Clandestine mistress of Bogart dies

Verita Bouvaire Thompson, the hard-drinking mistress and long-time companion of Humphrey Bogart who described herself as 'Bacall's worst nightmare', has died aged 89.

Thompson died of natural causes in New Orleans, the city she had made her home in the 1990s. Her 17-year affair with Bogart first came to light in 1982 in her book Bogie and Me: A Love Story, a memoir in which she described the close relationship the couple struck up two years before the star met his famous fourth wife, Lauren Bacall, on the set of the 1944 film To Have and Have Not

Between 1950 and 1956 Thompson travelled with Bogart, ostensibly as his personal secretary, bartender and hairdresser. A hopeful starlet who had spent most of her youth in Mexico, Thompson had trained in wig-making and then established herself in Hollywood as an expert in the preparation of toupees, working for stars such as George Raft, Ray Milland and Gary Cooper. When she travelled with Bogart, she always carried a suitcase packed with 10 hairpieces, including a 'cocktail wig' and a 'shaggy wig'. The actor, Thompson once recalled, was practically bald but hated wearing a toupee. 'I used to say: "You look like hell without it, like an old man". '

She first met Bogart at a party after shooting finished on his 1942 classic, Casablanca. 'Bogie didn't like to dance, but, honey, we danced the night away and from that day on we were lovers,' she told an interviewer in 1998.

Bogart made a habit of introducing her in company as his 'mistress', explaining to Thompson later that he believed the joke would ensure suspicious minds were thrown off the scent. The two shared a passion for sailing and drinking that repeatedly left his wife Bacall stranded, according to Jeffrey Meyers's biography Bogart: A Life in Hollywood.

This weekend the secret that lay behind one of the most iconic celebrity marriages of all time was confirmed once more by Thompson's boyfriend Dean Shapiro, 58, a New Orleans writer. 'It's hard for people to accept that the Bogie and Bacall myth wasn't really what it was,' he said. 'They were supposed to be this great Hollywood couple, but Bogie was carrying on with Verita on the side.' She could trade cuss word for cuss word and shot for shot with him. She liked to drink, he liked to drink. They did a lot of crazy things together.'

When the affair began, Bogart was still unhappily married to actress Mayo Methot and Thompson to her first husband, Robert Peterson.

In 1945 Bogart married Bacall, a 20-year-old former New York model, 12 days after his divorce from Methot had come through. The couple went on to have two children, Stephen and Leslie, a girl named after the British actor and friend of Bogart, Leslie Howard.

Nevertheless the clandestine affair with Thompson continued until her second marriage to cinematographer Walter Thompson in 1955. Bogart died in 1957 and Thompson has claimed that the actor called her from his deathbed.

'He asked me to spend the weekend on his boat to see everything was all right. When I got there, I discovered the boat had been painted. I think he knew he was going to die and the boat had to look her best in order to be sold. I called him and he said: "Don't drink all my scotch, I'll be down there soon." '

After the actor's death, Thompson opened Verita's La Cantina, a Mexican restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. She later moved to Natchez, Mississippi, in the late 1980s, before opening a piano bar in New Orleans called Bogie and Me.

Following Hurricane Katrina, Thompson was one of those who refused to leave her home. She commented: 'Lauren Bacall failed to chase me out of Hollywood; Katrina won't force me out of New Orleans.'

Born in 1918 in Arizona, she was raised by her grandparents and was prompted to head for Hollywood after being runner-up in the 1935 Miss Arizona Pageant. The one-time custodian of two of Bogie's big secrets, his baldness and his marital infidelity, Thompson is said to have slept with one of his toupees under her pillow.