TV REVIEW : ‘Bacall on Bogart’ on ‘Great Performances’

Class tells, always has and always will. And the mounting of “Bacall on Bogart” tonight on PBS’ “Great Performances” series is a class act down to its smallest detail (8 p.m. on Channel 24, 8:45 p.m. on Channel 50, 9:05 p.m. on Channel 28).

The first American television biography of Bogart to have his widow’s participation, this affectionate account of his life--minus a previous wife or three--is studded with the crucial people of his career, writer-directors John Huston, Richard Brooks, Peter Bogdanovich, screenwriters Julius J. Epstein and Budd Schulberg; Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Van Johnson and Alistair Cooke.

Bacall, looking splendid, strides authoritatively down between Warner Brothers sound stages to tell us sternly that she will be talking about Bogart the actor and his craft. Don’t be crestfallen; the bedrock stuff that made Bogart so singular is here in abundance.

Richard Brooks is one of the best at distilling it: being a tough guy, he says, had little to do with muscle or a general level of irascibility. . . . “It has to do with living 24 hours a day and being able to handle it.” It was that ability that made Bogart “the mature heroic figure that we remember forever.”

This is a careful biography, required viewing for any Bogart lover but also wonderfully satisfying for the care its makers--director David Heeley, who co-produced with Joan Kramer, and writer John L. Miller--have taken with its aesthetics.

The film clips are allowed to run amply and when “The Maltese Falcon” is discussed, not only do we learn about its two earlier botched adaptations, we see 1931’s “Dangerous Female” and 1936’s “Satan Was a Lady” and compare for ourselves.

The parade of early roles--all those forgettable, ingratiating juveniles, heavies of every variety from cowboy to Latino, and the lowest ebb of all, 1939’s “Return of Dr. X,” in which Bogart wears pince-nez with a white streak in his hair--are laced with Bacall’s tart comments. When she moves into their work together, she illustrates Bogart’s considerable influence on her work with film-clip examples, fascinating stuff. “Bacall on Bogart” was shot last year, but it benefits enormously by the presence of John Huston and Ingrid Bergman, sadly gone before the program was made. The Huston footage is from two interviews.

One for the BBC, in which he sports a horse-blanket plaid jacket and a foot-long cigar, tells the details of “The Maltese Falcon,” Huston’s adaptation and first directing job. It was because he was a neophyte director that George Raft turned the project down, Huston confides. The second footage, about “The African Queen,” was part of a Directors Guild interview from the early ‘80s, by which time Huston had his white whiskers.

These marvelous moments are further enlivened by co-star Katharine Hepburn’s pungent observations on the location and Bogart’s general foot-dragging attitude toward everything foreign--and by home-movie footage by Bacall.

The Bergman interview, about “Casablanca,” and the general hysteria that surrounded its ending, comes from a David Frost special, and it too has a fine, dry chaser in the form of comments by the estimable Julius Epstein, co-writer with his twin brother, Philip, of the screenplay. Natty as well as wickedly incisive, Epstein in 1987 somehow manages to look younger than anyone else on the screen.

There are home movies, newsreels of the Bogarts’ part in Hollywood’s 1947 protest of the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as private and intimate moments with their two children.

“Bacall on Bogart” opens with Bacall’s “Got a match?” and closes with a moment from “Dark Passage” as Bogart, his face suffused with love, takes his wife into his arms on a veranda. By the end of these 90 minutes, it becomes an illuminating gesture between two infinitely gallant people.