Mayo Methot | |
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Born | March 3, 1904 Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
Died | June 9, 1951 Multnomah, Oregon, U.S. |
(aged 47)
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 1920s–1940s |
Spouse | John M. La Mond (1921-1927) Percy T. Morgan Jr. (1930?-1936) Humphrey Bogart (1938-1945) |
Mayo Methot (March 3, 1904–June 9, 1951), also known as Mayo Methot Bogart, was an American film and theater actress.
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Methot was born in Portland, Oregon. A petite brunette, she became a popular actress on Broadway during the 1920s where she was admired for both her acting and singing ability. While on Broadway she originated a role in the Vincent Youmans / Billy Rose musical Great Day (1929), introducing the standard "More Than You Know" and several others. She moved to Hollywood in the early 1930s and began an association with Warner Brothers Studios. She found herself most usually cast as unsympathetic second leads, and tough talking "dames" of Warner's contemporary crime melodramas such as Jimmy the Gent and Marked Woman, where she met Humphrey Bogart. They married in 1938. It was her third marriage, first having wed at age 19 to Cosmopolitan Productions cameraman Jack La Mond, whom she divorced in 1927. After the death of her father, Captain Jack Methot, on December 20, 1929, she came to Hollywood in 1930 and soon married Percy T. Morgan (the co-owner, with his brother, of the well-known Cock n' Bull restaurant on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard). They divorced shortly after she re-acquainted with Bogart in 1936.
Methot and Bogart became a couple of high-profile Hollywood celebrities, but it was not a smooth marriage. Both drank heavily, and Methot gained a reputation for her violent excesses when under the influence. They became known as "The Battling Bogarts," with Methot's nickname widely known, for her combativeness, as "Sluggy." Bogart later named his motor yacht Sluggy, in her honor. During World War II, the Bogarts traveled Europe, entertaining the troops. But the troops weren't the only ones who were entertained. Most of the time during their travels, they stayed in officers quarters. They had no trouble borrowing guns, and many times, were caught "shooting up the place" in the middle of the night. Afterwards, the army banned married couples from entertaining the troops for the remainder of the war.
At one point, in their travels during the war, they linked up with director John Huston in Italy. During a night of heavy drinking, Methot insisted that everyone listen to her perform a song. Though they told her no, she sang anyway. The performance was so bad and embarrassing, Huston and Bogart remembered it years later and based a scene in Key Largo on the incident. It was the scene in which the alcoholic girlfriend (Claire Trevor) of the mobster (played by Edward G. Robinson) sang a number off key and while intoxicated. The performance won Trevor an Oscar.
Numerous battles took place at the Hollywood residence of the famous couple including one in which Methot actually stabbed Bogart in the shoulder. The incident was kept out of the press by the publicity department of Warner Bros. Actress Gloria Stuart recalled in her later years a dinner party at which Methot produced a pistol and threatened to shoot Bogart. At one point, when Methot was depressed, she slashed her wrists (again, played down by the press thanks to their studio). Methot's career went into a rapid decline as a result of her drinking, and her marriage to Bogart ended in 1945, when he left her to marry Lauren Bacall.
Methot was unable to renew her career and settled into a pattern of alcoholism and depression. Following her divorce from Bogart in May 1945 (Bogart married actress Lauren Bacall two weeks later), she moved back to Oregon where her mother helped take care of her. By the early 1950s, struggling to support herself and ill from years of alcoholism, she died in a motel room in Multnomah, Oregon, an outlying suburb of Portland, on June 9, 1951. Her body lay undiscovered for several days. When Bogart heard the news (while shooting The African Queen) his comment was "Such a waste". Mayo Methot's mother, Evelyn W. Methot, survived her daughter by five and a half years and died November 27, 1956. The Methot family members are all interred together at the Portland Memorial Mausoleum in Portland, Oregon.
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
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1930 | Taxi Talks | ||
1931 | Corsair | Sophie | |
1932 | The Night Club Lady | Lola Carewe | |
1932 | Vanity Street | Fern | |
1932 | Virtue | Lil Blair | |
1932 | Afraid to Talk | Marge Winters | Alternative title: Merry-Go-Round |
1933 | The Mind Reader | Jenny | |
1933 | Lilly Turner | Mrs. Durkee | Uncredited |
1933 | Goodbye Love | Sandra Hamilton | |
1933 | Counsellor at Law | Zedorah Chapman | |
1934 | Jimmy the Gent | Gladys Farrell | |
1934 | Registered Nurse | Nurse Gloria Hammond | |
1934 | Harold Teen | Sally LaSalle | Alternative title: Dancing Fool |
1934 | Side Streets | Maizie Roach | Alternative title: A Woman in Her Thirties |
1934 | Mills of the Gods | Sarah | |
1935 | The Case of the Curious Bride | Mrs. Florabelle Lawson | |
1935 | We're in the Money | Scenes deleted | |
1935 | Dr. Socrates | Muggsy, Red's Moll | |
1936 | Mr. Deeds Goes to Town | Mrs. Semple | Uncredited |
1936 | The Case Against Mrs. Ames | Cora | |
1937 | Marked Woman | Estelle Porter | |
1938 | Women in Prison | Daisy Saunders | |
1938 | Numbered Woman | Alternative title: Private Nurse | |
1938 | The Sisters | Blonde | |
1939 | Should a Girl Marry? | Betty Gilbert | |
1939 | Unexpected Father | Ethel Stone | Alternative title: Sandy Takes a Bow |
1939 | A Woman Is the Judge | Gertie | |
1940 | Brother Rat and a Baby | Girl in Bus | Alternative title: Baby Be Good |