Humphrey Bogart, The Making of A Legend could possibly be the worst book ever written. The only reason I hesitate calling it definitely the worst is because Porter has written so many other books based on dead movie stars who can't defend themselves or their reputations that I'm sure there are some other contenders for the title.
Porter cites no sources, but has a handy dandy paragraph at the beginning of the book claiming that every conversation can be cited — although he incudes no citations, but merely a list of books on Hollywood in the bibliography at the back of the book that he may or may not have read and taken stories from. He writes the book in the present tense, with full-blown conversations and details as to what Bogie, or "Hump," as he claims he was called for most of his early life, was eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a particular day — practically always ham and eggs. Bogie was in as endless a pursuit to find a plate of ham and eggs as he was a drink in a speakeasy or nightclub, but Porter rarely mentions what specific alcohol he was swilling, or his smoking, which he was supposed to have been doing in as much abundance.
Boring meals inventory aside, what the book is truly about is sex, sex, sex. The "making" of Humphrey Bogart — get it? According to Porter, not only did Bogart "ball" every actress he met, but they all came on to him, as well as every other actor he met. From his tender years growing up in Connecticut and even before he got kicked out of Andover, everyone he encountered was sex-obsessed and bisexual or gay, including his old man. His father and all of Hollywood may or may not have been bisexual. That doesn't matter. It's Porter's prurient way of portraying every other person Bogie comes across, his implication that what they were doing was sleazy, that becomes distasteful.
Supposedly Bogie's first wife, Helen Menken, was bisexual, as was almost every starlet he had an affair with and every actor he worked with once he got to Hollywood — Barbara Stanwyck, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, George Raft, etc., etc. Porter throws in more well-documented gay actors, such as Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich to add credibility to his "everybody's gay" motif. I'm not sure why he feels so compelled to out stars from so long ago. Does he really think anyone would be surprised or even titillated to know that actors and actresses, people on the stage and attracted to the arts, would be gay? Outing frequently appears a very short step from self-loathing.
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