Fat City Cafe
7820 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR 97219 (link is external)
Mayo Methot was raised in Portland and rapidly established herself as a prominent child actress in the Portland theater. In 1922, she moved to New York with her first husband and began performing on Broadway. In 1930, she moved to Los Angeles, hoping to build a career as a film actress. Methot married her second husband in 1931 and while she worked steadily until her retirement in 1940, she never achieved the stardom she had dreamed of as a child.
Methot divorced her second husband in 1937 and in 1938 she married rising film star Humphrey Bogart, whom she’d met on the set of The Marked Man. They became a high profile Hollywood couple marked by fighting, heavy drinking, and for Methot, an attempted suicide in 1943. They separated and reunited several times until Bogart met Lauren Bacall in 1943. He left Methot and she divorced him in 1945.
After a failed attempt to revive her career in New York, she moved back to Portland to live with her mother in the late 1940s. She died in 1951.
While most of Methot’s life is clearly seen in the public record, the circumstances of her death are more mysterious than any of her films or plays. The Oregonian article covering Methot’s death quotes her mother as saying the cause of death was influenza. Her death certificate indicates it was postoperative shock. Multiple sources indicate it was acute alcoholism. Her death certificate also lists Holladay Park Hospital as her place of death. There are numerous stories that she died in that Capital Highway motel and wasn’t found for days. Surprisingly, no coroner’s investigation is on record.
Regardless of what really happened, Mayo Methot’s remains rest at the Portland Memorial Mausoleum. Every week, a dozen roses were delivered to her crypt. These stopped when Humphrey Bogart died.