Humphrey Bogart was born to Belmont Bogart and Maud Humphrey on Christmas Day, 1899 in New York City. The eldest child, his father came from a long line of Dutch New Yorkers, while his mother could trace her heritage back to the Mayflower.

Belmont was a surgeon, while Maud was a commercial illustrator and suffragette. Young Humphrey was sometimes the subject of her artwork—a detail that got him teased in school. Maud earned over fifty-thousand dollars per year at the peak of her career. They lived in an Upper West Side apartment, and had land on the Canandaigua Lake in upstate New York.

Bogart and his two younger sisters watched as their parents — both career-driven — frequently fought and rarely showed affection to them. His mother insisted they call her Maud. Bogart remembered her as straightforward and unsentimental.

Bogie inherited his father’s sarcastic and self-deprecating sense of humor, a fondness for the water, and an attraction to strong-willed women. He attended the prestigious Trinity School and later Phillips Academy. He dropped out of Phillips after one semester in 1918, deeply disappointing his parents.

Bogart enlisted in the Navy in the Spring of 1918, serving as a Boatswain's mate. He later recalled, "At eighteen, war was great stuff. Paris! Sexy French girls! Hot damn!" He left the service on June 18th, 1919 with a pristine record.

Bogart returned home to find his father’s health and wealth doing poorly. Bogart’s liberal ways also put him at odds with his family, so he joined the Coast Guard Reserve and worked as a shipper and bond salesman.

Unhappy with his choices, he got a job with William A. Brady’s World Films. He was stage manager for daughter Alice Brady’s production of A Ruined Lady. He made his stage debut a few months later as a butler in Alice’s 1921 production of Drifting. He had one line, and remembered delivering it nervously, but it began a working relationship that saw Bogart appear in several of her productions.

Bogart liked the hours actors kept and the attention they received. He was a man who loved the nightlife, enjoying trips to speakeasies. He later joked that he "was born to be indolent and this was the softest of rackets."

The man never took an acting lesson, preferring to learn on the job. He appeared in at least eighteen Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935, playing juveniles or romantic supporting roles, more in comedy than anything else.

While playing in Drifting at the Playhouse Theatre in 1922, he met actress Helen Menken. They married in May, 1926. They divorced eighteen months later, but remained friends. In April 1928, he married actress Mary Philips. Both women cited that Bogart cared more about his career than marriage.

Broadway productions dropped off after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Many actors were heading for Hollywood. Bogart debuted on film with Helen Hayes in The Dancing Town.

He signed a contract with The Fox Film Corporation for seven-hundred-fifty dollars per-week. There he met Spencer Tracey. They became close friends.

Tracy made his feature film debut in his only movie with Bogart, John Ford’s early sound film Up The River, from 1930. They played inmates. Bogart next appeared opposite Bette Davis and Sidney Fox in Bad Sister.

Shuffling back and forth between Hollywood and New York and out of work for long periods, his father died in 1934.

That year, Bogart starred in the Broadway play Invitation to a Murder. During rehearsal producer Arthur Hopkins heard the play from offstage and sent for Bogart, offering him the role of a lifetime. He cast Bogart as escaped murderer Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood's The Petrified Forest.