Janszoon (eBook)

In the pursuit of Love, Family, and an Enduring Legacy

Mark Kraver (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
364 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798350951097 (ISBN)

Infos

It's 1942 and Humphrey Bogart seems to have it all; or did he?

Mark Kraver is an American novelist and United States Air Force Dental Corps veteran. Since his service, he's worked as a General Dentist specializing in Craniofacial pain. He now lives on the water in Southwest Florida with his wife of 45+ years and a large, undisciplined garden with many incomplete art projects. They also have three grown children, seven grandchildren, and several finished and unfinished historical fiction novels. Dr. Kraver grew up in the Melbourne, Florida area, where his father was a rocket scientist, and has also lived in Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.

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It's 1942 and Humphrey Bogart seems to have it all. By day, he's reading lines for Casablanca with Ingrid Bergman; by night, he's drinking bourbon on the Sunset Strip with friends like Peter Lorre and Leslie Howard. But to Bogart, life is not so glamorous. High-profile fights with his wife Mayo and a rigid studio contract committing him to a series of mediocre films have him feeling personally and professionally trapped. That is, until one day a mysterious note arrives on set. Heeding the strange invitation, Bogart finds himself in a series of long, secret conversations with his aunt and cousin about the swashbuckling tales of their ancestor, the pirate Jan Janszoon van Salee. These tales of the high seas ignite a fire within Bogart to carve out a path that is uniquely his own even if it means shedding the roles and people who made him famous. Janszoon is more than a Hollywood fantasy; it's a journey into the heart of a man wrestling with ambitions and desires, an actor who yearns to balance his on-screen personas with his off-screen reality. From his tumultuous marriage and infamous USO tour, through his affairs with Verita Patterson and Lauren Bacall, Janszoon imagines a life in which the enigmatic Humphrey Bogart seeks a legacy that transcends the ephemeral glow of stardom.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Warner Brothers Studio Rehearsal Room

Hollywood, California

Thursday, May 28, 1942

“I can’t fight it anymore,” Ingrid cried out in a voice of desperation. Bracing her elbows on the table, she glanced at her script with teary eyes. “I ran away from you once. I can’t do it again.” She buried her face in the shoulder next to her to wipe her eyes and nose. “I don’t know what’s right any longer,” she confessed, feeling defeated. “You’ll have to think for both of us, for all of us.”

“All right, I will,” Bogart responded with a smirk. Playing the part of bar owner Rick Blaine, mesmerized by the beauty of the woman sitting next to him, he cocked his head and said from the heart, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” As he spoke, he held his script in one hand and faked a toast with his imaginary glass of champagne in the other.

“I wish I didn’t love you so much,” Ingrid whispered, sitting up. She searched for something to look at until, focusing on his lips, she drew his face down to hers with a hand around the back of his neck.

A narrator standing by the door read out loud: “Rick hears a noise outside the room. He puts his glass down and goes to the door. Ilsa follows.”

“Cut!” shouted Michael Curtiz. The director was sitting at the end of the table, combing over the unfinished script with a stubby pencil and worn-out eraser. “Ah, I mean, stop,” he muttered, deep in thought, not looking up.

Shaking her head in frustration, Ingrid dropped her script. She said to those around her, trying to keep her voice calm, “God, I wish he would make up his mind about this awful script.”

“Yeah,” Bogart said with a half-laugh. “I need a glass of scotch to make this thing at least taste better.” Several others around the table nodded, agreeing with him.

Ingrid turned to Bogart. “And you. Calling me a kid. Really?”

“Bogie, Bogie, Bogie. You keep saying that line?” Curtiz complained with a tired, anguished voice. “You’re driving me crazy. And here I thought getting Cagney to sing on key in Yankee Doodle Dandy was a momentous feat. All I want for Christmas is this film in the can. Your improv is killing me.” He gnashed his teeth with restraint. “Next time, follow the goddamned script. It’s—” He scanned the cramped table and looked at the door. “Script, please?” he shouted out.

One of the eager young assistants at the door fumbled with her pages and then called out with a questioning voice, “Here’s good luck to you?”

“Who wrote that line?” another person peering through the door asked. The voice was a familiar one on the set. It was Hal Wallis, the producer.

“I did,” grumbled Curtiz without looking up.

“Bogie?” Wallis asked for verification. “Do you feel Rick would say, ‘Here’s good luck to you?’”

“I wouldn’t, so I guess Rick wouldn’t either.”

“I thought so. Do another take, staring at ‘You’ll have to think for both of us,’ but this time, follow the script. I think everyone will see for themselves which way is more, uh, effective. Then, after that is settled, time to meet makeup. We start shooting on Monday. Remember, Casablanca is in Morocco, occupied by the Nazi-controlled Vichy French puppet government, so do your due diligence.” Groans around the table signaled everyone was too tired to stick around and try on wigs and rouge. Wallis let out an exasperated sigh. “Alright then, we’ll put it off until tomorrow—early.”

“Oh, boss!” A short, fidgety actor with large eyes asked with urgency. “How early? I was going out tonight, and well—”

“Don’t give me any of your shenanigans, Lorre,” Curtiz grumbled. “You go out drinking every night.”

