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Welcome to another episode of You Must Remember This,

the podcast dedicated to exploring the secrets and or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century,

part of the Panoply Network.

I'm your host, Kareena Longworth.

Last week, we learned about how Humphrey Bogart, a blue blood Broadway theater actor who had struggled to make an impression in Hollywood,

transformed himself into a romantic tough guy who became one of Hollywood's biggest stars

and even something of an American hero.

Along the way, Bogie fell in love with Lauren Becal, his young co-star and Howard Hoxys to have and have not and took her as his fourth wife.

Lauren Becal was born Betty Persky in 1924 in the Bronx.

She was raised by a single mother and she modeled for Diana Vrelin's Harper's Bazaar before she was spotted by Hoxys' wife, Slim,

and shaped by Hox into the perfect on-screen counterpart to Bogie.

The Bogie and Becal romance started out as an extra-marital affair, but it wasn't just one of those things.

By Becal's account, she was the crowbar with which Bogart wedged himself out of his terrible third marriage,

a liberation which gave him a new lease on life, leading to 12 years of unmarried domestic bliss, abruptly ended with Bogart's death in 1957.

But by Becal's own admission, domestic bliss with Bogie meant putting her own professional life on the back burner,

and allowing Bogart to set the terms for not just their marriage, but also Becal's approach to choosing films and managing her career.

That seemed like a fair trade during their ecstatic marriage, but once Becal was on her own, it was a different story.

In part, because even in death, Bogie never really went away.

She used to joke about what women would be like in a perfect world.

In a perfect world, according to Bogie, a woman would be small enough to fit in his pocket.

And when he wanted her, he could take her out of his pocket, keep her cup in the palm of his hand, or maybe let her free to dance on top of a table.

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