Customer Reviews

The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart: The Early Years (1899-1931)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Possibly the worst-written bio I've ever read, and the most unbelievable. Here's a quick run-down so you don't have to bother:

1) Everyone has slept with everyone else except for Bogart and Bette Davis. Everyone. No point in keeping score because they're all doing it.
2) Most surreal moment, hands down, is George O'Brien showing Bogie an intimate part of his anatomy (and probably not the one you're thinking of!) and then explaining how he keeps it so young-looking, and tasty.
3) Most interactions between people include long conversations which the author could not possibly have been privy to, including a lot of pillow talk. Draw your own conclusions.
4) The narrative is riddled with inconsistencies as small as an inability to decide whether Bogart's favorite meal was ham and eggs or bacon and eggs (and who really cares anyway?), and as large as one minute he likes a salty-talking babe and the next he finds her incredibly vulgar and off-putting.
5) Removed by reviewer so as not to offend anyone.
6) The single most cliche-ridden text I have ever had the misfortune to read.
7) The author manages to make real people, people like Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks (Jr and Sr) seem like caricatures or pieces of wood...or both.
8) By page 400, any salacious thrills have descended to the level of "Please your mate" spam.
9) Bogart comes across very badly; if you're a big fan, skip this. There are only so many times he can be shocked by the goings-on before you start to want to give him a dime to buy a clue. At best, the author writes him like a teenage girl.
10) Every attempt at conveying a deeply emotional scene is hilariously inept.

I feel like I need a great big brush to clean out my brain, now. If I could give negative stars, this book would've earned a -5.

In today's age, when nothing can said to be sacred, Darwin Porter proves that a certain sort of shock value still persists. Porter, who specializes in the kiss and tell biographical novel, turns his focus to a "straight" biography. In this case he digs up the skeletons that kept company in the closet that was the life of Humphrey Bogart.

In order to concoct such a tome, Porter uses the old tabloid formula: one part truth and one part memories by co-stars (all of whom are conveniently decreased). Blend well, add five parts pure baloney, and presto! A new lurid biography, perfect for those times in the bathroom when a Jackie Collins novel is not available.

So how true is Porter's book? He bases Bogart's early life on incidents that did happen and speculates from there. For instance, it was commonly known that Bogart did not injure his lip during his Naval service as he never saw action. Porter attributes the injury to a beating by Bogart's father. O.K., that is a plausible explanation. So is the intrigue during his first marriage to Helen Mencken, who was one of the shining lights of Broadway's Lavendar Set. However, Porter gets himself in deep literary doo-doo when he begins to speculate about everyone Bogart supposedly slept with, and the reader can almost feel the book's theme derail as Porter plays a "can you top this" game with himself. If Bogart were truly the rake Porter makes him out to be, one wonders how he ever found time to act.

Porter cites the notes on Bogart's life by Bogart's friend and fellow actor Kenneth MacKenna and gossip columnist Stanley Haggart. Porter also depends on the testimony of such co-stars as Joan Blondell, Ruth Gordon, George Raft, Eric Linden and Mercedes de Acosta. The problem here is that the sources were well into the twilight of their years when interviewed and we don't know for sure whether they were working Porter to an extent or whether they had reached the age where legend becomes fact.

The use of a form of narrative usually found in a novel is also a hinderance, as neither Porter nor his sources could have been privy to the sort of intimate conversations he claims took place.

And finally, take into consideration the author's praise for Kenneth Anger, who brought back into vogue the sort of reporting one thought had died with the demise of "Confidential" magazine.

The book is a naughty pleasure, but in the final review, reader beware.

I knew this book would be more a work of fiction, then biography, but I thought the author might do something fun and creative with this, with a real sense of history. Well forget that. This book is long on gossip, no not gossip but bull sessions the author may of had with some of the folks that knew Bogart. And like most bull sessions have little to do with facts. Might of been better if the author had admitted he was just blowing smoke out his hind quarters and called his book "Lies about Bogie and other Tall Tales from the Jazz Age".

The tradition of the "roman a clef" has undergone a depressing and
alarming transformation in recent years. Originally, public figures could be
scandalously satirized in novels only if they were given fictional names
so as to avoid the penalties of slander. Much of the appeal of these books
was in guessing on whom the characters were based. In recent years Jacqueline
Susann and Jackie Collins have made fortunes with such as "Valley of the Dolls"
& "Hollywood Wives". Which is fine, becaue these are correctly presented
as fictional novels, and are taken as such.

However, we are now witnessing an increasing trend toward the "novelized biography",
with imagined conversations (what Thomas Jefferson said to Sally Hemmings),
and what each person was thinking. In other words: The authors' inventions.
Consequently, we learn more about the author's quirks
and points of view than we do about his subject.
And once on that slippery slope, there's no where to go but down.
And in this case that means the gutter.

