THE FIERY VERITA BOUVAIRE : HOLLYWOOD HAIRDRESSER and MISTRESS OF TOUGH GUY ACTOR HUMPHREY BOGART , YES EVEN WHEN HE WAS MARRIED TO THE LOVELY LAUREN BACALL

VERITA BOUVAIRE THOMPSON

1918-2011

I'm always curious about people back in the day, before there were the contraception options we have today and before we had the choices we have today when it comes to relationships inside or outside of marriage. Were they bigger risk takers? 

So much more discretion was required because affairs were considered immoral by most all the American public from which fans, who could make or break a career, came. Hollywood actors had to worry about offending the audience while living their off-screen lives. Morality clauses were written into Studio contracts.  Public relations and marketing and agents covered up potential scandals.  Within Hollywood itself, it seems actors could rely on insiders not to talk to the media, that is, unless they made enemies.

There was so much more pressure to be married and stay married too, to be "normal." Fans followed the lives of their favorites by reading tabloids that were sometimes deliberately inaccurate - for better or worse. Now we more open minded 21st century people know that, back in the Studio System days of Hollywood, gay actors were even made to go on dates or marry straight women for their careers to survive. Hollywood. 

The creatives who were there making movies happen, seemed to be the most liberal and understanding people alive about alternative lifestyles - at least among the initiated. Hollywood stars had minders helping to hide their personal lives and feed stories to the media to protect them and cover for them and to also, well, create mythologies. That has to be a more monumental task today when on the Internet a rumor with no basis can pass on information to the world in seconds.

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The book came out in 1982.  Bogart died in 1957. 

Humphry DeForest Bogart (1899-1957) reportedly had a difficult childhood and three previous bad marriages when he met the young model and starlet, Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Perske (1924-2014) and it seems that ever since then, Bogie and Bacall have been a famous couple. They quickly began a romance after meeting in 1944 on the set of To Have and Have Not. Married at the time to another actress in what was a combative relationship, "Bogie" filed for divorce in February 1945 and was married to Bacall in May of that year. In his forties and 25 years older than Bacall, this was the actor's final marriage, his fourth and her first. The legendary Hollywood couple had two children together and were together till his death. One could not imagine any difficulties such as another woman.

It's not easy to imagine what Bogie and Bacall had in common so maybe it was a case of opposites attract. She was from a Russian-Jewish background, with a mother who was an immigrant from Romania, and she lived in the Bronx, New York.  Though it's said that her parents earned good money, she was not raised as a class act but most certainly became one. He was from a White Anglo-Saxon Upper Class elite, the son of a surgeon and an accomplished artist. Yet Bogie played hard-living characters, smoking, drinking, and talking tough, lower class characters.  He's known for his work in such films as Casablanca and The African Queen.

In his off-camera life Bogie was a drinker who smoked his way into the lung cancer that killed him. The original "Rat Pack" were Bogie and the friends who came over to hang out and party, such as Frank Sinatra.

I was following the notion that Lauren Bacall had been involved with a married man (Bogart) and perhaps broke his marriage, when I discovered that Bogart had been involved with another women named Verita for about 14 years and while married to Lauren, until she herself married in 1955 to Walter Thompson!  This was a surprise to me. This long extramarital relationship between Verita Bouvair and Humphrey Bogart began in about 1942 when he was in his marriage to his third wife and she was also married at the time, but not to Thompson. 

Verita Bouvair  became Bogie's hairdresser. He'd go get his hair done and stay overnight at her house in Burbank, an area where many who work at nearby studios such as Warner Brothers lived and live, heading out for a film set early in the morning. Her husband had gone off to serve in World War II. 

Long ago when I toured the Hollywood Boulevard area, I went to the Max Factor Museum, famous for its pink room, blue room, and yellow room, where blondes, brunettes, and red heads had their hair done. At the time a hairpiece that was used to give Humphry Bogart his hair was on display. I don't think any of us can imagine a bald Bogie. The process of making toupees with natural hair on a kind of lace net, and disguising the lace net with cosmetics, gave a very natural hairline look. 

Verita, whose mother was Mexican, started out with Hollywood hopes of her own. In 1935 she was the runner-up in a Miss Arizona beauty pageant and a talent scout signed her to a contract with Republic Pictures. Her career soon ended when, in her first film, a Western, she fell off a horse and broke her arm. Realizing she needed to work at something else, she formed a partnership with a hairdresser and wig maker she met recuperating in Mexico City, then returned to Hollywood to become a licensed hairdresser. Bogart wasn't the only star that she worked with. The quality of the hairpieces she used was so good that she was in demand. By 1949 she had become Bogart's personal hairdresser, written into his contract with his new company, and worked on his hair in most of his films from that point on. 

The couple were discreet but for all the carousing; was it really possible to be discreet? By the time Verita's book was published, the revelation came as a surprise to the public and many in "the know" were long gone.  For about a decade, Thompson was Bogie's traveling companion and secretary.

One thing the two lovers had in common was getting drunk together. Pals, Bogie called her "Pete" as at the time she had a husband whose surname and hers was Petersen. Though still Mrs. Peterson, she was reportedly shocked to learn that the alcoholic actor married Lauren Bacall less than two weeks after his third divorce when she and Bogie had been together for a couple years. Yet, she did not spurn him. Verita was a high-spirited woman who liked a party and, like Bogie, was fond of her scotch and soda. Besides the road or at her house, Bogart's beloved boat, The Santana, became a place their relationship was carried out.  According to Verita, Bacall didn't like sailing!

Bogie insisted that she attend social engagements in his home where he lived with his wife and children because it was expected of all employees. She had dinner with them often enough and had qualms about it. She did it to keep their relationship from Bacall and to keep her relationship with Bogie too. However, Verita was not without suitors. She says Bogie approved that she marry Thompson, a producer, and that she remained friends with the couple from that point on. Upon her marriage the affair ended.  

After her husband died in 1975, Verita opened a Mexican restaurant called Verita's Canteena.  Eventually she moved to New Orleans in the 1990's and opened another restaurant with the same name.  It was when Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, was about to destroy New Orleans that there was an indication that Lauren Bacall had known about her husband's involvement with Verita all along. Offered a seat on a private jet to get out, she refused, saying, "Bacall failed to chase me out of Hollywood. Katrina won't force me out of New Orleans."

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References for this post include the book above, and articles on the Internet including the one by Tom Vallence in the Independent, October 23, 2011 titled Verita Thompson: Humphry Bogart's Secret Mistress, as well as encyclopedia.  Additionally, I read Lauren Bacall: By Myself.

The horrible death of her husband, Humphry Bogart, is what stays with me about this book.  Bacall sticks to her subject - herself.  Bacall had a brief affair with the couple's friend Frank Sinatra, but the Rat Pack was originally comprised of the friends of Bogart and Bacall.