ICON | Katharine Hepburn

Photo by Eliot Elisofon, 1951 scanned from The Making of the African Queen or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind.

I love the way Hepburn describes Bogart in this book, which she wrote almost thirty years after the film was made:

He walked straight down the center of the road—
No maybes. Yes or no.
He liked to drink. He drank.
He liked to sail a boat. He sailed a boat.
He was an actor. He was happy and proud to be an actor.
He'd say to me, "Are you comfortable? Everything O.K.?"
He was looking out for me.
"Need anything?"
To put it simply: There was no bunk about Bogie. He was a man.