Mayo Methot

Mayo Methot
Mayo Methot, during her early career, on Broadway.
Born	(1904-03-03)March 3, 1904 Portland, Oregon
Died	June 9, 1951(1951-06-09) (aged 47) Multnomah, Oregon
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1920s–1940s
Spouse(s)	John M. La Mond (m.1921-1927; divorced) Percy T. Morgan Jr. (m. c. 1930–1936; divorced) Humphrey Bogart (m.1938-1945; divorced)

Mayo Methot (March 3, 1904 – June 9, 1951), also known as Mayo Methot Bogart, was an American film and theater actress. She appeared in over 30 films, as well as on Broadway. She suffered from alcoholism, the effects of which she ultimately succumbed to in 1951.

Biography

Methot was born in Portland, Oregon. She started performing on stage at the age of four or five.^[1] A little more than five feet tall, she was nicknamed, "The Portland Rosebud."^[1]

She performed with the Baker Stock Company in Portland, Oregon until 1922^[2] when she left for New York, where she met George M. Cohan and worked in "Great Day", "All the King's Men", "The Song and Dance Man", and "The Medicine Man", as well as others, totaling some ten shows between 1923 and 1930.^[3]

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 was usually cast as unsympathetic second leads and tough-talking "dames" of Warner's contemporary crime melodramas such as Jimmy the Gent and Marked Woman,^[4] where she met Humphrey Bogart.^[2]

Personal life

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 met Bogart, in 1936. She married Humphrey Bogart in 1938. It was her third marriage, as she had first been wed at age 19 to Cosmopolitan Productions cameraman Jack La Mond, whom she divorced in 1927.

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 widely known, due to her combativeness, as "Sluggy." Bogart later named his motor yacht Sluggy in her honor.^[4]

During World War II, the Bogarts traveled Europe, entertaining the troops. But the troops weren't the only ones who were entertained. Usually 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 US Army banned married couples from entertaining the troops for the remainder of the war.

At one point in their travels during the war, the Bogarts 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 that Huston and Bogart remembered it years later and based a scene in Key Largo on the incident. It is the scene in which the alcoholic girlfriend (Claire Trevor) of the mobster (played by Edward G. Robinson) sings 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 - nicknamed Sluggy Hollow ^[5] - 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 Brothers Studios. Actress Gloria Stuart recalled in her later years a dinner party at which Methot produced a pistol and threatened to shoot Bogart.^[2]

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.

Final years and death

Methot was unable to renew her career and became locked 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.

Methot 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 in Africa (while shooting the film 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.

Her mother said her daughter could never take her career seriously, ". . . it was just for fun."^[2]

Filmography

References

External links

• Mayo Methot at the Internet Movie Database
• Mayo Methot at the Internet Broadway Database
• Biographical sketch at the University of Oregon
• Mayo Methot at Find a Grave
• still of Mayo Methot as a child actress