Bogart - by Ann Sperber (Paperback)

About the Book

Ann Sperber and Eric Lax offer therevealing, intimate, definitive biography of the legendary Humphrey Bogart, detailing the arc and span of his personal and professional life a story oftoil, tragedy, and triumph. Sperber and Lax exploreBogie s abusive childhood and the three unsuccessful marriages that precededthe lasting love he found with Lauren Bacall, and plumb the depths of hisarduous career working as Warner Brothers go-to drudge actor for thirteenyears of B-list films before rising to stardom and ultimately achieving hisplace amongst Hollywood royalty. The Los Angeles Times calls Bogart "animmediate triumph...so rich in its research, so compelling in its writing, itis an absorbing human story of the motion picture business in the age ofHumphrey Bogart."

Book Synopsis

Ann Sperber and Eric Lax offer therevealing, intimate, definitive biography of the legendary Humphrey Bogart, detailing the arc and span of his personal and professional life--a story oftoil, tragedy, and triumph. Sperber and Lax exploreBogie's abusive childhood and the three unsuccessful marriages that precededthe lasting love he found with Lauren Bacall, and plumb the depths of hisarduous career working as Warner Brothers' go-to drudge actor for thirteenyears of B-list films before rising to stardom and ultimately achieving hisplace amongst Hollywood royalty. The Los Angeles Times calls Bogart "animmediate triumph . . . so rich in its research, so compelling in its writing, itis an absorbing human story of the motion picture business in the age ofHumphrey Bogart."

From the Back Cover

Bogart paints an indelible portrait of a complex man, from the privilege and abuse he experienced in childhood to his triumphant 1935 acting breakthrough in The Petrified Forest to his classic roles as the cynical idealist Rick of Casablanca and the drunken yet lovable Charlie Allnut in The African Queen.

Based on more than two hundred interviews, years of research, and documents ranging from Warner Brothers script reports to an extensive FBI file, this is the definitive account of the immortal actor, painted against a backdrop of studio politics during Hollywood's Golden Age and the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era.

Bogart is engrossing and unforgettable--a biography as towering as the legend at its heart.

Review Quotes

"A very well done volume." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"A leisurely, formidably well-documented account of Humphrey Bogart's legendary screen career and four marriages (including a happy final one to Lauren Bacall), this is it. A. M. Sperber conducted some 200 interviews with people who knew the actor before his death in 1994; Eric Lax draws on her seven years of research to create a nuanced, in-depth, elegantly written portrait of the man recently dubbed Hollywood's greatest star by Premiere magazine." - Amazon.com
"This model biography should become the standard study of Bogart." - Library Journal
"Every day of Sperber's research shows... This meticulous attention to detail adds strength and dimension to the book... [readers] will learn volumes about such diverse topics as upper-class life at the turn of the century, the inner workings of Hollywood, the political climate in the 1950s, and what really went on during the filming of Bogart's movies. An admirable endeavor." - Booklist
"Compelling read...a convincingly layered portrait of Bogart." - New York Times Book Review
"Dramatic, historically informative, and elegiac, [Bogart] exemplifies an honorable standard in the uneven world of film biographies." - Kirkus Reviews
"The last word on a legend." - Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography
"An immediate triumph...so rich in its research, so compelling in its writing, it is an absorbing human story of the motion picture business in the age of Humphrey Bogart." - Los Angeles Times