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Lauren Bacall
Born	Betty Joan Perske September 16, 1924 (1924-09-16) (age 83) New York City, New York, United States
Years active	1944 - present
Spouse(s)	Humphrey Bogart (1945-1957) Jason Robards (1961-1969)
Awards won Golden Globe Awards Cecil B. DeMille Award 1993 Lifetime Achievement Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 1997 The Mirror Has Two Faces Screen Actors Guild Awards Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 1996 The Mirror Has Two Faces Tony Awards Best Actress in a Musical 1970 Applause 1981 Woman of the Year Other Awards NBR Award for Best Cast 1994 Prêt-à-Porter Hollywood Walk of Fame 1724 Vine Street

Lauren Bacall (born September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and model. Known for her husky voice and sultry looks, she became a fashion icon in the 1940s and has continued acting to the present day.

She is perhaps best known for being a film noir leading lady in films such as The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), as well as a comedienne, as seen in 1953's How to Marry a Millionaire. Bacall also enjoyed success starring in the Broadway musicals Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981.

Biography

Early life

Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in New York City, the only child of Natalie (née Bacal or Weinstein), a secretary, and William Perske, who worked in sales.^[1] Her parents were Jewish immigrants, their families having come from France, Poland, Romania and Germany.^[2][3] Her first cousin is former Prime Minister and current President of Israel Shimon Peres. Her parents divorced when she was six. She took her mother's name Bacall when her parents divorced.^[4] Bacall no longer saw her father and formed a bond with her mother, whom she took with her to California when she became a movie star.

Career

Bacall studied acting for thirteen years, taking lessons at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. During this time, she became a theater usher and worked as a fashion model. As Betty Bacall, she made her acting debut on Broadway in 1942, in Johnny 2 X 4. According to her autobiography, Bacall met her idol Bette Davis at Davis's hotel. Years later, Davis visited Bacall backstage to congratulate her on her performance in Applause, a musical based on Davis's turn in All About Eve.

Bacall became a part-time fashion model. Howard Hawks's wife Nancy spotted her on the March 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar and urged Hawks to have her take a screen test. Hawks invited Bacall to Hollywood for the audition. He signed her up to a seven-year personal contract, brought her to Hollywood, gave her $100 a week, and began to manage her career. Hawks changed her name to Lauren Bacall. Nancy Hawks took Bacall under her wing.^[5] She dressed Bacall stylishly, and guided the newcomer in matters of elegance, manners, and taste. Bacall's voice was trained to be lower, more masculine, and sexier, which resulted in one of the most distinctive voices in Hollywood.^[6] In the movie, Bacall even takes on Nancy's nickname “Slim”.

Breakthrough

Lauren Bacall in her first film, To Have and Have Not. Hoagy Carmichael is in the background playing piano.

During screen tests for To Have and Have Not (1944) she was nervous, so to minimize her quivering, she pressed her chin against her chest and to face the camera, tilted her eyes upward. This effect became known as 'The Look', Bacall's trademark.^[7] Hawks cast her and gave her the first name Lauren. Her performance is acknowledged as one of the most powerful on-screen debuts in film history.^[8]

On the set, Humphrey Bogart who was married to Mayo Methot, initiated a relationship with Bacall some weeks into shooting and they began seeing each other.

On a visit to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on 10 February 1945, her press agent, chief of publicity at Warner Bros. Charlie Enfield, asked the twenty year old Bacall to sit on the piano which was being played by Vice-President of the United States Harry S. Truman. The photos caused controversy and made worldwide headlines.^[9]

After To Have and Have Not, Bacall was seen opposite Charles Boyer in the critically panned Confidential Agent (1945).^[10] She then appeared with Bogart in the film noir The Big Sleep (1946), the thriller Dark Passage (1947), and John Huston's melodramatic suspense film Key Largo (1948). She was cast with Gary Cooper in the adventure tale Bright Leaf (1950).

1950s

Bacall turned down scripts she didn't find interesting and thereby earned a reputation for being difficult. Yet for her leads in a string of films she received favorable reviews. In Young Man with a Horn (1950), co-starring Doris Day and Kirk Douglas, Bacall played a two-faced femme fatale, with more than a hint of lesbianism to her character.^[11] This movie is often considered the first big-budget jazz film.^[12]

Bacall starred in the CinemaScope comedy How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953, a runaway hit that saw her teaming up with mega superstars Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable who were all at the height of their careers.^[13] Bacall got positive notices for her turn as the witty gold-digger, Schatze Page.^[14] According to her autobiography, Bacall refused to press her hand- and footprints in the cemented forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre at the Los Angeles premiere of the film.

Written on the Wind, directed by Douglas Sirk in 1956, is now considered a classic tear-jerker.^[15] Teaming up with Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack, Bacall played a determined soap opera woman. Bacall states in her autobiography that she didn't think much of the role. While struggling at home with Bogart's severe illness (cancer of the esophagus), Bacall starred with Gregory Peck in the slapstick comedy Designing Woman for rave reviews.^{citation needed} It was directed by Vincente Minnelli and released in 1957. Bogart succumbed to cancer later that year.

