Earth Angel: Ava Gardner, Gloria Grahame, Lauren Bacall, etc.

Earth Angel: Ava Gardner, Gloria Grahame, Lauren Bacall, and other co-stars of Humphrey Bogart. Song "I Forgot To Remember To Forget" by Elvis Presley.

Photo montage of Humphrey Bogart and Rita Hayworth

"Many have assumed the character of Maria Vargas was based on Gardner's life, although writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz said he was inspired by Rita Hayworth; her life as a dancer and her marriage to the international playboy Aly Kahn. Gardner, too, journeyed from a modest background to international stardom.
Gardner loved Europe, and felt alienated from Hollywood. Soon, she would buy a house in Spain (a place that reminded her of her North Carolina home) and live far from the movie business the rest of her life. She thought Bogart horribly provincial because he "hated Italy and lived on ham and eggs and steak whenever he could." He didn't think much of her acting ability; she wrote, "he certainly knew a lot more acting tricks than I did, and didn't hesitate to use them. I have to admit he probably forced me into a better performance than I could have managed without him." Sometimes, he gave her the wrong line just to freshen her performance, which he also did when acting in films with his wife, Lauren Bacall.
Mankiewicz said, "Bogie wanted you to be afraid of him a little. He made perfectly sure that you knew he was going to be an unpredictable man. I caught on to that and I played my own little game of keeping him off balance by never giving him his opportunity. You forstall it by kidding him out of it." But, he also said of him, "Bogie was the iconoclast in a society that dealt in icons, which is Hollywood. The cynicism that the part required was his by nature. When you've been through the Hollywood mill, you've been through the mill of mills." Source: www.moviediva.com

"Robert Osborne, the host of Turner Classic Movies always relates interesting background facts concerning the cast of the movies he presents. He shared the fact that Humphrey Bogart was very cool to Ava Gardner throughout the shooting of The Barefoot Contessa although she was certainly his type. Osborne reported that Bogart was a close friend of Frank Sinatra and that Ava Gardner was in the process of divorcing Sinatra at the time. Bogart was steadfast in his friendship with Frank which accounted for his coolness to her". Source: www.associatedcontent.com