his grades. Both of his parents made no secret about their disappointments in him–their failed plans for his future.

WWI

Bogart followed his passion for the sea and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in the spring of 1918 (World War I). He recalled later, “At 18, war was great stuff. Paris! Sexy French girls! Hot damn!” As a model sailor, he spent most of his sea time after the armistice ferrying troops back from Europe.

Lisping (also to image)

He may have received his trademark scar and his characteristic lisp during his naval stint. There are conflicting stories about that, too. According to one source, his lip was cut by shrapnel when his ship, the USS Leviathan, was shelled. The ship was never shelled, however, and it is believed that Bogart was not at sea before the armistice.

Another story, held by his friend Nathaniel Benchley, was that Bogart was injured while taking a prisoner to Portsmouth Naval Prison in Kittery, Maine. While changing trains in Boston, the handcuffed a prisoner who asked Bogart for a cigarette. When Bogart looked for a match, the prisoner smashed him across the mouth with the cuffs (cutting Bogart’s lip) and fled before he was recaptured and imprisoned. In yet another version, Bogart was struck in the mouth by a handcuff loosened while freeing his charge; the other handcuff was still around the prisoner’s wrist. By the time Bogart was treated by a doctor, a scar had formed, and it remained permanent.

Bogart said that his scar was caused by a childhood accident. “This goddamn doctor,” Bogart later told David Niven. “Instead of stitching it up, he screwed it up.” According to Niven, the stories that Bogart got the scar during wartime were made up by the studio’s publicity machine. His post-service physical did not mention the lip scar, although it noted several smaller scars.

When actress Louise Brooks met Bogart in 1924, she noticed the scar tissue on his upper lip. Brooks said that Bogart may have had partially repaired it before entering the film industry in 1930, though his “lip wound gave him no speech impediment, either before or after it was mended.” A barroom brawl at this time was also purported as a possible cause of Bogart’s lip damage, dovetailing with Louise Brooks’ account.

When Bogart returned home, he found his father in poor health, and his medical practice faltering. Much of the family’s wealth had been lost in bad timber investments that were made in the 1920s.

Bogart’s character and values developed separately from those of his family during his navy days. He began showing signs of rebellious conduct, and he became politically liberal at a young age. He was known for his dislike of pretension, phonies and snobs, often defying conventional behavior and authority.

In other ways, he was well-mannered in public, articulate in expressing his thoughts (but not his feelings). He tended to be punctual, which would serve him well as a contract actor at Warner.

Initially, he was self-effacing, and standoffish, two attributes that would change (in fact, disappear), when he became a star in the 1940s.

After his naval service he worked as a shipper and a bond salesman, before joining the Coast Guard Reserve. Bogart resumed his friendship with Bill Brady Jr., whose father had showbusiness connections. That’s how he obtained an office job with William A. Brady’s new company, World Films.

Although initially he wanted to try his hand at screenwriting, directing, or production, he quickly realized that he excelled at none of them. He worked for a while as a stage manager for a play in which Brady’s daughter Alice appeared, A Ruined Lady.

Stage Debut

Bogart made his stage debut a few months later as a Japanese butler in Alice’s 1921 play Drifting (delivering one line of dialogue). He also appeared in some of her subsequent plays.

Bogart had been raised to believe that acting was a lowly, unreliable, and disreputable profession. However, he liked the late hours that actors kept, and even more so, the attention they received: “I was born to be indolent, and this was the softest of rackets.”

Preferring to learn by actually doing, he never took acting lessons. Nonetheless, Bogart was persistent and worked steadily at his craft, appearing in at least 17 Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935.

He played juveniles or romantic supporting roles in drawing-room comedies. He is reportedly the first actor to say, “Tennis, anyone?” on stage.  The famous theater critic Alexander Woollcott noted: “Bogart is what is usually and mercifully described as inadequate.”

Other critics were kinder. Heywood Broun, reviewing Nerves, wrote: “Bogart gives the most effective performance … both dry and fresh, if that be possible.”

He played juvenile lead (reporter Gregory Brown) in Lynn Starling’s comedy Meet the Wife, which had a successful 232-performance run at the Klaw Theatre from November 1923 through July 1924.

But Bogart disliked his trivial early-career parts, calling them, “White Pants Willie” roles, which he perceived as feminine and effeminate.

While playing double role in Drifting at the Playhouse Theatre in 1922, he met actress Helen Menken. After an on and off courtship, Bogart and Menken were married on May 20, 1926, at the Gramercy Park Hotel in NYC.