1960s and 1970s

Bacall in Murder on the Orient Express

Bacall's movie career waned in the 1960s, and she was only seen in a handful of films. But on Broadway she starred in Goodbye, Charlie (1959), Cactus Flower (1965), Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). She won Tony Awards for her performances in the latter two. The few movies Bacall shot during this period were all-star vehicles such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964) with Henry Fonda, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood, Harper (1966) with Paul Newman and Janet Leigh, and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), with Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney and Sean Connery.

For her work in the Chicago theatre, she won the Sarah Siddons Award in 1972 and again in 1984. In 1976, Bacall co-starred with John Wayne in his last picture, The Shootist. The two became friends, even though Wayne was politically conservative and Bacall was a liberal. They had previously been cast together in 1955's Blood Alley.

Later career

During the 1980s, Bacall appeared in the poorly received star vehicle The Fan (1981) as well as some star-studded features such as Robert Altman's Health (1980) and Michael Winner's Appointment with Death (1988). In 1997, Bacall was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), for which she had already won a Golden Globe. She was widely expected to win the award, which went to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient.

She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997. In 1999, she was voted one of the 25 most significant female movie stars in history by the American Film Institute. Since then, her movie career has seen a new renaissance and she has attracted respectful notices for her performances in high-profile projects such as Dogville (2003) with Nicole Kidman, The Limit (2003) with Claire Forlani, and Birth (2004), again with Kidman. She is one of the leading actors in Paul Schrader's 2007 movie The Walker.

In March 2006, she was seen at the 78th Annual Academy Awards introducing a film montage dedicated to the film noir genre. She also made a cameo appearance on The Sopranos in April 2006, during which she was punched and robbed by a masked Christopher Moltisanti.

In September 2006, Bacall was awarded the first Katharine Hepburn Medal, which recognizes "women whose lives, work and contributions embody the intelligence, drive and independence of the four-time-Oscar-winning actress," by Bryn Mawr College's Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center.^[16] She gave an address at the memorial service of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr at the Reform Club in London in June 2007.

Bacall is the spokesperson for the Tuesday Morning discount chain. Commercials show her in a limousine waiting for the store to open at the beginning of one of their sales events.

Personal life

On May 21, 1945, Bacall married Humphrey Bogart. Their wedding and honeymoon took place at Malabar Farm, Lucas, Ohio. It was the country home of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield, a close friend of Bogart. The wedding was held in the Big House. Bacall was 20 and Bogart was 45. They remained married until Bogart's death from cancer in 1957. Bogart usually called Bacall "Baby," even when referring to her in conversations with other people. During the filming of The African Queen in 1951, Bacall and Bogart became friends of Bogart's co-star Katharine Hepburn and her partner Spencer Tracy. Bacall also began to mix in non-acting circles, becoming friends with the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and the journalist Alistair Cooke. In 1952, she gave campaign speeches for Democratic Presidential contender Adlai Stevenson.

Shortly after Bogart's death in 1957, Bacall had a relationship with singer and actor Frank Sinatra. She told Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in an interview that she had ended the romance. However, in her autobiography, she wrote that Sinatra abruptly ended the relationship, having become angry that the story of his proposal to Bacall had reached the press. Bacall and her friend Swifty Lazar had run into the gossip columnist Louella Parsons, to whom Lazar had spilled the beans. Sinatra then cut Bacall off and went to Las Vegas.

Bacall was married to actor Jason Robards from 1961 to 1969. According to Bacall's autobiography, she divorced Robards mainly because of his alcoholism. Bacall had two children with Bogart and one child with Robards. Her children with Bogart are Stephen Bogart, a news producer, documentary film maker and author, and daughter Leslie Bogart, a leading yoga instructor. Sam Robards, her son with Robards, is an actor.

After Robards, Bacall has not married. In her autobiography Now, she recalls having a relationship with Len Cariou, her co-star in Applause.

Bacall has written two autobiographies, Lauren Bacall By Myself (1978) and Now (1994). In 2005, she re-published the first volume and updated it with an extra chapter. She released it as By Myself and Then Some.

Quotes

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Lauren Bacall

Bacall is known for speaking out her mind and her sarcastic remarks on her colleagues and peers. She has also delivered some of the most famous lines in movie history.

Movie quotes

From To Have and Have Not (1944): "You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

From The Big Sleep (1946): Humphrey Bogart: "What's wrong with you?" Lauren Bacall: "Nothing you can't fix."

From How to Marry a Millionaire (1953): "Look at that old fellow, what's his name, in The African Queen. Absolutely crazy about him!" (in reference to her then-husband, Bogart)

On Howard Hawks

Of Mr. Hawks, Bacall told Larry King on CNN:

• "He was a Svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved."

