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Humphrey Bogart Gambling? More Like Drinking!

Seven years before he died in 1957 at the early age of 57, this famous acting legend boldly stated how to solve the world's problems. With three daily alcoholic beverages. Bogart's take was that there would be no need for a United Nations if everybody in the world would have three alcoholic drinks a day. Everybody would loosen up, government stand-offs would be a thing of the past and everybody would become buddy buddy. Was Humphrey Bogart gambling with his public image making such a statement? Not at all. He would controversially live his life his way, knowing that it was easier to be totally transparent than to pretend to be someone else. Heck, you save that for the movies, it's not the way you handle the press! Interestingly enough, Bogart didn't trust anyone who wouldn't drink. He would say as a result they would be incapable of expressing their true self and so you could never really get to know them.

The young Humphrey Bogart had acquired his penchant for alcohol from his parents. He had bad behavior as a teenager heading into his twenties. Manhattan's Jazz Age Nightlife was where it was at, and in spite of prohibition, booze was easy to get your hands on, and if he didn't have enough money to pay, he would run up a tab at one of a dozen, bars and clubs he would frequent. He had finally found a steady job as an office boy at a theatrical office owned by William Brady and became good friends with his son Bill Brady Jnr. and the two would drink their way through till dawn. Humphrey Bogart gambling his job was safe.

This was a feature that echoed through Bogart's entire life, his love of drinking. It would be no surprise having caught the acting bug from his early years at Brady's theatrical office & playing a few minor roles his first marriage would be to established Broadway actress Helen Menken in 1926. After only a year they divorced, Bogart now stepped up his drinking. He now knew what he really needed in a wife, someone who could keep pace with him and his lifestyle. Two further wives were to follow another established actress Mary Phillips a huge drinker, followed by yet another drinking actress whom he met in Hollywood Mayo Methot whom he wed in 1938.

In 1945, whilst filming "To Have and to Have Not", Bogart was to meet wife number 4, a nineteen year old called Lauren Bacall. For such a young girl, although not into his life style she willingly let him be happy as only he knew. Mothers ruin, the drink may have cursed her predecessors, but with Lauren, he finally met the special gal, he had been forever seeking.