Bogart met Lauren Bacall while filming ‘To Have and Have Not’ (1944), a loose adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel.

When they met, Bacall was 19 and Bogart 44. He nicknamed her ‘Baby‘.

She had been a model since 16 and had acted in two failed plays.

Bogart was drawn to Bacall’s high cheekbones, green eyes, tawny blond hair, and lean body, as well as her maturity, poise and earthy, outspoken honesty.

Their physical and emotional rapport was very strong from the start, their age difference and disparity in acting experience.

He was still married and his early meetings with Bacall were discreet and brief.

While filming ‘The Big Sleep’, Bogart was still torn between his new Love and his sense of duty to his marriage.

The mood on the set was tense, the actors both emotionally exhausted as Bogart tried to find a way out of his dilemma.

Bogart fell in Love with the character she played, so she had to keep playing it the rest of her life. Howard Hawks

Bogart filed for divorce in February 1945 and he and Bacall married in a small ceremony. The marriage proved a happy one, though there were tensions due to their differences.

Bogart‘s drinking sometimes inflamed tensions. He was a homebody and she liked nightlife; he loved the sea, which made her seasick.

In California in 1945, Bogart bought a 55-foot (17 m) sailing yacht, the Santana. He found the sea a sanctuary, spending about thirty weekends a year on the water.

An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to be. Humphrey Bogart

A heavy smoker and drinker, Bogart developed cancer. He did not speak of his health and visited a doctor in January 1956, after much persistence from Bacall.

The disease worsened several weeks later. However, the surgery failed, even with chemotherapy.

Bogart underwent corrective surgery in November 1956, when the cancer had spread. Bogart fell into a coma and died on January, 14.

He had just turned 57 twenty days prior and weighed only 80 pounds (36 kg).