A few weeks ago I started reading my first biography of Humphrey Bogart. This book was written by Ann Sperber and Eric Lax, published in the late '90s, and appears to be very thoroughly researched—especially regarding anything that happened at Warner Bros. So I was curious if they mentioned anything about the dog in High Sierra and his relationship to Bogart.
Given my earlier research that uncovered that Zero, the dog that played Pard, was not owned by Bogart at the time of filming High Sierra, I was not expecting to find anything in this thoroughly-documented biography. But, in fact, there actually is a mention of Zero in this book, and he is specified as Bogart's dog!
This was troubling to me. My research, based on contemporary newspaper articles, seemed highly unlikely to be outright incorrect. So I quickly turned to the end notes to try to find out the source for this brief mention.
Here it is:
Ida Lupino!
That was certainly a surprise. She said this in a 1991 interview with author Ann Sperber, over 50 years after the filming of the movie. Given the time that had passed, and the lack of corroboration from sources of 1941, it seems clear this is a case of Lupino misremembering.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, a newspaper story from 1941 had reported, second-hand, that Bogart sought (unsuccessfully) to purchase Zero the dog after the movie. If I may speculate, maybe that was true, maybe Bogart talked during the filming about a desire to own Zero, and maybe, over many decades, that became, in Lupino's mind, that Bogart actually owned Zero.
Due to the solid reputation of the Sperber-Lax biography of Bogart, could it be the original source of all the rumors about Bogart's ownership of Zero that have been repeated so often in internet writings and other sources over the last decade or so? I am inclined to believe so for the time being—pending further discoveries, of course.
Comments