On Frank Sinatra

She told Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne:

• "He was a womanizer, he wanted to be in the sack with everybody and I liked that."

She said of Sinatra to Larry King:

• "Well, his attention span was not long, shall we say."

On her political leanings

From the Larry King interview:

• Bacall: "I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it."
• King: "Wait a minute. Are you a liberal?"
• Bacall: "I'm a liberal. The L word!"

Bacall was a staunch opponent of McCarthyism along with other Hollywood figures such as Humphrey Bogart.

On Tom Cruise

From the 8 August 2005 issue of Time:

• "When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but, I think it's kind of a sickness."

Political views

Bacall appeared alongside Humphrey Bogart in a photograph printed at the end of an article he wrote titled "I'm No Communist" in the May 1948 edition of Photoplay magazine,^[17] written to counteract negative publicity resulting from his appearance before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. In October 1947, Bacall and Bogart traveled to Washington, DC along with other Hollywood stars, in a group that called itself the Committee for the First Amendment. In the article, Bogart distances himself from the Hollywood Ten.

Dramatization of Bacall

In 1980, Kathryn Harrold played Bacall in the TV movie Bogie that was directed by Vincent Sherman and was based on the novel by Joe Hymans. Kevin O'Connor played Bogart, and the movie focused primarily upon the disintegration of Bogart's third marriage to Mayo Methot, played by Ann Wedgeworth, when Bogart met Bacall and began an affair with her.

Bacall in popular culture

The conclusion of the Bugs Bunny cartoon Slick Hare (1947) features a blonde likeness of Bacall, addressed by both Bogart and Bugs as "Baby." Bacall is also featured in a cartoon spoof of To Have and Have Not called Bacall to Arms (1946), which stars "Laurie Becool" and "Bogey Gocart" in a film within the cartoon.

In the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita, the song "Rainbow High" has the character of Eva Peron singing "Lauren Bacall me" when she orders her stylist to dress her up for her trip to Europe.

She is mentioned in the chorus for the song "Car Jamming" by punk rock act The Clash.

She is also mentioned in the Madonna song "Vogue", along with other style icons of past decades.

Bon Jovi song "Captain Crash And The Beauty Queen From Mars" mentions her and Bogart.

The Bertie Higgins hit song "Key Largo" refrains "We had it all, just like Bogie and Bacall."

Bacall was shown on an episode of The Simpsons, "Smoke on the Daughter." She appeared to Lisa in the form of a ghost.

Filmography

Features

Short subjects

• 1955 Motion Picture Theatre Celebration (1955)
• Amália Traïda (2004)

Selected stage appearances

• January Two by Four (1942)
• Goodbye Charlie (1959)
• Cactus Flower (1965)
• Applause (1970)
• V.I.P. Night on Broadway (1979) (benefit concert)
• Woman of the Year (1981)
• Angela Lansbury: A Celebration (1996) (benefit concert)
• Waiting in the Wings (1999)

Television work

• What's My Line (1953)
• The Petrified Forest on Producers' Showcase (1956)
• Blithe Spirit (1956)
• Applause (1973)
• Perfect Gentlemen (1978)
• Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs (Rockford Files) (1979)
• Dinner at Eight (1989)
• A Little Piece of Sunshine (1990)
• The Portrait (1993)
• The Parallax Garden (1993)
• It's All in the Game (Columbo) (1993)
• From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1995)
• 6th PBS ident (1996) as announcer
• 7th PBS ident (1998) as announcer; older woman in red shirt
• Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke (1999)
• The Sopranos (2006)

Books by Lauren Bacall

• By Myself (1978)
• Now (1994)
• By Myself and Then Some (2005)

Awards and nominations

• 1970 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical – Applause
• 1972 Sarah Siddons Award
• 1980 National Book Award for Best Non-Fiction Book – By Myself
• 1981 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical – Woman of the Year
• 1984 Sarah Siddons Award
• 1993 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award
• 1997 Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role – The Mirror Has Two Faces
• 1997 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role – The Mirror Has Two Faces
• 1997 Kennedy Center Honors
• 2000 Stockholm Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2007 Norwegian International Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award

Nominations

• 1977 BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role – The Shootist
• 1997 BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role – The Mirror Has Two Faces
• 1997 Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role – 'The Mirror Has Two Faces

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1724 Vine Street.

See also

• Humphrey Bogart: the Bogart and Bacall section
• Bogart-Bacall syndrome
• Monarch of the Seas: She is the godmother of the Royal Caribbean International Cruise Ship.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Lauren Bacall

External links

• Lauren Bacall at the Internet Movie Database
• Lauren Bacall at the TCM Movie Database
• Lauren Bacall at the Internet Broadway Database
• Lauren Bacall at Allmovie
• Lauren Bacall at TV.com
• Idol Chatter: Lauren Bacall
• Interview with Larry King on CNN
• Article about the "origin" of the "Rat Pack" taken mainly from her book "Lauren Bacall, By Myself", (New York: Knopf, 1978)