Humphrey Bogart's Favorite Liquor That He Often Drank On Set
His brooding, sarcastic quip in "Casablanca" (1942) may center around another liquor ("Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,"), but off-screen, Bogie was a scotch man through and through. Per the lore, Humphrey Bogart's final words were, "I should never have switched from scotch to Martinis." Whether or not the phrase was actually Bogart's last is the subject of some debate (according to historians, it's more likely that he uttered the line in the 1970s). Still, the lament adequately serves to weave scotch into its frontline position in the tapestry of the late Hollywood star's life.
Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) acquired a taste for scotch during his early 40s and might have initially picked it up after some coarse teasing from a drinking buddy. As recorded by "Bogart" biographers Ann Sperber and Eric Lax, per Scotch Whiskey, "For many years, Bogart in the course of an evening would mix Martinis with beer with Drambuie. Finally Hellinger told him that he was drinking 'like a kid.' Under such tutelage he switched almost exclusively to scotch." The conversion was more or less a permanent one. The actor is noted to have once waxed, "Scotch is a very valuable part of my life."
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Bogie Was On The Watch For Scotch
Famously quoth Bogart, "The problem with the world is, everyone in it is three drinks behind." Indeed, this was a prescription the actor followed zealously on an everyday basis. When shooting wrapped at 6:00 p.m. (a strict requirement of Bogart's), a scotch and water was promptly delivered to him on set by his hair stylist and longtime mistress Verita Peterson. According to agent Phil Gersh, Bogart's regular lunch order at Romanoff's, a Hollywood hangout in Beverly Hills, was French toast, a brandy, and two scotch and sodas. (Bogart was also a fellow regular at Alfred Hitchcock's favorite Hollywood restaurant, Chasen's.)
It's even rumored that Bogart evaded the wave of dysentery virus that swept the cast and crew of "The African Queen," which was filmed in Uganda in 1951, because he didn't drink the water there -- just whisky -- and ate only canned beans and vegetables. Then again, a few years later in 1956 while filming "The Barefoot Contessa," the actor joked that he only consumed scotch and minestrone during his time in Italy. While he was recovering from chest surgery at home during the same year, Bogart's wife allowed him one ounce of scotch topped with water and two ice cubes before lunch, and two more before dinner. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the figurehead of countless iconic oft-quoted one-liners had a fitting adage for this, too: "I gave up drinking once -- it was the worst afternoon of my life."
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