The front page NYT obit lead off with a picture of Bogey and Bacall from 1946. Most movies have memorable lines, but Bogart and Bacall's sentences could enter a greatest lines movie compendium. Maybe they already have.
A whole paragraph of Enid Nemy's obituary carries the dialog between "Slim," Bacall's character, and Steve, Bogart's character. It has to do with what it takes to hail a cab. Or a woman, it seems.
The dialog is from her first movie with Bogart in 1944, 'To Have and Have Not.' The plot concerns resistance fighter smuggling, boats, a night club, and Bogart as a bit of an angel of mercy. Slim likes the adventure.
The movie is a classic based on the era and its stars. But, like most good movies, there's more dialog than what everyone imitates at a bar or party. Or, quotes.
Take the scene where Bogart plays a medical professional and removes a bullet from Paul de Bursac, a resistance fighter who was shot as Bogart was trying to get him out of the area in a boat. He does this of course while wearing the standard nautical cap of a pleasure boat captain. He does wash his hands first and sterilize the instruments the best he can.
Humphrey Bogart's father was a surgeon on the East Side of Manhattan, so naturally his character should have some medical expertise. A typical movie bullet removal ensues with the patient out cold, shoulder slit open a bit, and tweezer/pliers used to grope for the bullet, grab it and pull it out. The bullet is always held up by the extractor as a trophy of their work, and clinks into a metal tray.
Loss of blood is inevitable, and there is no chance of a transfusion in the cellar hovel where all this is going in: the basement of the nightclub hotel where Slim sings and Bogie sleeps. Paul's wife, Helene storms in to space and insists she must watch what's being done to her husband. You can tell Bogart doesn't think dames should be watching, but he's got no choice, since he's already scrubbed up and got a probe in Paul's shoulder.
Well. Bogie's right, because one look at what's going on and Helene faints dead away and collapses on the floor. (Good thing she's not around to view the new series 'The Knick' on Cinemax. She'd lose consciousness for a week.)
Bogie continues, attends to his patient and insures everything will be all right after the ritual rest is acquired and the patient is not moved for a while. Any appearance of a subsequent fever must be reacted to.
Bogie, being gallant, picks up the fainted dame with two hands in front of him and carries her into the outer room of the cellar. By this point in the movie, Bacall's character Slim has set her sights on Bogie, and another woman who is a damsel in distress is not to be trusted.
So, as Slim comes out of the room where the bullet was removed, she sees Bogie carrying the unconscious Helene to be stretched out and made as comfortable as possible.
The cat in the woman comes out, and with a simple sentence, she asks Bogie, "what are you trying to do, guess her weight."
Lauren Bacall was 19 when she made that movie with Bogart, and she married him as soon as he got a divorce from his third wife, Mayo Methot. She was 25 years younger than Bogart, but who wouldn't know what they wanted?
Ms. Bacall was born in Brooklyn; Bogart was born in Manhattan. Bacall was already a top model when she made the movie. She hadn't lead a sheltered life and by then was worldly enough to know about men.
I have to think that even if they hadn't met on a movie set, with her New York savvy and his movie persona, they would have met somewhere else and still ignited.
He had to marry her. Anyone would have wanted to marry her. She was a New York smart-ass. And very good looking.
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