Hollywood (1942)

•f°oyw,adel,,Y anymore A" g b>9 8 y.?u«irreal .es the' .ssl th' H seen s^orU; ore *° tob"^0olh 'frond £eV^S repe°,s thoSe vefV OS*" m< sp ri" nie SORCERESS Hanglo rayon wilK double-woven col ton applique ond cull. jIso COQUETTE Peek-a-boo parly goer in Hanglo royon. $1.25 COLLEEN Of line Hanglo rayon in brilliant colors. Jl.25 HflnSEN^I GLOVES NEW YORK MILWAUKEE CHICAGO Sneering for a living has packed the family coffers to the brim, so Humphrey Bogart hasn't any intention of reforming right now. He's in Warners' The Big Shot By IM 4. VI. O'LIAM ■ There's more to making a career of a sneer than you might think. Especially where ninety percent of your salary paying public is female. Ask Humphrey Bogart, who has parlayed one into a yacht, money in the bank and steady work at first class rates. Sneering, Bogart believes, is nice work if you can get it. There isn't anything he'd rather do for a living than sneer, unless it would be sailing his boat and talking to the sort of people he likes to listen to. He doesn't mind not getting the gal. In fact, he rather likes it. He doesn't especially enjoy playing opposite women. He's happiest when he's in an all-male cast, or as near to all-male as Hollywood ever lets a cast get. As for not getting the girl, there's a technique about that and none knows it better than the Emir of Sneer. He has to almost, but not quite, get the girl. Not getting her must be his doing, not hers, or some handsome rival's. He must have it in his power to get her, but in the end he must spurn her and remain forever untamed. If he started losing girls by other than his own volition, his career would suffer. He's smart enough to know that. That's ■why he's popular with the women picturegoers. They seem to sense that any time he wants to turn on the pressure, he can set up housekeeping with the best of them. He doesn't, however, and therein lies his charm. He's hard to get and the woman hasn't yet been created who isn't intrigued by something hard to get, even if it has everything its best friends won't tell it about. "A friend told me that if I ever got the girl, I'd be licked," he explains, "and then he told me that if I ever lost the gal, I'd be a dead pigeon, too. So I mustn't lose 'em; just walk out on 'em." He looked a little alarmed. He didn't want the impression to get out that he believed in himself as he appears on the screen. You'd hunt around a long time before you found a friendlier, more natural citizen than "Bogey." He and his wife, Mayo Methot (known to him as "Slug," or "Sluggy" when he's in a tender mood) , are among Hollywood's most informal and popular people. Their home is a sort of clearing house for laughs. If anyone has an idea for a gag, they drop in and talk it over with Bogey and Slug. If they haven't an idea for a gag, they drop in and borrow one from the Bogart files. There are always plenty around that aren't working. He's just had quite a problem to struggle with. His Maltese Falcon is a box-office riot, but there's been a serious recoil. While the women fans have flocked to see it, they've protested. They don't want him to turn straight, as he does at the end of the Falcon. They want him to fight it out on anti-social lines. All this has happened at a point when the Freres Warner were figuring on carrying him over into a sort of sequel to the Falcon. He was to have the gal under his thumb, seem hard and unrelenting and aligned against the law, and then turn straight again. But it seems the women wouldn't stand for it; and what the women won't stand for in pictures has a peculiar way of turning out to be exactly what the studios don't stand for. 46