He died at 57 so we never saw how he would have looked in his 60s and beyond.
He was said to be particularly attractive while discussing pork chops and apple sauce.
Physically attractive, no. But he had a very compelling style and presence.
To those who say that Bogart always played Bogart I would recommend In a Lonely Place. Its about as dark a film as it gets. You can watch for free here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv4iVbBXHsLjUKEQ9LbQKBasW9L5Hzz6i
By the mid Fifties, he was ill and looked like it, too.
The movies always found a way to make even ordinary players look attractive if they wanted to, whether from lighting them in a certain way, or casting other players who didn’t obviously tower over them.
Not in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where he goes nuts, Roaring Twenties or Petrified Forest, where he is just a Bad Guy.
His first film was The Petrified Forest where he played a tough guy. And he only got the role because Leslie Howard insisted on it. It’s why Bogie’s daughter was named Leslie. But it typecast him for a decade. He mostly just played bad guys or toughs. Even in the Western (!) he made, he was the “black hat” playing against “white hat” James Cagney (!) – The Oklahoma Kid.
I always thought Bogie had tons of charisma.
Charisma is extremely under-rated. I’ve known guys in low status jobs who were able to date very attractive women based mostly on confidence and charm. These guys weren’t ugly, but they weren’t particularly handsome either, just like Bogart. Add Bogart’s natural Charisma to movie stardom and it doesn’t really matter that he doesn’t have traditional leading man looks.
It didn’t hurt that he was also very intelligent. He was a decent chess player and corresponded with Supreme court justices.* It also didn’t hurt that he came from money.
*Take the last with a grain of salt. I know I’ve read it but didn’t have good luck googling it just now.
He was not the Gerber Baby.
His sneering lip came not from WWI shrapnel, but from falling of his bicycle as a child.
I did not find him good-looking. Why? Because of my own, personal taste. Didn’t find him attractive, either. Why? His dour persona did not jibe with me. When he smiled, he looked scary. To me.
Same with me! When I was a kid, I always found him to be a little frightening, even in sympathetic roles. Plus he reminded me of Moe Howard (Three Stooges), who also scared me. I was a weird kid, I guess.
Yeah, his mom, a commercial artist, drew the Gerber Baby, but it wasn’t Bogie. I think it was actually a girl?
I also heard his family was well off.
My father’s looks reminded me of Bogart. Per my mother, he was regarded as quite the catch back in the day.
It’s a tough-guy “look” that was more popular in the 1940s and 1950s, and sort of out of date today. Back then a guy like Joe DiMaggiowas good looking enough to marry the likes of Marilyn Monroe. Frank Sinatra, also more a tough guy than matinee idol, also made them swoon.
It also helped that Bogart worked for Warner Brothers at the time. During the 30s and 40s, Warner Brothers was different than other major studios in that they made into stars actors and actresses who were considered too “unconventional” looking to be leads elsewhere. Along with Bogart, this was the case with Warner’s other major stars like James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, and Bette Davis.
The Academy begs to differ.
He was WAY before my time and I haven’t really seen many of his movies. I’m a 33 year old, straight, male. But I’m just scrolling down on Google Images looking at a million pictures of him and I’m baffled by the idea that he was NOT handsome. I know there are a lot of different ways that a man can look handsome, and I know that everyone’s tastes are different, but…how could he not be considered at least within the normal range of what a handsome male face looks like? It has all the right proportions. For those who think he was outright unattractive, can you explain why?
Not his first film or even his first starring role, which was Two Against the World released earlier the same year. It’s true his early movie career had not been successful which is why he went back to Broadway between 1934 and 1936.
As for being typecast, there was at least one exception, his role as the Irish horse trainer Michael O’Leary in Dark Victory, 1939 (3rd billing over poor Geraldine FitzGerald). Considering that The Petrified Forest came out in 1936, saying he was typecast as the villain for a decade goes about 5 years too far.
Which is not really the same thing as attractive. I’ve been deemed less attractive than much uglier men plenty of times.
I agree but also think this overlooks the fact that status and wealth play into the attractiveness of people, especially men. Almost any pop or rock star can have millions of ladies swooning and very few of them are handsome. I’m not going to say this only applies to male celebrities, either. I can think of several TV actresses and movie stars who are considered exceptionally beautiful but I can walk down the street in any major city and find several more stunning looking women flying completely under the radar (at least pre-Tinder/Instagram era).
Mrs, Plant found him quite attractive in the 1980s.