Actor Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) cultivated a tough-guy image, but when he got together with director John Huston (1906-1987), Bogie was like a kid brother to the rascally younger man, and like brothers, they squabbled. Nat Segaloff explores the pair's enduring alliance in the well-considered Bogart and Huston.
After devoting a biographical chapter to each man, Segaloff examines their six collaborations, working chronologically from 1941's The Maltese Falcon ("the first 'Bogart picture' that was truly a 'Bogart picture' ") to 1953's Beat the Devil ("unquestionably an acquired taste"). Segaloff, whose previous books about Hollywood include Mr. Huston/Mr. North, identifies some commonalities among the six movies (they "broke molds and showed the way for maturity, boldness, and moral complexity"), but his true interest is Bogie and Huston's personal relationship.
Both men liked to drink (Segaloff's bottomless research finds his subjects resolving one heated conflict over scotch), and both men leaned politically left (they protested the House Un-American Activities Committee's efforts to tank the careers of Hollywood's perceived Communist sympathizers). But they generally didn't fraternize unless they were doing a movie together, and sometimes not even then. Segaloff reports that when rain waylaid shooting The African Queen (1951), Huston went hunting, but not Bogart: he "was a homebody to whom Africa was an inconvenience." With authority spiked with wit, Bogart and Huston captures a noteworthy working friendship that served both men, not to mention the film-viewing public, well. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer