Tough Without A Gun: Exploring Humphrey Bogart’s Hollywood Legacy

Stefan Kanfer’s new biography about Humphrey Bogart, Tough Without a Gun, has led film fans and critics to reflect on the life and legacy of the Hollywood legend. “Bogie” passed away in 1957, but he’s left behind an indelible mark on Tinseltown; some say no star will ever achieve the  level of success that Bogart did. What was it about the actor that made him such a force?

Why is Bogart so special? “How did an actor who was limited to embodying the particular stresses of America in depression and war become inimitable—and immortal?” asks Alyssa Rosenberg at The Atlantic. Maybe “the kind of masculinity Bogart represents is simply unreproducible”? But why is that? Kanfer’s book doesn’t resolve this “enigma of moviegoing,” and leaves me still to wonder “why do we continue to need Humphrey Bogart?”

He gave all of himself: “Now we have fine leading men such as George Clooney and Brad Pitt but there’s something generic about them, no wounds, no despising death in the manner of Bogie in Casablanca,” says Henry Allen in The Wall Street Journal. We’ve seen stars rise up in the 50 years since, but “the post-Bogart guys have so little personal identity that stage impressionists can’t even imitate them.” Even if Bogart fell prey to some vices in his later years, “his best side still drives American psyches.”

He hit at the right time: “Bogart was the unlikeliest of movie stars,” says Saul Austerlitz in The Boston Globe. “As Kanfer notes, Bogart was the right star for the right moment” who “came to serve as the ideal hero for the era of noir: hard-bitten, wise to the world’s evils, but with a sneaky sense of justice and moral order.” Bogart set the tone for a type of character, and actor, we often see today. “He is every bit as diffident and as gruff as any 2010 antihero, and yet his prickly dignity marks him as a timeless American icon.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.