It’s Humphrey Bogart’s Birthday. In addition to being one of Planet Earth’s most iconic actors, Bogie was a heckuva drinker, not to mention the original founder of the Rat Pack. “Bogie had an alcoholic thermostat,” screenwriter and drinking comrade Nunnally Johnson said. “He just set his thermostat at noon, pumped in some scotch, and stayed at a nice even glow all day, redosing as necessary.” True story: While shooting The African Queen in the jungles of the Congo, the only two people on the set who didn’t come down with dysentery was Bogart and director John Huston. Why? Because, to quote Katherine Hepburn, “those two had so lined their insides with alcohol that no bug could live in the atmosphere.” Unquote. “I built a solid wall of scotch between me and the bugs,” Bogart reported. “If a mosquito bit me, he’d fall over dead drunk.”
