Why Humphrey Bogart was convinced his co-star was trying to kill him: “It was accidentally”
Everyone knows that it isn’t paranoia if they’re really out to get you, which left Humphrey Bogart convinced that a co-star whom he didn’t like anyway was purposely trying to murder him when they worked together for the first time.
Naturally, the alleged culprit denied that there was any malicious intent behind Bogie’s near-miss, but in a place like Hollywood where ego runs rampant and every major star believes there’s a target on their back, the ‘Golden Age’ icon refused to believe that it was anything other than a premeditated attempt on his life.
Accidents happen on set all the time, regardless of whether or not stringent safety measures are in place, and it’s not as if history is littered with one actor attempting to murder another in front of an entire cast and crew. And yet, Bogart refused to budge from his standpoint that the only thing on William Holden’s mind when they made Invisible Stripes was to ensure he didn’t make it out alive.
The actor wasn’t quite the household name he’d soon become, with the crime flick releasing in 1939, two years before High Sierra and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre catapulted Bogart to stardom. In fact, he was only the fifth-billed name in the cast, with Holden third behind George Raft and Jane Bryan.
Even though Bogart was almost 20 years Holden’s senior, there was tension between them. Despite the generational divide, they viewed each other as rivals who had eyes on snaking their way towards the top of the industry ladder, which meant the former wasn’t convinced a stunt gone wrong was as accidental as the latter claimed it was.
“I think I almost killed him,” Holden admitted to Dick Cavett. “But it was accidentally.” One scene required Holden to operate a motorcycle with a sidecar, which he suggested was faulty. He was a semi-experienced rider in his free time, but was adamant that the one provided on Invisible Stripes was “a bad machine.”
“So Bogart got out,” he explained. “He said, ‘I’m not riding with that crazy so-and-so. He said, ‘He’s liable to kill me’. So a stuntman got in, and sure enough, we turned the corner and went right through a brick wall. The whole gear in the front broke.” As far as Bogie was concerned, that was all the proof he needed.
It appeared to be nothing more than an innocuous mishap, but Bogart was convinced that Holden had masterminded the faulty motorbike so that when it inevitably crashed into a wall, there was a decent chance he’d end up dead. It sounds ludicrous, and the would-be murderer told him so.
“I had to go through the brick wall,” Holden remembered telling him. “You think I’m immune to bricks and you’re gonna get away with it?” Most people wouldn’t be in a rush to reunite with the person they accused of trying to kill them, but the pair were back onscreen together a decade and a half later in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina.
Had the tension thawed by then? Nope, they still hated each other, and the director despised Bogart, too.
