"Bogart was one of the best actors I worked with. He was a far cry from the actors of today, who are a little bit on the dilettante side... when I started working with him, I said, "Why don't you ever smile?" "Oh", he said, "I've got a bum lip." He had a lip that was badly cut up, and I think the nerves were cut. And I said, "Well, the other night when we got drunk you certainly were smiling and laughing a lot." He said, "Do you think I can?" And I said, "You'd better if you're gonna work with me . . ."
I had trouble the first day with him. I remember grabbing him by the lapels and pushed his head up against the wall, and said, "Look, Bogey. I'll tell you how to get tough, but don't get tough with me." He said, "I won't".
Everything was fine from that time on. He had had a couple of drinks at lunch, and that's what caused it. I stopped that.
As for Lauren Bacall, she had to keep practising [sic] for months to keep that low voice" -H Hawks. Source: www.reelclassics.com
Lauren Bacall in a publicity still for The Big Sleep, directed by Howard Hawks in 1946."She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full. She had a drink. She took a swallow from it and gave me a cool level stare over the rim of the glass". -Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
"On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again". -"The Big Sleep" (Raymond Chandler)
Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge, Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe and Peggy Knudsen as Mona Mars in "The Big Sleep""Truth and invention, real lives and fiction become indistinct and equal elements, merging with other people's work in the found-footage style, to create a single fabric of random spontaneous expressiveness, not unlike the life that slides by in front of a shop video camera. Each piece of film presents a clue to an inextricable tangle to which everything in the world is connected in its spider web of time, space and chance". — Excerpt from Serafino Murri, 'Chris Petit, Anatomies of the Image', in Afterall - A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, Issue 5, February 2002.
Martha Vickers as Carmen Sternwood in "The Big Sleep" (1946)"I've been called that by people of all sizes and shapes, including your little sister. She called me worse than that for not getting into bed with her. I got five hundred dollars from your father, which I didn't ask for, but he can afford to give it to me. I can get another thousand for finding Mr. Rusty Regan, if I could find him. Now you offer me fifteen grand. That makes me a big shot. With fifteen grand I could own a home and a new car and four suits of clothes. I might even take a vacation without worrying about losing a case. That's fine. What are you offering it to me for? Can I go on being a son of a bitch, or do I have to become a gentleman, like that lush that passed out in his car the other night?", "She was as silent as a stone woman". -Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