However, the marriage did not last long, and they divorced on November 18, 1927, though remained friends for several years. Menken later said that Bogart was too self-centered, that he valued his career more than their marriage, citing neglect and abuse.

Several months later, on April 3, 1928, Bogart married Mary Philips, with whom he had worked in the play Nerves during its brief run at the Comedy Theatre in September 1924. The wedding took place at her mother’s place in Hartford, Connecticut.

As is well known, theatrical production dropped off sharply after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and many of the more photogenic and more experienced actors began heading to Hollywood to try their luck in the nascent and potentially exciting sound era.

Cary Grant

Cary Grant (ne Archibald Alec Leach) was born on January 18, 1904, at 15 Hughenden Road in the northern Bristol suburb of Horfield. He was the second child of Elias James Leach (1872–1935) and Elsie Maria Leach (née Kingdon; 1877–1973).

He hailed from the working class: His father worked as a tailor’s presser at a clothes factory, while his mother worked as a seamstress. His older brother John died of tuberculous meningitis.

Grant considered himself to be partly Jewish.

He had an unhappy upbringing; his father was an alcoholic and his mother suffered from clinical depression. He had such “a traumatic childhood,” said Grant’s fifth wife-actress Dyan Cannon. “It was horrible. I work with a lot of kids on the street, and I’ve heard a lot of stories about what happens when a family breaks down, but his was just horrendous.”

Grant’s mother taught him song and dance when he was four, and she was keen on him getting piano lessons, which he got only irregularly due to their financial difficulties. She would take him to the movies, where he enjoyed the performances of Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain, and Broncho Billy Anderson.

He was sent to the Bishop Road Primary School, Bristol when he was four and a half.

McCann claimed that his mother “did not know how to give affection, and she also did not know how to receive it.”  His mother blamed herself bitterly for the death of Grant’s brother John, from which she had never recovered. She frowned on alcohol and tobacco, and when drunk, she would be abusive and insensitive; she would reduce pocket money for most minor mishaps. Grant attributed her behavior towards him as overprotective, based on her fear that she would lose him, just as she had John.

When Grant was nine, his father placed his mother in Glenside Hospital, a mental institution, but told him that she had gone away on a “long holiday.” Later on, he further lied, declaring that she had died. Grant grew up resenting his mother, after what he had though was her abandoning the family.

After she was gone, Grant and his father moved into the home of his grandmother in Bristol. When Grant was ten, his father remarried and started a new family. Grant would not learn that his mother was still alive until he was 31, when his father felt a need to confess, just before his own death.

In June 0f 1935, shortly after he learned of her existence, Grant  made arrangements for his mother to leave the institution. The last time he visited her was in October 1938, after the shoot on Gunga Din was completed.

Despite all the familial hardships, Grant enjoyed the vaudeville theater, pantomimes at Christmas, which he attended with his father.  He befriended a troupe of acrobatic dancers known as “The Penders,” or the “Bob Pender Stage Troupe.” They subsequently agreed to train him as a stilt walker, and he began touring with them.

Jesse Lasky, the Broadway producer, who saw Grant performing at the Wintergarten theater in Berlin around 1914, claimed that he was quite impressed with him.

In 1915, Grant, then age 11, won a scholarship to attend Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, though his father could barely afford to pay for the uniform. He was capable in most academic subjects, but he especially excelled at sports. Grant hated mathematics and Latin and was more interested in geography, because he “wanted to travel.”

Grant’s good looks and acrobatic talents made him a popular figure among both girls and boys. (and those skills would help later in his career when making screwball comedies). Like Bogart, he also developed a reputation for mischief and pranks.

He frequently refused or failed to do his homework. A former classmate referred to him as a “scruffy little boy,” while an old teacher remembered “the naughty little boy who was always making a noise in the back row and would never do his homework.”

Grant preferred to spend his evenings working backstage in Bristol theaters. Among other jobs, he was responsible for the lighting for magician David Devant at the Bristol Empire in 1917, at the age of 13.

He began hanging around backstage at the theater at every opportunity he had. He then volunteered for work in the summer as a messenger boy and guide at the military docks in Southampton. All of these acts were ways of escaping the unhappiness of his home life.

The time spent at Southampton strengthened his desire to travel and to explore.  Eager to leave Bristol, he tried to sign on as a ship’s cabin boy, but he was deemed too young for that.

On March 13, 1918, Grant was expelled from Fairfield. There were rumors that he was discovered in the girls’ lavatory and assisted two classmates with theft in the nearby town of Almondsbury. Others said that Grant had set out intentionally to get himself expelled in order to pursue entertainment career with the troupe. Hence, he rejoined the Pender’s Troupe three days after being expelled.

