Free Bogart by Stephen Humphrey Bogart Page B

limo. As I climbed from the car I heard a woman say, “That’s his son.” I wanted to punch her. I felt as if I was being forced to perform. I was being thrust into the spotlight, which is not where an eight-year-old who has just lost his father wants to be.
    Mother led us into the church. Huston stayed close, as if he could somehow protect us from the fans.
    In addition to the bereaved fans on the street, eight hundred of Bogie’s Hollywood friends and associates had come to attend the service. The fans had come, of course, not just to say good-bye to Bogie, but to gawk at the movie stars who would be there. Gary Cooper came, and so did Charles Boyer, Dick Powell, Tony Martin, Gregory Peck, Marlene Dietrich, Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Danny Kaye, and of course Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. (Frank Sinatra wanted to come to Dad’s funeral, of course, but if he had, it would have created great hardship for the club where he was performing in New York. My mother told him it was okay to stay in New York.)
    We moved slowly down to the front of the church and took a pew. All eyes were on us, probably my mother mostly, but I felt as if they were all watching me. I remember that the priest, a man named Kermit Castellanos, who everyone called K.C., talked for a while about my father.
    Then John Huston spoke. He was such a big, impressive- looking man and he had an incredible voice. He gave the eu logy, though I didn’t yet know that word. I’ve since learned that Huston was actually my mother’s second choice. She had first asked Spencer Tracy, but Tracy was so devastated by Bo gie’s death that he told my mother he was afraid he could not speak about his friend without falling apart.
    There was no body at my father’s funeral service. Bogie had expressed his wishes to my mother long before, at the fu neral of his friend Mark Hellinger.
    “Once you’re gone, you’re gone,” he said. “I hate funerals. They aren’t for the one who’s dead, but for the ones who are left and enjoy mourning. When I die I want no funeral. Cremation, which is clean and final, and my ashes strewn over the Pacific. My friends can raise a glass and exchange stories about me if they like. No mourning, I don’t believe in it. The Irish have the right idea, a wake.”
    Unfortunately, when Jess Morgan, who was then the young associate of my father’s business manager, Morgan Maree, went to make arrangements for the cremation he was told that such a scattering was illegal. My mother was very up set. She had wanted Bogie to go back to the sea, which he loved. So Dad was cremated. Mother had arranged for the cremation to take place at the same time as the service, and after the service the ashes were placed in an urn in the Gar dens of Memory at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Included with the ashes was the gold whistle my mother had used in their first film together, To Have and Have Not. On the whistle were in scribed the initials B & B —Bogie and Baby. And at 12:30 that day, a moment of silence was observed at both Warner Broth ers and Twentieth Century-Fox.
    Most of that day I’ve forgotten. They played music. I know now that it was from the works of Bach and Debussy, Bogie’s favorite composers. Leslie and I kneeled when we were supposed to. I remember the crowds. I remember the familiar smell of magnolias, cut from our front yard, and the white roses that surrounded the altar. And on the altar there was Bogie’s treasured glass-encased model of the Santana. I remember thinking my father should be there to see it. But mostly I remember just being stunned by it all, being in a kind of daze.
    When it was over, people rose from the pews, began to mill around, shaking hands with old friends, clapping each other sympathetically on the back. I felt lost for a moment and then John Huston leaned down to me. He put his big hands gently on my shoulders and he whispered, “You know, Stephen, there are going to be many photographers out there trying to take