There is just something so blissfully beautiful about this - my two all-time-favorite Old Hollywood genius actors, together at last, in a truly off-the-cuff moment. Betty comes charging in at the wrong time, quickly realizes her mistake and darts off-camera again. Then she and Bogie come out to ask the director what they're supposed to be doing. It only lasts a minute, and I've slowed it down to make it last longer. . . but oh, is Bogie gorgeous in this, as is Bette the natural firebrand beauty, just so casually blazing. Charisma streams off these two, yet strangely enough, they do not cancel each other out. I don't think they ever starred as a romantic couple - I think this was Dark Victory, in which Bogart only played a minor role. But who cares? Having them in the same UNIVERSE together is magical, powerful and special. No one lives to equal them, but I am grateful that they "were" - and, even better than that, we have a record.
Showing posts with label Humphrey Bogart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humphrey Bogart. Show all posts
Sunday, June 6, 2021
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Cigarette psychology
There was a time (think Mad Men) when smoking was so entrenched in culture as to be expected, even required. A non-smoker was a social pariah, an oddball who lived on wheat germ and drank only celery tonic. Maybe he belonged to the Oddfellows (whatever that is). Old movies abound with cigarette symbolism, usually sexual in nature. It's all part of the art of seduction. Think Bette Davis and Paul Henreid blowing smoke in each other's faces.
Nobody mentions coughing your lungs out in a cancer ward.
The following little slice of post-war wisdom came from one of those oddity sites, so I felt free to borrow it. No doubt they did, too. Let's zero in on it some more. . .
Even without reading the text, we can already see that hand position is paramount, even if the meaning isn't crystal-clear. The middle position is kind of baffling to me. I've never in my life seen anyone hold a cigarette like that. It's positively weaponlike. Is it meant as a sort of ash catapult, or an enemy smoke-wafter?
All of these photos remind me of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, for some reason. He was constantly smoking in that one, just as EVERYONE was constantly smoking (and drinking). In every picture he made, the cigarette was his signature. But we all know how it ended. One might say that it cost him a lot.
Here the good doctor goes into detail about how smoking style reveals a man's personality. Man's. Not woman's:
OK then. So where do I start? For one thing, that Dr. Neutra thing is suspicious to me. I think of Mr. Neutron in Monty Python. . .
. . . and of course the words neutral and neuter. And a nutria, which is a kind of large beaverlike rodent made into coats (and other things).
But the reason women's smoking gestures aren't considered significant is obvious to Dr. Neutron (or whoever he is): "Women are so affected naturally in their regular posture that they're more often than not too conscious of how they hold a cigarette, and therefore useless as subjects for this experiment."
Useless? Affected? I can think of something to do with my cigarette. Dr. Neutron: sit on this and rotate!
But there's more of this shit to trudge through:
Note that the descriptions of women are devastating, even abusive, whereas he goes fairly easy on the men. If they put on airs, they're not "affected" but "sort of the Texas millionaire type". It's obvious the vast majority of the adjectives to describe men are positive (intellectual, brainy, contemplative, direct, straight-forward, hail fellow well-met, daring, calculating, dreamer, replete with business caution). As for women, any analysis is "just a guess" because they are so "affected": "insecure, afraid to lose that cigarette" (? They come in packs, don't they?). "She probably holds on to her man like glue." Greedy, graspy, possessive! But the next one is worse: "Typical grasp of a female bored with her date. She has to concentrate on the tip to keep from yawning." One has to wonder if this Dr. Neutron has a filthy Freudian mind and sees prick-symbols everywhere he looks.
Is this whole thing a joke, a bit of satire to send up people's smoking habits? I think not! I believe it's drenched with misogyny and contempt for women, and trivializes everything about them.
So what is the conclusion? While you're busy rotting your lungs and throat with terminal cancer, boys, make sure you hold your cigarette in the proper way. Cultivate it for a good impression. Grasp it properly so that the tip is sticking straight up. And good luck in the heart-and-lung ward.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Smoking fish
It's the Humphrey Bogart of the fish plaque world. And whatever did happen to all the fish plaques? You know, those singing fish. I still have a singing lobster, but it may be the only one left. It's a non-smoker.
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Thursday, April 10, 2014
Charisma to burn
I would have to call these two my favorites from Old Hollywood. They acted the stuffings out of a part while keeping it real. And they were gorgeous: the camera ate them up.
Both of them smoked too much, but Bogie fell far sooner, in an awful sort of way, consumed. He kept smoking even after contracting fatal throat cancer. Perhaps it was a "what the hell, it's coming anyway" thing. Somehow Bette was tougher, but cancer devoured her too, eventually, until she was an unrecognizable wraith.
Our heroes flare briefly. It's always brief, when you think about it. Each of us climbs only a tiny segment of the wall (just like Harold and his fake aerial sets in Safety Last). It's hard to put any of it together. I once had the thought that if you kept going back and back, and back and back and back, through the thousands and mega-thousands and millions and billions of ancestors that spread out exponentially behind you, you would eventually reach the first cell of life that winked on out of nothingness.
We all go back to the primordial ooze. There goes the neighborhood.
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