He was the ultimate love icon onscreen and married to four women in real life but Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart feared that he was gay, claims a new biography.
The actor was uncertain about his sexuality, which almost drove him to suicide, claims author Darwin Porter, a journalist who worked in Hollywood in the 1960s. The Casablanca star started having doubts that he might be gay during his second marriage to American stage and film actress Mary Philips, the Daily Mail reported. Porter says Philips insisted on openly maintaining her previous relationships, even spending the night before their marriage in 1928 with a friend of Bogart’s “as a farewell gift”. The actor, whose conquests included names like Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich and Ingrid Bergman, is said to have confessed to another confidante to thoughts of killing himself.
“But I never get beyond the thinking stage. I just can’t see myself taking a razor to my throat,” Bogart reportedly said. The book Humphrey Bogart: the Making of a Legend, due out in October, is based on unpublished memoirs and interviews with some of the actor’s contemporaries. In his book, Porter suggests that the actor’s mental turmoil stemmed from his childhood.