Bogart Read Online Free PDF Page B

better.
    I only have one other memory of causing trouble for my father, and that is mostly because I was told the story years later by David Niven, one of my father’s closest Hollywood friends. He told me about a time when I almost knocked out one of the world’s most famous playwrights in our liv ing room.
    The playwright was Noel Coward. It seems that one night in 1955, Niven and Coward were sitting with Bogie. Noel Coward was visiting on his way to Las Vegas, where he was to make his first Vegas appearance, at the Sands Hotel. Coward wanted to discuss his material with Bogie and Niven. He was very worried about it. Would the Vegas nightclub crowd even understand the sophisticated humor of a British playwright? Bogie and Niven were in the two easy chairs, facing Coward, who sat on the sofa. I was behind the sofa. I don’t know whether I was being ignored or just in a pissy mood, or had something against British comedy or what, but Niven says I began moving ominously behind Coward, eyeing his head as if it were some sort of animal to be stalked. And I was armed with a large brass serving tray. When I got close behind Noel Coward, I lifted the tray and smashed it down on top of his head. It must have stung something awful, even if it was being wielded by a six-year-old. But the famous playwright never turned to look at me. He just looked at my father and, in that clipped British accent, said, “Bogart dear, do you know what I am going to give darling little Stephen for Christmas? A chocolate-covered hand grenade.”
    It was unusual for us to use the living room. It was not fully furnished, but it did contain a few expensive antiques and paintings. When my mother and father brought guests into the house, which was often, my mother was inclined to steer them toward the wood-paneled study, the butternut room, where the furniture was less pricey and more comfort able. And where there was a bar. The butternut room was a cozy room with full bookcases, comfortable chairs, folding ta bles, and a pull-down screen for film viewing. These guests were famous people: Sinatra, Tracy, Garland, Benchley, Niven, Huston, on and on, and many were very wealthy. But most of them were drinkers. My father was not comfortable with people who didn’t drink. “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink,” he once said. So my parents’ friends could be rowdy at times and I don’t think Mother wanted them bump ing into her paintings and shattering vases.
    Bacall certainly had good reason to worry. My father and his friends were capable of mischief. Once, after John Huston and his father, Walter, got Academy Awards for their work on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Dad, who also got an Oscar nomination for the movie, went back to John Huston’s place where Bogie and the director, still wearing tuxedoes, played football in the mud against a movie executive and a screenwriter. They either didn’t have a football or were too drunk to look for one, so, instead, they ran pass patterns with a grapefruit.
    * * *
    There are many reasons why I did not see a lot of my fa ther when I was a kid. One reason was his work. Another was his boat, the Santana.
    While most people know that Bogie and Bacall had a great love affair, probably fewer know about my father’s other great love affair. It was with sailing. Specifically, it was with the Santana, a fifty-five-foot sailing yacht, which he had bought from Dick Powell and June Allyson. The sea was my father’s sanctuary.
    My father was not simply some movie star throwing money into a hole in the water. He was very serious about the boat and he was an excellent helmsman who earned the re spect of the sailing fraternity, despite some well-entrenched prejudices they had about actors with boats.
    My father once answered a question about his devotion to sailing this way: “An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to