Lauren Bacall

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Lauren Bacall (born September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and a former model. Known for her husky voice and sultry looks, early in her career Bacall became a fashion icon and role model for modern-day women.

She was married to and appeared in movies with film icon Humphrey Bogart, a quarter-century her senior. Today, she is considered a legendary actress, partly due to the longevity of her career.

Image:Bogart Bacall AFRS.jpg

Contents

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Career

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Early Stages

Born in New York City as Betty Joan Perske, she was the only child of Jewish immigrants, William Perske (a relative of the Former Israeli Prime-Minister Shimon Peres, born in Poland, in an area which is now part of Belarus) and Natalie Weinstein-Bacal (born in Romania). Her father was a salesman and her mother was a secretary. Her parents were divorced when she was six years old.

As a result, she no longer saw her father, and she formed a strong bond with her mother whom she took with her to California once she had become a movie star.

Bacall first studied dancing for 13 years. She then studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. During this time she became a theater usher.

As Betty Bacall, she made her acting debut on Broadway in 1942, in Johnny Two by Four (her stage name is derived from her mother's Romanian maiden name (Bacal)). At that time her idol was the actress Bette Davis.

Later on, she recalled that she had wanted to be "the Bette Davis of the theater". Bacall, then a young Betty, got the chance to meet Davis at her hotel. Years later, Davis would visit Bacall backstage to congratulate her on her triumphant performance of Margo Channing in Applause, a musical based on Davis's successful turn in All About Eve.

Bacall began to model part-time. This was when she experienced anti-Semitism for the first time. Later, when she first went to Hollywood, she noticed that director Howard Hawks would make anti-Semitic remarks. This made her nervous of revealing her identity and she did not let Hawks know at the time that she was Jewish, a decision she now regrets.

A career on the stage was what Bacall had envisaged for herself, but she entered the world of movies almost by chance. After Howard Hawks' wife (nicknamed "Slim") spotted Bacall on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, she showed the photo to her husband, and he then made a phone call to New York to bring her to Hollywood for a screen test. Hawks would use the nickname "Slim" for Bacall's character in her first movie To Have and Have Not.

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The Breakthrough

Hawks gave her several screen tests, teaching her to speak in a lower tone. Not liking the name Betty, he gave her the first name Lauren. She was nervous in front of the camera, so Hawks suggested that she tilt her head a little and pull her hair over one side of her face. This became known as The Look, Bacall's sensual trademark.

She met Humphrey Bogart on the set of her first film, To Have and Have Not (1944). Bogart (who was married to Mayo Methot) initiated a relationship with Bacall some weeks into shooting and they began to see each other off set.

To Have and Have Not catapulted Bacall to instant stardom. Her turn in the film has later been acknowledged as one of the most powerful on-screen debuts in film history. She would later recall that because of the overnight success she got, the triumphs of her career from then on didn't feel like triumphs.

Bacall contacted Hal Wallis to ask him to go and see Kirk Douglas who then had a small part in a Broadway play. Wallis then brought Douglas to Hollywood. As a result, Douglas made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946, opposite Barbara Stanwyck).

The 20-year old Bacall made worldwide headlines, and created a sensation, on a visit to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on (10 February 1945). Her press agent (Charlie Enfield, chief of publicity at Warner Bros.) asked her to sit on the piano which was being played by the Vice-President of the United States Harry S. Truman as a publicity stunt. The photos of the incident (see [[1]]) caused somewhat of a scandal, and even Truman’s wife Bess was upset about it. Bacall has said that she still gets sent picture postcards of this event to this day.

After To Have and Have Not, she appeared with Bogart in the classic film noir The Big Sleep (1946), the thriller Dark Passage (1947), and John Huston's melodramatic suspense film Key Largo (1948). Their off-screen romance was obvious on-screen as well.

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The 1950s to the 1980s

Bacall was known to frequently turn down scripts she didn't find interesting. This was rarely heard of for a young female film star and earned her a reputation among studio executives for being difficult to deal with.

Despite or because of her hesistance to appear in subpar projects, she continued to get favorable reviews for her leads in a string of significant films.

