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| Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart: The Early Years (1899-1931) | 
 enlarge | Author: Darwin Porter
Publisher: Blood Moon Productions
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $4.52
You Save: $12.43 (73%)
New (21) Used (18) Collectible (1) from $4.29
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 532653
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0966803051
Dewey Decimal Number: 790
EAN: 9780966803051
ASIN: 0966803051
Publication Date: June 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Beaten to a Pulp Fiction September 10, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I stumbled upon this book with its extensive online excerpts while researching Eva Von Berne, a Viennese actress-model discovered by Irving Thalberg and Norma Shearer on their 1927 honeymoon. Miss Von Berne was brought to the U.S. and MGM publicists immediately began releasing press stories for fear they would repeat their earlier mistake of believing that little would become of another MGM import, Greta Garbo. But in this case the 17 year old Von Berne couldn't act and was slightly overweight (120 lbs.!) She was sent back to Europe on a boat where she made three more films before she passed away. The point being that she was only in the U.S. a short time, that it is unlikely that Thalberg would have been having sex with her on his honeymoon, and even less likely that Von Berne would have been around to commment on the Jean Harlow-Paul Bern nuptials since she died before the engagement was announced. Hollywood is FULL of people who like to trash stars - both dead and alive - and writers who believe these unreliable stories and use both the tellers of the tales and the dead celebrities to make money. This includes marginally more responsible writers who have axes to grind and want all stars to be ambisexual. I'm not suprised no one has sued him because doing so would give this book waaaaay more publicity than it deserves. Its a word version of the 1930's "Tijuana Bibles" that used the same content, only pictorially.
Skip this one unless you love the tabloids! June 20, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Totally agree with all the negative reviews about this book! I've gotten up to chapter 6, after about 2 weeks of reading, and I'm not sure I can go on. Porter barely talks about Bogie's early career except to say which costar he had his eye on. The detailed conversations included make me wonder if everyone in Hollywood was also wearing a wire besides sleeping with everyone. Even if this is based on part of the journals kept by MacKenna and others, no one I know writes in that much detail. Especially when they weren't there to witness the event in the first place. I'm torn between finishing this book to see if anything remotely interesting about Bogie's career is revealed, and my pride of always finishing a book I start, or just tossing it back onto the bookcase to await the next book drive at the YMCA. I wonder if it's took late to my money back? I feel dirty contributing my money to this kind of sleazy so-called biography. And to those who rated this 5 stars, did you copy your review straight from the book's back cover or the publisher's press release? If you're die hard fan of the supermarket tabloids and need some juicy gossip, filled with some soft core porn, then this book is for you. Otherwise, skip it!
Mean-spirited hogwash May 24, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
That this trash is a hideous pack of lies is a given. Did it ever occur to this Porter imbecile that all the dead people he delights in lewdly slandering have descendents? How does he think THEY feel? Such gutless, tasteless lying to sell a couple of books. His lies about the great Glenda Farrell border on criminal. THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!!
Barrel, Bottom Of February 21, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I was given this book as a birthday treat from a wonderful young man who is a friend of recent standing. He is to be commended for knowing the kind of thing I like and supplying it under conditions of complete surprise. But alas, I come to bury Darwin Porter's book not to praise it.
I can't believe, first all, that Porter thinks he is fulfilling the sacred wishes of Kenneth McKenna (d. 1962) to have the whole truth about Bogart published. Why would that be anybody's dream? That's just hogwash. If McKenna actually left diaries or journals or whatever, let's have them deposited in a place of public record, a university or industry library, for all to read. Porter then says that he supplemented the information McKenna left with him, with a series of interviews with Joan Blondell, John Springer, Shirley Booth, Ruth Gordon, Louise Brooks, and Mae West, needless to say, not one of his sources is alive. He makes the often maligned Boze Hadleigh seem like he has the journalistic integrity of David Halberstam.
I am curious about George O'Brien and the care with which he polished, lubed and prettified his amazing, maneating orifice. Also the story of "Big Bill" Tilden having his way with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., when the latter was only 13. Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction, but we're in Never Never Land here.
Laughable at best!!!! January 24, 2006
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I will issue this caveat,I am hardly homophobic and a very liberal person to say the least,that said:This book can only be looked at as a joke.It would seem Mr.Porter needed to write out a gay fantasy where everyone beds eachother regarldess of sex,and our characters inhabit a world where every male is well endowed,and they all know this because they (as Mr.Porter writes time and again)"did the obligatory pecker check while standing at the urinal".As other reviews have stated,this book has phoney dialogue that the author could never have been privy to and no bibliography to back it up.It's a bad game of sexual telephone at best,to be looked at as historical fiction for the Tom of Finland crowd.At worst,it's a lousy attempt to cash in on Bogart and the nostalgia of his day.It is no wonder no big publisher picked this up.And that not being for a lack of couth on the major publishers part,it is just that even if Mr.Porters claims could be backed up his juvenile prose still sinks this ungodly tome.Enjoy!!!!!!!
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