page_title: Humphrey Bogart
section_title: The African Queen
hierarchical_section_title: Humphrey Bogart / Later career / The African Queen
caption_attribution_description: Publicity still for the 1951 film The African Queen, featuring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. The colour blanace here has been slightly changed from the original (which can be seen by clicking the source link below).
context_page_description: Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American film and stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart as the greatest male star of classic American cinema.
  Bogart began acting in Broadway shows, beginning his career in motion pictures with Up the River for Fox. Bogart appeared in supporting roles for the next decade, sometimes portraying gangsters. Bogart was praised for his work as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, but remained secondary to other actors Warner Bros. cast in lead roles.
  His breakthrough from supporting roles to stardom came with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, considered one of the first great noir films. Bogart's private detectives, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, became the models for detectives in other noir films. His most significant romantic lead role was with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, which earned him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
context_section_description: Outside Santana Productions, Bogart starred with Katharine Hepburn in the John Huston-directed The African Queen in 1951. The C. S. Forester novel on which it was based was overlooked and left undeveloped for 15 years, until producer Sam Spiegel and Huston bought the rights. Spiegel sent Katharine Hepburn the book; she suggested Bogart for the male lead, believing that "he was the only man who could have played that part". Huston's love of adventure, his deep, longstanding friendship (and success) with Bogart, and the chance to work with Hepburn convinced the actor to leave Hollywood for a difficult shoot on location in the Belgian Congo. Bogart was to get 30 percent of the profits and Hepburn 10 percent, plus a relatively-small salary for both. The stars met in London, and announced that they would work together.
  Bacall came for the over-four-month duration, leaving their young son in Los Angeles. The Bogarts began the trip with a junket through Europe, including a visit with Pope Pius XII. Bacall later made herself useful as a cook, nurse and clothes washer; her husband said: "I don't know what we'd have done without her. She Luxed my undies in darkest Africa." Nearly everyone in the cast developed dysentery except Bogart and Huston, who subsisted on canned food and alcohol; Bogart said, "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whisky. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." Hepburn (a teetotaler) fared worse in the difficult conditions, losing weight and at one point becoming very ill. Bogart resisted Huston's insistence on using real leeches in a key scene where Charlie has to drag his steam launch through an infested marsh, and reasonable fakes were employed. The crew overcame illness, army-ant infestations, leaky boats, poor food, attacking hippos, poor water filters, extreme heat, isolation, and a boat fire to complete the film. Despite the discomfort of jumping from the boat into swamps, rivers and marshes, The African Queen apparently rekindled Bogart's early love of boats; when he returned to California, he bought a classic mahogany Hacker-Craft runabout which he kept until his death.
  His performance as cantankerous skipper Charlie Allnutt earned Bogart an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1951 (his only award of three nominations), and he considered it the best of his film career. Promising friends that if he won his speech would break the convention of thanking everyone in sight, Bogart advised Claire Trevor when she was nominated for Key Largo to "just say you did it all yourself and don't thank anyone". When Bogart won, however, he said: "It's a long way from the Belgian Congo to the stage of this theatre. It's nicer to be here. Thank you very much ... No one does it alone. As in tennis, you need a good opponent or partner to bring out the best in you. John and Katie helped me to be where I am now." Despite the award and its accompanying recognition, Bogart later said: "The way to survive an Oscar is never to try to win another one ... too many stars ... win it and then figure they have to top themselves ... they become afraid to take chances. The result: A lot of dull performances in dull pictures." The African Queen was Bogart's first starring Technicolor role.
caption: With Katharine Hepburn in a publicity photo for The African Queen
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