1950's Young Man with a Horn, co-starring Doris Day and Kirk Douglas, is often considered the first big-budget jazz film. Bacall played a two-faced femme fatale, with a hint of lesbianism at the end, when, accompanied by another woman, as tall and dark as she, she walks out on Douglas; given the year the film was made, the sexual polemics could not be drawn clearly.

1953's colorful comedy How to Marry a Millionaire was a runaway hit that saw Bacall teaming up with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable. Bacall is one of Monroe's few still living co-stars (along with Eli Wallach and Jane Russell).

Written on the Wind, directed by Douglas Sirk in 1956, is now considered a classic tear-jerker (co-star Dorothy Malone won an Oscar for her performance).

In the 1960s, Bacall´s movie career waned, and she was only seen in a handful of films. Her saving grace, however, was on Broadway. Her Broadway roles included Goodbye, Charlie (1959), Cactus Flower (1965), Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981).

She won Tony Awards for her performances in the musicals Applause and Woman of the Year.

For her work in the Chicago theatre, she won the Sarah Siddons Award in 1972 and again in 1984. She also appeared often on London's West End.

In 1976, Bacall co-starred with John Wayne in his last picture, The Shootist. Like Bogart twenty years earlier, Wayne was dying of cancer, and Bacall recognized the signs.

During the filming of Bacall and Wayne's previous collaboration Blood Alley (1955), Bacall had been terrified of Wayne, as she later reported in her autobiography. However, 20 years later, during the filming of The Shootist, Bacall became attracted to Wayne, albeit platonically, even though Wayne was far to the right and Bacall was a liberal.

Although political polar opposites, there was common ground between them and a common attraction (Wayne, like Bogart, loved being out on his yacht, and had a love of the sea).

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Later Stages

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 received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997. Since then, her movie career has seen a new renaissance and she has given strong performances in some important recent movie projects such as Dogville (2003) with Nicole Kidman, Gone Dark (2003) with Claire Forlani, and Birth (2004), again with Kidman.

In 1999, she was voted one of the 25 most significant movie stars in history by the American Film Institute. She has said that "absolutely" two of her favorite films to make were Designing Woman with Gregory Peck and The Shootist with John Wayne.

In 2004, Bacall started appearing in advertisements for the Tuesday Morning discount store franchise. Years prior to that, she provided her voice to plugging Fancy Feast cat food, among other products. She also continues to appear in film, and is one of the few major stars of her generation still active in the industry.

In March 2006, she was seen at the 78th Annual Academy Awards introducing a film montage dedicated to the film noir genre.

Lauren Bacall has twice written her autobiography, Lauren Bacall By Myself (1978) and Now (1994). In 2005, Bacall updated and renamed her autobiography By Myself and Then Some.

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Private life


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Love life

On May 21, 1945, Bacall married Humphrey Bogart. Their wedding and honeymoon took place at Malabar Farm, Mansfield, Ohio (the country home of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield, a close friend of Bogart). At the time of their marriage, 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.

After the filming of The African Queen in 1951, Bacall and Bogart became great 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 and the journalist Alistair Cooke.

In 1952, she gave campaign speeches for Democratic Presidential contender Adlai Stevenson (on whom she allegedly had a "school-girl" crush).

Shortly after Bogart's death in 1957, Bacall had an affair with singer and actor Frank Sinatra. Bacall states that the affair began after Bogart's death; Knowing of Sinatra's reputation as a womanizer, Bacall knew that he was unlikely to be a faithful husband. 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 "dropped the curtain," cutting Bacall off completely and going to Las Vegas.

She was later married to the actor Jason Robards from 1961 until their divorce in 1969, due to Robards' alcoholism. She is the mother of two sons, news producer, documentary film maker, and author Stephen Bogart and actor Sam Robards as well as one daughter, Leslie Bogart, who became a nurse and yoga therapist.

See also: the Bogart and Bacall section in the Humphrey Bogart article.