Meanwhile, his father got a better-paying job in Southampton. Grant’s expulsion brought local authorities to his father with questions about why his son was living in Bristol and not with his father in Southampton.

His father became instrumental in co-signing a 3-year contract between Grant and Pender until the age of 18. It stipulated, among other things, Grant’s weekly salary, room and board, dancing lessons, and other training. There was also a provision in the contract for salary raises, based on the quality of his job performance.

While at the Pender Troupe, Grant developed his pantomime skills, which broadened his physical and acting skills. They traveled on the RMS Olympic for a tour of the U.S. on July 21, 1920, when he was 16.

It just happened that Hollywood’s royals, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, were aboard the ship, returning from their honeymoon, and Grant played shuffleboard with him. Grant was so impressed with theFairbanks that he became an important role model.

After arriving in Manhattan, the group performed at the New York Hippodrome, the largest theater in the world at the time, with the impressive capacity of 5,697 seats.  They performed for twelve months, putting on 12 shows a week. One of their productions, Good Times, was particularly successful.

Doing stand-up comedy is extremely difficult. Your timing has to change, from show to show and from town to town. You’re always adjusting to the size of the audience and the size of the theatre—Grant on stand-up comedy.

After becoming a member of the vaudeville circuit, Grant began touring, performing in places like St. Louis, Missouri, Cleveland, and Milwaukee.

He decided to stay in the U.S. with some other members, when the rest of the troupe returned to Britain. He became fond of the Marx Brothers during that period. Zeppo Marx was an early role model for him, especially in terms of physical pratfalls.

In July 1922, Grant performed in a group called the “Knockabout Comedians” at the Palace Theater on Broadway.

He performed with another group called “The Walking Stanleys,” with several former members of the Pender Troupe, and he starred in variety show named “Better Times” at the Hippodrome towards the end of the year.

Upon meeting George C. Tilyou at a party, the owner of the Steeplechase Park racecourse on Coney Island, Tilyou hired him to appear on stilts. He performed while wearing a bright-great coat and a sandwich board which advertised the racetrack.

Grant spent the next couple of years touring the U.S. with “The Walking Stanleys.” He visited Los Angeles for the first time in 1924, a growing city that made a lasting impression.

After the group split up, he returned to New York, where he began performing at the National Vaudeville Artists Club on West 46th Street, juggling, doing acrobatics and comic sketches.  He enjoyed a short spell as a unicycle rider known as “Rubber Legs.”

Grant gradually became a leading man. The experience proved demanding, but it gave Grant opportunity to improve his comic technique and timing, and to develop skills which would benefit him later in Hollywood.

He then formed the “Jack Janis Company,” which began touring vaudeville. He was sometimes mistaken for an Australian during that period and was subsequently nicknamed “Kangaroo” or “Boomerang.”

In 1927, he was cast as an Australian in Reggie Hammerstein’s musical Golden Dawn, for which he earned $75 a week. The show was not well received, but it ran for 184 performances, and several critics started to notice Grant as the “pleasant new juvenile,” or “competent young newcomer.”

In 1928, after joining the William Morris Agency, he was offered another juvenile part by Hammerstein in his play Polly, another unsuccessful production. One critic wrote: “Grant has a strong masculine manner, but unfortunately fails to bring out the beauty of the score.”

The pressure of failing productions began to make him fret, and he was eventually dropped from the run after six weeks of poor reviews. Despite the setback, Hammerstein’s rival, showman Florenz Ziegfeld made an attempt to buy Grant’s contract, but instead, Hammerstein sold it to the Shubert Brothers.

Shubert then cast him in a small role as a Spaniard opposite Jeanette MacDonald in the French risqué comedy Boom-Boom at the Casino Theater on Broadway, which premiered on January 28, 1929. MacDonald later admitted that Grant was “absolutely terrible in the role.” But others thought that he exhibited some charm, which endeared him to people and effectively saved the show from failure. The play ran for 72 shows, and Grant earned $350 a week before moving to Detroit, and then to Chicago.

To console himself, Grant bought a 1927 Packard sport phaeton. He visited his half-brother Eric in England, after which he returned to New York to play the role of Max Grunewald in a Shubert production of A Wonderful Night. It premiered at the Majestic Theater on October 31, 1929, two days after the Wall Street Crash, and lasted until February 1930, with a total of 125 shows.

The play received mixed notices; one reviewer criticized his acting, likening it to a “mixture of John Barrymore and cockney,” while another announced that Grant had brought a “breath of elfin Broadway” to the role.

