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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 (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.
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 [1] caused somewhat of a scandal, and even Trumans 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.
The 1950s to the 1980s
Bacall was known to frequently turn down scripts she didnt 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. 1950s 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, the type of character she was known to excel in. 1953's colorful comedy How to Marry a Millionaire was a runaway hit that saw Bacall teaming up with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable. Written on the Wind, directed by Douglas Sirk in 1956, is now considered a classic tear-jerker.In the 1960s, Bacalls movie career waned, and she was only seen in a handful of films. Her saving grace, however, was on Broadway. Her Broadway roles include Goodbye, Charlie in 1959, Cactus Flower in 1965, Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. She won a Tony Award 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.In 1976, Bacall co-starred with John Wayne in his last picture, The Shootist. Like Bogart twenty years before, Wayne was dying of cancer, and Bacall saw the signs and the parallels. 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, a staunch conservative, and Bacall was on the far left, 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).
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 in 2003 with Nicole Kidman, Gone Dark in 2003 with Claire Forlani, and Birth in 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 written two autobiographies, Lauren Bacall By Myself (1978) and Now (1994). In 2005, Bacall updated and renamed her autobiography By Myself and Then Some.
Reputation in Hollywood
Bacall is widely known for her acid tongue and straightforward approach on things. Her tendency to publicly speak out her mind has garnered her a reputation as one of Hollywood's most uncompromising figures, up to the extent that she's been called "bitchy" and "vulgar" by some of her peers. In 2004, she made international headlines by stating her opinion on Nicole Kidman and, later, Tom Cruise.
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.
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