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Trivia

  • Bacall is a cousin of Shimon Peres, the former Prime Minister of Israel.
  • Contrary to some reports, Bacall does not have a vocal disorder. However, a type of one has been named after her and Humphrey Bogart. Bogart-Bacall Syndrome (or BBS) is a form of muscle tension dysphonia most common in professional voice users (actors, singers, TV/radio presenters, etc) who habitually use a very low speaking pitch. BBS is more common among women than men and has been blamed on the social pressure that professional women feel to compete with men in the business and professional arenas. The syndrome got its name from the low-pitch speaking tones that both actors used in their performances.
  • Actress Kathleen Turner has often been compared to Bacall. When Turner and Bacall met, Turner reportedly introduced herself to Bacall by saying "Hi, I'm the young you."
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Quotes

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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 iconic lines in movie history.

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Famous Movie Quotes

From To Have and Have Not (1945): "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." (in reference to her then-husband, Bogart)

From Written on the Wind (1956): Bacall: "Just what do you do for the Hadley Oil Company?" Robert Stack: "We're troubleshooters. Wherever they want trouble, they send for us."

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On Harry S. Truman's Piano-Playing

From an interview with Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne:

  • "...badly, playing the Missouri Waltz, or something."
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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."
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On Frank Sinatra

She told Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne:

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

She said of Sinatra to Larry King:

  • "Well, his attention span was not long, shall we say."
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On Being a Democrat

From the Larry King interview:

  • BACALL: "I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it. Even though..."
  • KING: "Wait a minute. Are you a liberal?"
  • BACALL: "I'm a liberal. The L word!"
  • KING: "Egads!"
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On Nicole Kidman

From the Associated Press on Nicole Kidman:

  • "She's not a legend," Bacall said. "She can't be a legend at whatever age she is...you have to be older."

From the Larry King interview:

  • KING: "I'm told the media tried to stir up a fuss when you took issue with a reporter describing Nicole Kidman as a legend. You worked together in "Dogville" and the film "Birth," and the legend label was used by a British morning show hostess. And you said she's not a legend, she's a beginner."
  • BACALL: "God, if the press ever quoted anyone correctly, it would be brilliant."
  • KING: "Straighten it out."
  • BACALL: "I love Nicole. Nicole and I happen to be very great friends. Besides that, the press never get it straight. They do not print what you say."
  • KING: "You can't get it wrong here. What did you mean?"
  • BACALL: "Well, number one, this is what happened. We were in Venice for "Birth" at the Venice Film Festival. And you know when you have a day when you go from one room to another with the roundtables with about five journalists sitting around at each table throwing questions at you all the time. So in one of these rooms, I'm sitting there. And one of the journalists said "you're an icon, and Nicole Kidman's an icon, and what do you think about that?". And I said: "Why do you have to burden her with the category? She's a young woman. She's got her whole career ahead of her. Why does she have to be pegged as an icon or as anything? Let her enjoy her time. Don't, you know, suddenly put her in a slot". And that was all I said. The word "legend" never came up. It was "icon" to begin with. And, of course, Nicole was there. And she says, you know the press. Because my only interest was that she was not hurt or that she did not misunderstand."
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On Tom Cruise

She slammed Tom Cruise in the 8 August 2005 issue of Time Magazine:

  • "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."
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References in popular culture

  • The 1981 romantic ballad, Key Largo (written and sang by Bertie Higgins) referenced the Bogart/Becall movie of the same name, and their relationship.
  • In the song "Rainbow High" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Evita, the main character Eva Peron orders her stylist to "Lauren Bacall me!"
  • Bacall is mentioned among some other Hollywood icons in the lyrics for Madonna's 1990 hit single "Vogue".
  • Bacall is mentioned in The Clash song "Car Jamming" from Combat Rock: "I thought I saw Lauren Bacall/I swear/Hey fellas/Lauren Bacall/In a car jam".
  • 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.
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Filmography

Upcoming:

  • Firedog (2006) (voice)
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Books by Lauren Bacall

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Awards and nominations

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (At 1724 Vine Street)

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See also

Bogart-Bacall Syndrome

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External links

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