Grant still found it difficult to form meaningful relationships with women. He later recalled that he “never seemed able to fully communicate with them” even after many years “surrounded by all sorts of attractive girls” in the theater, on the road, and in New York.

In 1930, Grant toured for nine months in the musical The Street Singer, which ended in early 1931. The Shuberts invited him to spend the summer performing on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri, and he appeared in 12 different productions, putting on some 87 shows.

He received praise from local newspapers, gaining reputation as romantic leading man. Influences on his acting were Gerald du Maurier, A. E. Matthews, Jack Buchanan, and Ronald Squire.

He was eventually fired by the Shuberts at the end of the summer, when he refused to accept a pay cut because of financial difficulties of the Depression.

Grant’s unemployment was short lived, however. Impresario William B. Friedlander offered him the lead romantic part in his musical Nikki, and Grant starred opposite Fay Wray as a soldier in post-World War I France. The production opened on September 29, 1931 in N.Y., but it closed after just 39 performances due to effects of the Depression.

After a successful screen-test directed by Marion Gering, Bud Schulberg signed a contract with Grant, then 27, on December 7, 1931 for five years, at a starting salary of $450 a week.

Dec 27: checked

Duke

John Wayne (Marion Robert Morrison) was born on May, 1907, at 224 South Second Street in Winterset, Iowa. The local paper, Winterset Madisonian, reported on page 4 of the edition of May 30, 1907, that Wayne weighed 13 lbs at birth.

Wayne claimed that his middle name was soon changed from Robert to Michael, when his parents decided to name their next son Robert. However, research indicates that no such legal change occurred. Wayne’s legal name remained Marion Robert Morrison throughout his entire life.

Wayne’s father, Clyde Leonard Morrison (1884–1937), was the son of American Civil War veteran Marion Mitchell Morrison (1845–1915). Wayne’s mother, the former Mary “Molly” Alberta Brown (1885–1970), was from Lancaster County, Nebraska. Wayne had Scottish, English and Irish ancestry.

His great-great grandfather Robert Morrison (b. 1782) left County Antrim, Ireland with his mother arriving in New York in 1799. They eventually settled in Adams County, Ohio. The Morrisons were originally from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.

He was raised Presbyterian.

Wayne’s family moved to Palmdale, California, and then in 1916 to Glendale at 404 Isabel Street, where his father worked as a pharmacist.

He attended Glendale Union High School, where he performed well in both sports and academics. Wayne was part of his high school’s football team as well as its debating team. He was also the President of the Latin Society and contributed to the school’s newspaper sports column.

A local fireman at the station on his route to school in Glendale started calling him “Little Duke,” because he never went anywhere without his huge Airedale Terrier, Duke. In later years, he preferred the name “Duke” to “Marion,” and the nickname stuck for life.

Wayne attended Wilson Middle School in Glendale. As a teen, he worked in an ice cream shop for a man who shod horses for Hollywood studios. He was also active as a member of the Order of DeMolay. He played football for the 1924 league champion Glendale High School team.

Wayne applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, but he was not accepted. Instead, he attended the University of Southern California (USC), intending to major in pre-law. He was a member of the Trojan Knights and Sigma Chi fraternities. Wayne also played on the USC football team under coach Howard Jones.

Loss of Scholarship

A broken collarbone injury curtailed his athletic career; Wayne later noted that he was too terrified of Jones’ reaction to reveal the actual cause of his injury, a bodysurfing accident. As a result, he lost his athletic scholarship, and without funds, he was forced to leave the university.

First lead role

As a favor to coach Jones, who had given silent western film star Tom Mix tickets to USC games, director John Ford and Mix hired Wayne as a prop boy and extra. Wayne later credited his walk, talk, and persona to his acquaintance with Wyatt Earp, who was good friends with Tom Mix.

Wayne soon moved on to playing bit parts, establishing a longtime friendship with the director who provided most of those roles, John Ford.

Early in this period he had a minor, uncredited role as a guard in the 1926 film Bardelys the Magnificent.

Wayne also appeared with his USC teammates playing football in Brown of Harvard (1926), The Dropkick (1927), and Salute (1929) and Columbia’s Maker of Men (filmed in 1930, released in 1931).

While working for Fox Film Corporation in bit roles, Wayne was given on-screen credit as “Duke Morrison” only once, in Words and Music (1929).

Director Raoul Walsh saw Wayne moving studio furniture while working as a prop boy, and he decided to take a risk and cast him in his first starring role in The Big Trail.

Dec 27: checked

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