In BOGIE & BACALL, William J. Mann has mined the legend, lore and lasting, well-established facts concerning two storied icons of the big screen.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had careers that seemed shaky, even improbable, at the outset. Bogart, the product of aristocratic parents who endowed him with privilege but little love, was not the typical big handsome hero --- not, as Mann points out, the actor of choice for Westerns. But after a brief stint on Broadway and a few failed attempts, he proved himself in his portrayal of a creepy killer in The Petrified Forest. So his movie career escalated, seen as a guy who looks ordinary but has qualities good or evil that surprise and engage the watcher. Bacall was the child of Jewish parents who separated when she was five. Her striking looks landed her work as a clothes model in her teens and fostered her desire to become an actress.

"[Bogie and Bacall's] saga comprises a dual biography of remarkable range, a broad tapestry that shows the couple from seemingly all angles, and establishing Mann once again as a highly skilled literary cameraman."

Mann’s two protagonists met during the filming of To Have and Have Not, and their romantic affair came into full bloom before their work was done. Bogie, at 45, was married to a third wife and had developed a need to consume alcohol on a regular, sometimes self-destructive basis. Bacall was 18 and possibly secretly wanted the attention from an older man that she had missed out on in childhood. Whatever the motives, they were married, appeared in three more films together, and for 13 years maintained their attachment. They had a son and a daughter, and were still capable of tenderness despite the strife --- later recorded in Bacall’s memoir --- of Bogie’s alcohol problems and their individual cravings for stardom.

Bogart passed away in 1957. The scenes of his final days in the hospital, suffering from and yielding to cancer, indicate that Bacall rewarded him with the care and comfort he so lacked as a child, revealing her to be someone quite capable of bestowing unselfish love.

Mann has written about other greats of the screen realm --- Marlon Brando, Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand --- and here tackles the separate and paired reputations and realities of two more cinematic legends. Their saga comprises a dual biography of remarkable range, a broad tapestry that shows the couple from seemingly all angles, and establishing Mann once again as a highly skilled literary cameraman. The book is big and bursting with engaging fact, much of it centered on Bacall’s lengthy career, second marriage, and awards and recognition as she lived to near 90.

Mann avers in the Preface that he was fortunate to have access to newly released files about the couple, along with Bacall’s books about the stellar relationship that he insists --- and here seeks to prove --- was “Hollywood’s greatest love story.”