“All right, that’s enough, focus boys,” Ingrid said with perturbed agitation about yet another change to the script. She coughed briefly into her fist, cleared her throat, and looked up. Placing her hand on her chest, she forced her mannerisms into the right frame of mind to play the role of the love-starved damsel in distress. “You’ll have to think for both of us, for all of us,” Ingrid delivered dramatically.

“All right, I will. Here’s good luck to you,” Bogart said, pretending to toast her again with the imaginary glass of champagne while raising his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. Lorre bit his fisted knuckles not to laugh while another actor, Paul Henreid, threw his script into the middle of the table, not at all amused by Bogart’s endless antics.

No one made a sound. Eyes shot around the rehearsal table like pinball marbles until they all landed on Curtiz. He frowned heavily, bobbing his head up and down several times before saying, “I’ll sleep on it.” Then he raised his voice to announce, “Tomorrow we shift gears a bit, going over the ending just a little—if we can get the script back before then. Oh, Major Strasser, ah, Conrad won’t be here tomorrow either, but that’s okay; all he does is get shot.” He looked down at his note and scratched his head. “Although who gets to shoot the Nazi, we still do not know,” he added, throwing his worn-out pencil into the trash can.

The room, full of actors, let out a soft, barely perceptible moan at the idea of yet another delayed script.

“I’ll make it easy. I can shoot the son-of-a-bitch,” Paul shouted, causing some laughter. “After all, I escaped from the Nazis, remember?”

“Literally,” Lorre whispered to Bogart.

“My, my, my,” Curtiz said, shaking his head. “Good evening, everyone. Oh, Bogie—,” he added, remembering the note before him. “Your wife called—again.” He shoved the note in the actor’s direction, stood, folded up his papers, and abruptly went to Wallis’ side to discuss parts of the missing script and other irregularities.

“What? Mayo? Did she need something?” he asked, looking at the note that just said ‘Mrs. Bogart called again.’

“Yeah, she needs your hands strapped around her—” Lorre laughed, raising his eyebrows, then flashed Ingrid a warning frown while shaking his head slightly.

Bogart smiled proudly. “I can’t help it if she loves me to death; can’t do without me.”

Paul leaned toward Ingrid and Bogart. “Bogie, we don’t need more of your hijinks. This picture is already bad enough.” He rose and left the room with a sardonic thumbs-up gesture to indicate he hoped Bogart had gotten the message.

Ingrid looked at Bogart with a brilliant smile.”What’s with him?”

“The aristocrat? Oh, he’s just sore. I’ve beaten him in chess too many times.”

“Chess?” she asked, tilting her head and smiling coquettishly.

Bogart grinned with amusement. He was well aware of Ms Bergman’s history with her leading men. Apparently, she believed cultivating off-screen chemistry was key to being convincing on the big screen. He also knew she tended to ditch the men as soon as the last scene was shot, but there was no reason not to enjoy the attention for now. “Yeah, you know. Life is like a game of chess?” Bogart said with a knowing smile.

She pouted and tucked a curl behind her ear. “I don’t know how to play chess very well,” she confessed.

“Really? I’d expect a girl like you to be pretty good at it.”

“Oh? Maybe you could teach me some moves? We could also play golf—but you would have to lose on purpose. You won’t want to make me cry?” She bit her lower lip and batted her eyes with a quick smile.

“How about we review the rules over a drink?” Bogart asked, leaning back in his seat.

Still smiling, the leading lady didn’t answer but rather stood and straightened her blouse.

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” Bogart said as she moved to join the director and producer to add her ideas for spicing up the plot.

“I can go drinking tonight,” said a feminine voice as a petite figure appeared between Bogart and Lorre.

Snapping his eyes away from the incomparable Swedish actress and back to reality, Bogart noticed the twenty-something bombshell talking to him. “Hello?” he asked with intrigue, examining her curvy backside.

He had noticed the attractive young woman enter the room earlier wearing a tailored woolen skirt to just below the knee, paired with a fitted blouse, moving with purpose and poise, her heels clicking on the polished studio floors, attracting every man’s attention. He’d lost sight of her after that as she blended into the scenery by mingling with the leaving actors, but he was pleased to note she was just as beautiful up close.

“Señor Bogart, if you need a drinking partner,” she said with a soft Spanish accent after listening in on their conversation. “My dance card has an opening for you.”

“Dance card?”

“Yes, you still know how to dance with a young woman?” Lorre asked, sliding forward to take over the conversation.

Almost too distracted to remember what to do, the woman stopped and redirected her attention back to Bogart. “Señor Bogart, I almost forgot. A message from Uncle Henry,” she said, handing him an envelope. Bogart’s face visually changed to concern, and he hesitated momentarily to take the letter from her hand.

“You haven’t mentioned an Uncle Henry. What’s it about?” Lorre asked with interest, straining his neck to see the letter with his bulging eyes.

“I don’t—where’d you get this?” Bogart asked her, deflating...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 27.3.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-13: 9798350951097 / 9798350951097