Porter and his late companion (whom he credits with conceiving the idea for this book)
obviously spent many happy hours together, fantacizing about every possible sexual
combination and activity between their favorite Hollywood stars. Their obscession
with their male idols' anatomy (who was well endowed, or was not) is not only offensive,
it's absurdly monotonous (Darwin must have the most heavily thumbed-over copy of
Hollywood Babylon in existence).

Every actress is a former hooker, every actor a hustler,
and of course, EVERYONE is bi or gay (surprise! surprise!). Not content with
the "usual suspects" that one finds in
the daisy chain of Boze Hadleigh-Axel Madsen repetitions,
in Darwin's world EVERYBODY is at the party.
And since the quotes are his own creation, they all
talk like little Darwin before his mother
washed his mouth out with lysol.
Literally, every voice (the book is 80 per cent dialogue)
is the same. BOR-ING!

You may ask: Why hasn't he been challenged by the families
of the scores of people whose reputations he has damaged?
It's because they don't want to draw attention to this trash,
which sadly would only serve to increase its meager sales.

And for the record: No, I didn't waste my money on this book
(I wouldn't have it in my home if you gave it to me).
I forced myself to read it (that's my job) in the bookstore.

If you take my advice, you won't even want to do that!

This is perhaps the worst book ever written. Porter pretends to have written this book through thorough documentation (from interviews, tapes, etc...). Hilariously, not only is he privy to intimate conversations, he also claims to have the inside information on what people were thinking...and not in general terms. This book also contains some of the funniest (albeit filthiest) lines in the history of prose. It's zero stars for quality and 5 stars for enjoyability. Truly an anti-masterpiece that will live on for decades.

This was the most nasty, filthy book I have ever read. Well, I only read half of it and could not stomach any more. I recently removed it from my bookcase and shredded every single page. I ran the Bogart/Bacall fan club from 1946 to 1951, Bogie would have sued this author if he had written this before his death. For all Bogart fans....DO NOT BUY OR READ THIS TERRIBLE BOOK.

I will issue this caveat,I am hardly homophobic and a very liberal person to say the least,that said:This book can only be looked at as a joke.It would seem Mr.Porter needed to write out a gay fantasy where everyone beds eachother regarldess of sex,and our characters inhabit a world where every male is well endowed,and they all know this because they (as Mr.Porter writes time and again)"did the obligatory pecker check while standing at the urinal".As other reviews have stated,this book has phoney dialogue that the author could never have been privy to and no bibliography to back it up.It's a bad game of sexual telephone at best,to be looked at as historical fiction for the Tom of Finland crowd.At worst,it's a lousy attempt to cash in on Bogart and the nostalgia of his day.It is no wonder no big publisher picked this up.And that not being for a lack of couth on the major publishers part,it is just that even if Mr.Porters claims could be backed up his juvenile prose still sinks this ungodly tome.Enjoy!!!!!!!

That this trash is a hideous pack of lies is a given. Did it ever occur to this Porter imbecile that all the dead people he delights in lewdly slandering have descendents? How does he think THEY feel? Such gutless, tasteless lying to sell a couple of books. His lies about the great Glenda Farrell border on criminal. THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!!

I was given this book as a birthday treat from a wonderful young man who is a friend of recent standing. He is to be commended for knowing the kind of thing I like and supplying it under conditions of complete surprise. But alas, I come to bury Darwin Porter's book not to praise it.

I can't believe, first all, that Porter thinks he is fulfilling the sacred wishes of Kenneth McKenna (d. 1962) to have the whole truth about Bogart published. Why would that be anybody's dream? That's just hogwash. If McKenna actually left diaries or journals or whatever, let's have them deposited in a place of public record, a university or industry library, for all to read. Porter then says that he supplemented the information McKenna left with him, with a series of interviews with Joan Blondell, John Springer, Shirley Booth, Ruth Gordon, Louise Brooks, and Mae West, needless to say, not one of his sources is alive. He makes the often maligned Boze Hadleigh seem like he has the journalistic integrity of David Halberstam.

I am curious about George O'Brien and the care with which he polished, lubed and prettified his amazing, maneating orifice. Also the story of "Big Bill" Tilden having his way with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., when the latter was only 13. Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction, but we're in Never Never Land here.

I find myself having to agree with readers giving this book negative reviews.

I say this not out of mere loyalty to Bogart. I say it because the narrative just doesn't seem credible. Time and again, long stretches of stilted, self-aware dialogue are attributed to people early in their lives who couldn't possibly have had their thoughts recorded in such involved detail. Give it a look, but within 50 pages this reader felt that the book's truths were being drowned in outrageous fabrications that quickly became tiresome and boring.

Another indication that this bizarre diversion needed an author and editor worthy of their salt is the surprising number of amateurish misspellings, punctuation and grammatical errors.

A real disappointment, because this is an actor about whom I'd like to learn more.