How Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall Made Their Romance Work

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s 12-year marriage was passionate, yet challenging. Still, the Hollywood power couple remained married until Humphrey died in 1957. The couple’s only son, Stephen Humphrey Bogart, is opening up about what his parent’s relationship taught him about love — and how to make it work.

“I think loyalty. I think talking. You gotta talk to each other and you have to respect each other. You have to have each other’s back,” Stephen, 75, told Us Weekly in an exclusive interview tied to the recently released documentary Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes. “And humor, if there’s no humor in a relationship, then it’s not gonna work — you gotta laugh.”

Bacall and Humphrey met and fell in love in 1943 while filming To Have and Have Not. At the time, Bacall was 19 years old, while Humphrey was two decades older and married to another woman, Mayo Methot. Despite their differences, the pair began dating while Humphrey waited to finalize his divorce. Later, in 1945, the pair married, before going on to star in multiple films together, including The Big Sleep, Key Largo and Two Guys from Milwaukee. The couple shared two children, Stephen in 1949 and Leslie Howard Bogart in 1952.

Stephen said he “really didn’t know” his father when he was alive — his dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer when he was 7 years old and died when he was 8.

“He was a reluctant father,” Stephen said. “When I was born, he didn’t want to have kids. He wanted my mother to be his only, and kids were gonna kind of get in the way maybe.”

Stephen continued to explain what he remembered about his family’s dynamic,“This is what his day would be: He would go to work, come home. Back in the ‘50s, kids were to be seen and not heard. So the edict would be I would have dinner before he came home so he could have dinner with my mother. And maybe we’d sit there for half an hour or something like that.”

Even though the couple’s love was strong, they experienced their fair share of struggles. According to the book Bogie & Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood’s Greatest Love Affair, Bacall allegedly had an emotional affair with United States politician and presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. The author, William J. Mann also alleged that Humphrey also had an affair with wigmaker Verita Thompson, which reportedly began before he met Bacall. Despite their purported entanglements, the couple’s marriage held firm — Bacall was by his side and took care of Humphrey after the actor was diagnosed with ​​Esophageal Cancer and until the end of his life.

Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes explores the women in Humphrey’s life and how those relationships affected his career. For Stephen, “the whole film was surprising” and “so nuanced” because — except for his mom — he wasn’t aware of the details surrounding his dad’s previous relationships. Stephen says he was specifically unaware of Humphrey’s three other ex-wives, Helen Menken, Mary Philips and Methot.

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“[I hadn’t thought] about Helen. [Humphrey] was a stagehand. And how often does a superstar end up with a stagehand?” Stephen said. “He wanted to go to Hollywood and he went to Hollywood and he met Mary. And he met and he brought her out to Hollywood. I think he really loved Mary. And he wanted her to stay, but she wanted to go back to Broadway.” He further explained, “Then Mayo kind of came on and took over his career. And for some reason with her, his career just went skyward.”

As for Stephen’s love life, the lessons of loyalty, respect and humor he’s learned from his parent’s relationship helped him form a lasting relationship of his own — he’s been happily married to Carla Soviero since 2014.

Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes will be available to stream on all major services on December 9.