Humphrey Bogart’s Unconventional Diet Filming ‘The African Queen’ Saved Him From Dysentery
Humphrey Bogart is, to this day, one of the biggest names in movies. Although the dashing leading man died fairly early, at just 57, he starred in a monumental number of classic films. Of his many iconic performances, the one he lent to the notoriously troubled production of The African Queen is one of his best.
He pushed through a brutal shoot alongside the incomparable Katharine Hepburn. Cast and crew fell ill on the set one after another. All, that is, except Bogart and director John Huston. How did that curious situation come to pass?
‘The African Queen’ set was legendarily troubled
The 1951 film The African Queen set the template for a whole subgenre of films. It’s still imitated to this day, its blend of adventure and comedy reflected in recent movies like Jungle Cruise and The Lost City. The lavish direction and impeccable acting came at a severe cost to everyone who worked on it, though.
The Guardian reports that the shoot was difficult and messy in many different ways. Some were preventable, like director John Huston’s erratic behavior. Others were unavoidable for the global shoot. Chunks of the film were handled in Los Angeles studios and Florida worked as a stand-in for some of the African locations in the script.
But large amounts of the movie were filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Huston’s cast and crew were not properly prepared for the environment. They were stalked by crocodiles and bitten by tsetse flies. Shoots would wildly shift between heavy rains and searingly hot sunny days. And then there was the notoriously difficult behavior of Bogart himself.
How Humphrey Bogart’s diet saved him from illness on ‘The African Queen’ set
Bogart and Huston were intense figures on any sets they worked on. Together, while making The African Queen, their alcoholism led to constant erratic behavior and creative clashes between the whole cast and crew.
The lead actor and his director bonded over one thing above all: scotch, according to ScotchWhisky.com. Bogart used to drink whatever he could get his hands on, but by this point gained the Rat Pack affect of sipping on a glass of scotch. It replaced most of his meals and drinks. When he and Huston did drink water, it tended to have a touch of the smoky liquor added to the glass.
This habit, as unhealthy as it obviously was, saved the pair from dysentery. The entire cast and crew were stricken with the illness from drinking tainted water. Somehow, Bogie and Huston ended up in one of the rare situations in life where a heavy daily drinking habit ends up being a positive.
Humphrey Bogart’s truncated career remains one of the greatest runs in cinematic history
Difficult shoots weren’t rare for the Rat Pack leader. Famously, nearly everyone involved with filming Casablanca thought they were making a sloppy dud of a film. Bogart was dismissive toward the script, the director, and many of his costars agreed. It wasn’t until the moment they saw the final cut of the film that they realized they had something special on their hands.
According to the British Film Institute, his top films still serve as examples of some of the finest work in several genres. He was most influential for noir films, and the broader cinematic crime genre. His gritty noir work in The Maltese Falcon is the mold modern crime dramas still strive for.
