The Influential Women of Humphrey Bogart’s Life: From His Suffragette Mother to Wife Lauren Bacall

variety.com:

Rosemary Rossi Academy Award-winning actor Humphrey Bogart’s life might have turned out a whole lot different had he taken to heart criticism his parents showered on him through his entire early life, calling him an “inadequate” actor and scholar, and an outright “failure.” But a distinctive, raspy voice, the character in his face that he once said had “taken an awful lot of late nights and drinking to put it there,” and that unparalleled talent for playing an emotionally complex tough guy — all fueled by an incredible drive — made him a Hollywood legend.

And, as told in the new documentary streaming today, “Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes,” five women in his life defined the trajectory of his career. “Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes” is chock full of never-before-seen photos and is told using Bogart’s own words from letters, diaries and historical interviews as the narrative backbone.

But what makes the doc different than any other about Hollywood royalty is that it is framed around key relationships with his mother and four wives, including his final marriage to screen icon Lauren Bacall. “As we began developing the film, we quickly decided that the idea of telling Bogart’s story by interweaving the stories of the women in his life felt like a different angle, and one that really excited us,” director Kathryn Ferguson (“Nothing Compares”) says. “These were women who had been instrumental in his success and who all, bar his fourth wife, Lauren Bacall, had been left as footnotes in history.