HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, BOGIE.

Byline: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt The New York Times

Title: ``Bogart''

Author: A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax

Data: Illustrated. 676 pages. William Morrow & Co.; $27.50

Title: ``Bogart: A Life in Hollywood''

Author: Jeffrey Meyers

Data: Illustrated. 369 pages. A Peter Davison Book/Houghton Mifflin Co. $30

Why only now, more than 40 years after his death, are we finally getting two major biographies of Humphrey Bogart: ``Bogart,'' by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax, and ``Bogart: A Life in Hollywood,'' by Jeffrey Meyers?

One can only speculate. To judge from these two books, part of the reason may be that Bogart's career was so visible, not only because of the scores of films he made and the gossip that the Hollywood publicity machine ground out, but also because of the many memoirs published by his friends, family members and professional associates, ranging from director John Huston to Lauren Bacall, Bogart's fourth wife.

Another explanation may be that collective memory has only lately begun to gain perspective on the era in which Bogart was a star. This was the time of studio domination, when Warner Bros. cranked out films involving tough-guy urban characters so perfected by Bogart that even when he eventually played a different type, such as Charlie Allnut in ``The African Queen'' or Capt. Queeg in ``The Caine Mutiny,'' part of the appeal of his performance was the contrast.

Still another possibility is simple nostalgia for a dramatic form in which, for all the moral ambiguity of the characters Bogart played, the issues of good and evil were clearer. This, at any rate, is the main appeal of reading about Bogart at length in these two exhaustive biographies.

In other respects, Bogart's life seems all too familiar. The details of his privileged background as the eldest child of Dr. Belmont DeForest Bogart and Maud Humphrey, a nationally known illustrator, are not that revealing (although Sperber and Lax do disclose what a dysfunctional family Bogart was raised in). Nor are the events leading to his breakthrough in the role of the sinister Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood's stage play ``The Petrified Forest.'' (Apparently, no record exists of any play in which he spoke the line ``Tennis, anyone?'')

Unsurprising, too, are the major themes of these biographies, Bogart's four stormy romances (``I must have a wife,'' Meyers quotes Bogart as insisting); his long and exhausting struggle with Warner Bros. for the freedom to play the roles he wanted to, and his near-brush with public disapproval over his stance against the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early days of the Cold War.

And in neither of these books does the account of Bogart's courageous fight against a fatal esophageal cancer surpass Alistair Cooke's description in his 1957 essay ``Humphrey Bogart: Epitaph for a Tough Guy.''

No, where both of these books become more absorbing is on the sets of the major movies Bogart made, particularly ``The Maltese Falcon'' (1941), ``Casablanca'' (1942), ``To Have and Have Not'' (1944), ``The Big Sleep'' (1946), ``The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' (1948), ``Key Largo'' (1948), ``The African Queen'' (1951), ``The Caine Mutiny'' (1954) and ``Sabrina'' (1954). It is here that you re-experience the atmosphere of these wonderfully made films and learn what exactly went into their creation.

Which of these two books tells Bogart's story better? Both contain essentially the same material, from Bogart's expulsion from prep school for bad grades to how technicians stuck fake leeches to his skin in ``The African Queen.''

What you want, of course, is the quicker, more compelling read, and paradoxically you get it in the longer work, ``Bogart,'' which was begun by Sperber, who wrote ``Murrow: His Life and Times,'' and was taken over at the time of her death in 1994 by Eric Lax, the author of ``Woody Allen: A Biography.''

Meyers may use fewer words, but too many of them seem beside the point. He fills space with jumbled plot summaries of Bogart's minor movies. He wanders into irrelevant detours, like comparing the young Bogart to an F. Scott Fitzgerald character and then quoting two paragraphs of a Fitzgerald short story to exhaust his point.

He exposes the ugly sides of Bogart, like his tendency to needle people when he was drinking, without first developing a context, thereby making Bogart seem a boring bully. He writes about Bogart's sexual affairs with the trace of a leer.

Lax, by contrast, rarely mentions a plot wrinkle in a Bogart film without relating it to some larger issue. He digs deeper into Bogart's story, as when he interviews Robert Blake about his experience playing the 13-year-old street urchin who sells Bogart a lottery ticket in ``Treasure,'' but such excursions always sharpen the picture of Bogart. The result is altogether smoother and more coherent.

Even the major themes seem richer and more complex, like the furious ambivalence of Bogart's relations with Jack Warner, and the slipperiness of the slope down which Bogart slid from patriotic indignation over the congressional Hollywood red hunt to resigned surrender to the prevailing hysteria of the times.

Perhaps most important, Sperber and Lax, who never met each other, present a convincingly layered portrait of Bogart. Superficially he was nasty and provocative, particularly when he had been drinking heavily. Underneath he was the tough guy he so often presented in his films. Deeper still he was the cultivated product of his Eastern WASP heritage. And at the bottom he was a sensitive professional who only wanted to excel at his work.

John Huston said in his eloquent eulogy to his friend: ``With the years he had become increasingly aware of the dignity of his profession - actor, not star: actor. Himself, he never took too seriously - his work most seriously. He regarded the somewhat gaudy figure of Bogart, the star, with amused cynicism; Bogart, the actor, he held in deep respect.''

On the set, both before and after the action, Sperber and Lax capture the man Huston was talking about.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Of the two major biographies of Humphrey Bogart, one truly captures the man best known to his friends.

(2) Where both biographies of Bogart become more absorbing is on the sets of the major movies he made, such as ``Casablanca,'' with co-star Ingrid Bergman.