Bogie & Bacall by William J. Mann

Author:William J. Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN-YEAR-OLD PENNY SCHETTLER WAS AWAKENED BY VOICES COMING FROM downstairs. Tiptoeing out of bed and sitting on the stairs, she couldn’t quite believe what she saw in her family’s modest living room. “My mother and father sat talking with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall,” she remembered. She knew that they were “very important people, Hollywood movie stars,” but what were they doing in her living room in the little town of Mansfield, Ohio? Penny’s father, Herbert Schettler, was a municipal court judge. As it turned out, he was talking with Bogart and Bacall about their wedding, asking for their input on the script he would read. To the little girl, the celebrities seemed ordinary. “I remember thinking that Bogart was awfully short to be a movie star,” she said years later. “Bacall appeared to be much taller.” She was also struck by how much older Bogart was than his bride-to-be. “He was the same age as my father,” Penny said. In terms of looks, she didn’t think he came anywhere near Bacall’s level.

At high noon on the warm, clear afternoon of May 21, 1945, Betty, wearing a simple wool dress of rose beige, a brown scarf, and brown suede pumps, with a short, irregular peplum below her waist, descended a red-carpeted staircase into the main hall of Louis Bromfield’s Malabar Farm. The strains of Lohengrin’s “Wedding March” lilted up from a piano below. Betty and Bogie had chosen to hold the ceremony at Bromfield’s farm to avoid a media circus. Still, dozens of newsmen had descended on the bucolic town, some of them sneaking onto the property and some circling in low-flying planes overhead.

Still, inside the house, all was serene, even though Betty had been a bundle of nerves before she started her descent. Bromfield served as Bogie’s best man. His secretary, George Hawkins, gave Betty away, accompanying her down the stairs and across an enormous tiger rug in the center of the room. Natalie was waiting there, trying to hold back tears.

Just why Charlie Weinstein, whom Betty considered to be a father figure, did not give her away is curious. For that matter, it wasn’t Jack Bacal, either, despite how much he’d done for his niece’s career. Neither of them was present at the wedding. Growing up, Betty’s uncles had always been there for her, financially supporting her and encouraging her dreams. When Franklin Street had closed before making it to Broadway, Charlie had sent a rhyme to console Betty: “Don’t be disheartened, you’ve only just started. I can see from afar, you will be a star.” But now she was a star, and Charlie was missing from her crowning moment.

A wedding is an important ritual in Jewish culture; the absence of the bride’s closest male relatives would have been noticed. Perhaps business kept the two lawyers from making the trip to Ohio. Perhaps they weren’t happy that the ceremony was secular, presided over by a Christian judge. (Charlie’s own Gentile wife had converted to Judaism.) But there may have been other reasons, too.

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