Screen legend Lauren Bacall died on August 12, 2014 at the age of 89. Best known for her sultry beauty and her work in such classic films as To Have and Have Not (1944) and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Bacall had a storied career.
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in 1924 to a working class Jewish parents in New York City. Her parents divorced early on in her childhood and Bacall’s mother raised her.
Money was scarce for Bacall growing up: As a teenager, Bacall — Betty, to her friends — attended plays with Alexander H. Cohen, who’d go on to be one of Broadway’s leading impresarios. [Cohen notes:] ‘We were so poor, we snuck in during the second act.’”
After attending boarding school paid for by wealthy relatives, she worked as a model. It was during this time that she appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar cover in 1943. Bacall caught the attention of Nancy Hawks, the wife of Howard Hawks, who was a powerful Hollywood director. This sparked her career and landed her a Hollywood screen test. Hawks convinced her to speak in a lower register and to change her name to Lauren Bacall to deemphasize her Jewish heritage.
Her portrayal of a sultry femme fatale in To Have and Have Not put Bacall on the map, in addition to connecting her to her first husband, Humphrey Bogart. However, her confident persona belied her true feelings. Bacall was an inexperienced actress who was faking it until she made it: “In the movie’s famous early scene, Bacall stands at Bogart’s door and sultry-whispers, ‘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.’ She leaves and Bogart whistles appreciatively. That scene could be a documentary film of the middle-aged star realizing he loved his leading lady. Bacall was still a virginal ‘nice Jewish girl,’ and she had adopted her eyes-up, chin-down tilt — what would come to be known as The Look — because she was a nervous ingénue with a case of the shakes.”
Bacall became famous for not only her beauty and elegance, not to mention the famous “look.” Yet, as CBS News reports, Bacall suffered from a lack of truly meaty roles: “Few female roles in the '50s could fully tap her wit, though she was cheeky and elegant as the den mother of gold-diggers Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable in ‘How to Marry A Millionaire,’ and there were flashes of her marvelous timing in ‘Designing Woman.’”
After losing Humphrey Bogart to cancer she married Jason Robards Jr., only to divorce him after a tumultuous marriage. She raised three children, all the while acting on and off. Beginning in the 1970s, she gained critical acclaim on Broadway. She won two Tony awards—one for 1970’s Applause and another for 1981’s Woman of the Year. Bacall continued to act occasionally in films and was nominated for an Oscar for the 1996 film The Mirror Has Two Faces, also starring Barbra Streisand.
Bacall was just as formidable off screen as she appeared on screen. Her grandson, Jamie Bogart notes, “ ‘She was, you can say she was a tough personality. She wanted the best and if you weren't doing the best she let you know about it. She was a great person. Catch her on a bad day it could be interesting. She was a good grandma. She was lucky to have a pretty unique life’”
It might sound clichéd, but Lauren Bacall was ahead of her time, coming of age in an era where the roles for women actresses often relied on stereotype, a fact that sadly remains. Richard Brody from the New Yorker writes, “She was meant to play Presidents and C.E.O.s, editors-in-chief and visionary directors. How many such roles existed for actresses—for women in real life—in her heyday? Bacall was bigger than her career. She started young and stayed ahead of her time, and her greatness—her mighty personal presence and her diverse body of work—carries a shadow of unfulfillment, and even tragedy.” Still, despite the difficulties she faced, Bacall leaves behind a legacy of great films, fashion, and fierceness.