The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart: The Early Years (1899-1931)

This biography shatters myths with a controversial closeup of Bogart at the debut of his career, pre-Casablanca, pre-Bacall, and pre-African Queen, revealing for the first time what was under the trench coat of history's most famous male movie star. Focusing on those mysterious early years when Bogart, like dozens of other American actors, was making the transition from Broadway to the early Talkies in Hollywood, it's loaded with anecdotes and insights about those wild, Pre-Code days in anything goes Hollywood that required years of research to uncover. Darwin Porter uncovers scandals within the entertainment industry of the 1920s and 1930s, when publicists from the movie studios deliberately twisted and suppressed inconvenient details about the lives of their emerging stars.--Turner Classic Movie News. Exceptionally well-written.--Hollywood Inside. London's Mail On Sunday published extensive excerpts of this title, referring to it as one of the best insights into the entertainment industry of the Jazz Age ever written.