Free Bogart by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

“Why did you give him cancer? Why did you kill him? Why did you do this to me?” I am hysterical. My heart is broken.
    I scream until my throat hurts. Then I sob.
    “Stephen,” I hear.
    It is May, the big black woman who is our cook, and part of our family.
    “Stephen, what are you doing up there?” she asks. I stare down at her. I don’t answer.
    “Stephen,” she says softly.
    I understand that she is trying to make me feel better. I know that she is sad, too, because she knew my father for a long time. We stare at each other. She is crying, too.
    Finally, she says, “You be careful coming down, Stephen.” She walks back to the house, shaking her head.
    * * *

3
    I’ve lived with celebrities and with stars, great people, great direc tors, and I can tell you that the children always have to suffer. You just cannot live up to the reputation of a parent who becomes successful. To have to follow in those footsteps is a very big handicap.
    —SAM JAFFE
    The heaviest thing I have ever had to carry is my fa ther’s fame.
    Bogie’s reputation has often made normal conversation difficult. It has brought me attention that I didn’t want. And often it has deprived me of attention that I did want. It has made me sometimes distrustful of friendly people. It has, I am the first to admit, placed that big chip on my shoulder. It is a subject that, until now, I haven’t wanted to talk about. I am not the sole owner of this problem. I have talked to the sons and daughters of many celebrities, and always it is the same. The fame of the celebrity exerts some strange grav itational pull on the children, and makes it difficult for them to simply break free.
    Perhaps if I had been the son of some famous actor who fell from fame when the lights went out, it might not have been so bad. But I had the luck to be fathered by a man who became even more famous after he died. Humphrey Bogart, whether I like it or not, is our most enduring Hollywood legend. In 1993, Entertainment Weekly crowned Bogie the number-one movie legend of all time. (Number two, by the way, was his friend Katharine Hepburn.)
    So Bogie is very big stuff. And, as a consequence, I have gone through life accompanied by what I call “The Bogie Thing.” This is the big, red-lettered label that hangs from me. It doesn’t say “Steve.” It says, HUMPHREY BOGART’S SON.
    “Jack, I want you to meet my friend, Steve Bogart. He’s Humphrey Bogart’s son.”
    “No kidding? You’re really Bogie’s boy?”
    “Yes.”
    “God, I loved your father.”
    “Really?”
    “Oh yeah, my first date with my wife was when we went to see Sabrina. Bogie! Now there was a man’s man. God, this is so weird! Just the other night we rented The Maltese Falcon. That’s the one where he plays Sam Spade.”
    “Right.”
    “It’s really nice to meet you. Hey, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship. Get it, huh, a beautiful friendship?”
    “I get it.”
    “ Casablanca ! What a great movie.”
    I have had this conversation, or some version of it, more than a million times. At least it seems that way. This, of course, pisses me off.
    I deal with these encounters in many ways. Usually I am polite and patient. I know that people don’t mean to rob me of my identity. Besides, they are just meeting Bogart’s son once. They’re excited to have some connection to the screen legend. They’re not thinking about the fact that every day I have to listen to strangers tell me what a great guy my dad was.
    There are other times when I amuse myself to keep from getting angry. For example, one time a guy said to me, “Are you Humphrey Bogart’s son? I heard he had a son named Steve.”
    “He did,” I said.
    “And you’re him?”
    “No,” I said. “My parents named me after Humphrey Bogart’s son.”
    And many times I simply deny it.
    “Are you Humphrey Bogart’s son?”
    “No, but a lot of people ask me that.”
    Often, when I worked as a producer at ESPN and later at NBC