Who was Humphrey Bogart? New documentary looks at the man behind the legend

Today's nepo babies typically have one parent to thank for their reflected glory. But how about if both Dad and Mom happen to be among the most famous actors in Hollywood history?

That's the case for Stephen Humphrey Bogart, 75, a retired television producer who got his name and pebble-tumbled voice from his legendary father and his hooded almond-shaped eyes from his mother, Lauren Bacall. Initially, that Bogie and Bacall parentage was something their son avoided.

"It's mind-boggling to me still that I'm the kid of these two people, maybe among the top famous couples of the 20th century," says Bogart while promoting a new documentary about his father, "Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes" (available now for home viewing from Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and other on-demand platforms).

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Did he ever think about acting himself, given those thespian genes?

Bogart just laughs. "I tried in high school, but I was horrible," he says. "I hated acting, I just didn't like being someone else. And then, well, how could I go there, really? OK, so now I'm doing that and people are going to compare me to Humphrey Bogart? That's not going to work."

In fact, for a while Bogart actively shunned his high-profile heritage.

"I didn't want my name to be the focus of things," says Bogart, whose sister, Leslie, was born three years after him. "When my father died (at age 57 in 1957), and I was 8, we moved to England for a bit and then to a small town in Connecticut, and nobody cared who you were there. That was important to me."

Who was Humphrey Bogart?

In adulthood, the scion started to embrace his father's legacy. He even wrote a book about it (1995's "Bogart: In Search of My Father") and served as a consultant to the documentary's director, Kathryn Ferguson ("Nothing Compares").

"What I didn't want this to be was just some treatise on my father's biggest movies," he says, a list that includes "Casablanca," "The Maltese Falcon," "The Big Sleep" and "The African Queen."

Instead, "Bogart" closely examines the various women in the actor's life (he married three times before meeting Bacall, who was 19 when they filmed "To Have and Have Not") and their impact on his career.

The actor's son gives credit to Bogart's third wife, actress Mayo Methot, with whom the star had legendary fights but who also led him to some of his biggest roles.

"My father's career is a bit of a mystery, where it all came from and the genesis of it all," he says. "No question these women in his life affected his career in different ways, and I think Mayo was in many ways more important than my mother, even if my mother proved later to be a sustaining factor for him. But pushing him into roles like 'Casablanca,' that was Mayo."

Which movie made Humphrey Bogart a star?

If there was a turning point in Bogart's screen career, that came in "The Petrified Forest" (1936). At that point, Bogart, the son of a talented New York illustrator mother and surgeon father, had spent a dozen years playing largely forgettable parts on Broadway and in movies. But his grizzled, hard-boiled performance would essentially set the Bogart mold for the next two decades.

That tough persona wasn't especially different from the man that the younger Bogart recalls.

"I don't have a lot of memories of him, no, I kind of remember snippets," he says softly. "There's no, 'Oh, remember when we did this together' stuff. It's very weird. When I see him on film, I don't really think, 'Oh, there's my father.' He just wasn't around much when he was alive. He'd go to work at the studio, then come home and want to have dinner with my mother. He felt kids were to be seen and not heard. And on the weekend, he'd go off on his beloved boat and sail."

Bogart's boat, the Santana, was in fact a refuge for the actor as his celebrity mushroomed. "Bogart" makes clear that the solitude afforded by the sea was a salve for the flashbulbs and constant demands that faced him on land.

Did Humphrey Bogart ever win an Oscar?

His fame brought him Hollywood's highest honors. He was nominated as best actor three times ("Casablanca," "The Caine Mutiny" and "The African Queen") and won for "Queen" in 1952. But the limelight dimmed as heath issues surfaced. Bogart died relatively young of esophageal cancer, the result of a lifetime of smoking and drinking. Bacall would later remarry, to actor Jason Robards, and have another child, son Sam Robards. And life simply went on.

An inevitable final question looms. What is the favorite Humphrey Bogart movie of Humphrey Bogart's son?

Bogart rolls his eyes theatrically. At first he resists, then relents.

"That has to be 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,' " he says of the 1948 film made by Bogart's good friend, director John Huston.

"He wasn't going to do it at first. But John was his friend, and John's father (Walter Huston) was going to be in it, so he said yes," Bogart says. "And then John and Walter both won Oscars for it," for best director and screenplay, and supporting actor respectively.

He pauses. Then states the obvious.

"It's great," Bogart says. "But he made so many great movies."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Bogart' explores rise of one of Hollywood's most enduring stars