From PEOPLE Magazine
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MY FATHER HAD HIS OWN reserved table at Romanoff's. I remember it well. It was the second booth to the left from the entryway. There Bogie would eat his French toast, drink his Scotch and shoot the breeze with some of the best-known people in the world.
One day, when I was 7, Bogie decided that I should join the world of men. That is, I should be taken to Romanoff's and shown off. On this day, he wanted to be Daddy. My mother dressed me in long trousers and a spiffy new shirt, then she brought me up to the bedroom to be inspected by the man himself. My father, wearing gray flannels, a black cashmere jacket and a checked bow tie, looked long and hard at me. "You look good, kid," he said. Then off we went, me and Bogie, in the Jaguar.
Romanoff's was in Beverly Hills. Dad and I arrived at 12:30, my father's usual time. The valet took the car and we were led immediately to Bogie's regular booth. Dad waved to a few of the many Hollywood notables who were already dining, and I'm sure most of them thought it adorable that he had his little Stevie with him. We sat in the booth and Mike Romanoff came over to greet us.
"Good afternoon, your royal phoniness," my father said. His usual greeting to Mike. [Romanoff claimed to be the last czar's nephew]
"Good afternoon, Mr. Bogart," Mike said, in his carefully cultivated Oxford accent. "Are you going to be paying your bill today? I thought that might be a pleasant change."
"Are you going to be putting any alcohol in your overpriced drinks?" Bogie asked. "That also would be a nice change."
"You won't be needing a necktie today?" Romanoff said.
"No."
Romanoff, you see, had a jacket-and-tie policy at the restaurant, and he always made Dad wear a tie. One time my father had baited Mike by showing up with a bow tie that was one inch wide and sat on a pin.
"I see you brought your grandson," Mike said.
Mike liked to rib my father about his age. Bogie was a quarter of a century older than Bacall, so when my mother was with him at the restaurant, Mike would say to her, "I see you are still dating the same aging actor."
It went on like that for awhile. I guess it always went on like that for awhile. My strongest memories of that day are the feel of the green-leather upholstery of the booth, the taste of creamed spinach, a specialty of the house, which I loved, and the steady parade of grown-ups, which I wasn't crazy about.
I don't know everyone who came by to talk on that particular day. But this schmoozing at Romanoff's was a daily ritual. It was common for David Niven to stop by at my father's booth, and for Judy Garland and [her husband] Sid Luft. And sometimes Spencer Tracy. Swifty Lazar came by. Swifty, whose real name was Irving, got his nickname from my father after making three big deals in one day. He was known as the first Hollywood superagent. He was not my father's agent; he was his friend.
Movie stars, singers and studio heads came by, all of them smiling at the rare sight of Bogie with a child. They paid their dues to me: "How are you, Stephen?" and "My, don't you look grown-up!" But then into shoptalk they would go...Stanley Kramer had just bought rights to such and such a book, Gary Cooper was filming this, [Columbia Pictures chief] Harry Cohn was pissed off about that...and so on.
Fascinating talk, to grown-ups. But not to a person whose idea of fun was sliding down banisters and climbing trees with Diane Linkletter [daughter of Art, a neighbor]. I was not impressed. I was the son of two movie stars, and, more to the point, I was only 7 years old. So I was, in a word, bored.
By the time Bogie was into the brandy my boredom had begun to take physical form. I was rapping my water glass with a fork.
"Don't do that, kid," my father said.
I was banging my feet under the table.
"Cut it out, kid," my father said.
And, no doubt, I was making faces, tapping my fingers, fidgeting and glancing around. Acting like a kid. But the behavior of children was a complete mystery to Humphrey Bogart and, though he was almost continually amused by life, he was now getting less and less amused.
By the time we left the restaurant that day we were not speaking to each other. My father's knuckles were white on the wheel of his Jaguar as he drove, perhaps a little too fast, through the streets of Beverly Hills, anxious to deliver the demon son back to the arms of Bacall.
When we got home that day my mother was out by the pool reading. Dad led me directly to her, as if I might try to make a run for it.
"Baby," he said. "Never again."
My mother said nothing. She put her book down and looked at me, as if to ask, What is your side of the story?
"Never again," I said, mimicking my father, and off I went to read my comic book.
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