“You look like an old movie star in that hat,” my friend Betty told me as I donned it. “I just can’t think of his name.”

“Humphrey Bogart,” I suggested hopefully.

“Yeah, he wore them sometimes, but that’s not who I’m thinking of.”

Not exactly the reply I wanted. Having been told by various other friends that my chapeaux gives me the appearance of a Mennonite elder, a state trooper, Garth Brooks, and Johnny Cash, I was hoping for a more cosmopolitan comparison with a bit of panache and style.

Like Bogie. Chip Chapman expressed it very well while I was interviewing him for a profile a few years ago. Naming Casablanca as his favorite movie, he described Bogart as the epitome of Hollywood cool. I was hard-pressed to disagree. Casablanca is at the top of my list of favorite movies too, in a three-way tie with The Hound of the Baskervilles (the 1939 version with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) and Charlie Chan on Broadway.

Everybody Comes to Rick’s was the original title of the screenplay, and just about everyone who’s seen the film has vicariously imagined walking through the doors of that Moroccan gin joint, hanging out with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, and joining in on a Dooley Wilson sing-along, with all the atmosphere and action revolving around Bogart.

Bogart the unruffled tough guy denying a Nazi sympathizer access to his casino: “Your cash is good at the bar.” “Do you know who I am?” the rejected official demanded. “I do. You’re lucky the bar is open to you.”

Bogart the macho ladies’ man brushing off Yvonne at the bar: “Where were you last night?” she asked. “That’s so long ago, I don’t remember.” “Will I see you tonight?” “I never make plans that far ahead.”

Bogart the worldly cynic who still cares enough to do the right thing, encouraging Isla to depart with Victor Laszlo: “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life…I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

Rick in Casablanca, Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, Linus Larrabee in Sabrina…Bogart was a glamorous figure the likes of which Hollywood hasn’t seen in many a year and (more’s the pity) will never see again. I thought I’d seen all the available examples of it, which is why I was surprised to come across In A Lonely Place while doing some late-night channel-surfing in Munich.

It was the only station offering English programming, and a Bogart film (particularly one I’d never even heard of before) could hardly have been a better find. Bogart was playing anti-hero Dixon Steele, a talented screenwriter and murder suspect trying to control his chronic rage problem while trying to keep a new romance alive and stay out of jail at the same time.

The ending could’ve been better, but it was still an inspiration. Bogart was on the tube, I was in one of the most international cities in Europe, so the next evening I was in a little shop in the Marienplatz looking at a Borsalino.

I’m still waiting for Betty to remember who it makes me look like.