Category: humphrey bogart

A Brit a Day [#657]

Here is a description of love and marriage from a young man, Daniel Radcliffe, whom I assume is just beginning to figure out the complexities of relationships and commitment–


“When growing up, I thought of marriage as being very official, drawing up a contract. It seemed slightly clinical to me. But then you meet somebody that you really love and you think, ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind standing up in front of my friends and family and telling them how much I love you and that I want to be with you forever.’


“….I’m not an easy person to love. There are lots of times when I’m a very good boyfriend, but there are times when I’m useless. I mean, I’m a mess around the house. I talk nonstop. I become obsessed with things….And she listens to it, and she loves me for my oddness, my awkwardness, all of those things that I hate about myself. She finds them cute. I guess that’s love.”


And here are the words of a man who’d been around the block a few times, Humphrey Bogart, lifted from the pages of his son Stephen’s biography “In Search of My Father”–

A Brit a Day [#650]

Sometimes I’d like to write about someone in ABAD who is not known to be British, and then I find that they are.  I’ve immersed myself in noir fiction this holiday–Raymond Chandler [raised in England, btw] and Dashiell Hammett–and where Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe tread, images of Humphrey Bogart aren’t far behind.

I’ve always been fascinated by the marriage of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  She was 25 years younger than him, and I’m usually kind of judgmental if the age gap exceeds 17, the age difference between my maternal grandmother and grandfather. [My grandmother was widowed fairly young, and her second husband was also 17 years older than she was.]  Anyway, age gap notwithstanding, the Bogarts seemed to have had a very loving marriage, and they stayed married until he died.

It turns out, lucky for me, that Humphrey Bogart had English relatives on both his parents’ sides, and in fact, he was Episcopalian like his mother.  The picture below caught my eye this morning for a number of reasons, but mostly, who could pass up such an adorable shot of boxers on Boxing Day, right?

If you are interested in reading about the Bogart/Bacall wedding as Lauren Bacall wrote about it in her memoir, grab a hanky and go here:

http://oldhollywood.tumblr.com/post/134183086/lauren-bacall-humphrey-bogart-on-their-wedding