Lauren Bacall: An icon who can now be called a legend

It was nervousness that made Lauren Bacall look so self-possessed. On the set of 1944’s “To Have and Have Not,” the 19-year-old actress trembled so much that the soundman leaned over and whispered to co-star Humphrey Bogart, “Hope we don’t hear her knees knocking!” As Bacall recounted in her 1978 autobiography, after a couple of false starts, she “realized that one way to hold my trembling head still was to keep it down, chin low, almost to my chest, and eyes up at Bogart, [which] turned out to be the beginning of ‘the Look.’”

It was “the Look” — a term coined by her publicists — that helped transform Betty Joan Perske, an intelligent, pretty and ambitious blonde from the Bronx, into Lauren Bacall, the sultry, powerful and confident movie star. She also, at the suggestion of director Howard Hawks, purposefully lowered the register of her voice. “And ... what the hell,” Hawks said upon hearing the results. “You have to notice a girl like that.”

Bacall died today at the age of 89. She leaves a legacy of sophistication probably not to be repeated, coming as it did from her own marvelous abilities and a studio system capable of producing outsize careers. Even a publicity photo of her at the age of 20, perched atop an upright piano being played by Vice President Harry Truman, was enough to cause upset. 

She was born on Sept. 16, 1924, to Jewish parents — her mother a Romanian émigré and her father a first-generation Polish-American. Young Betty worked as a theater usher and fashion model while studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Howard Hawks’ wife Nancy noticed a picture of Betty in Harper’s Bazaar and suggested a screen test. Hawks ultimately signed her to a contract and changed her name to Lauren Bacall.

“I was Betty Bacall always,” she told Larry King in 2005. “And Lauren was Howard Hawks.”

As we all know, Bacall and Humphrey Bogart fell in love, even though Bogart was married at the time. The two held hands openly on the set. “Betty was pretty giggly — and silly,” remembered dancer Joy Barlowe. “But cute. And funny. And Bogie got a little more giggly because of her.” Hawks tried to put an end to the relationship but failed.

“To Have and Have Not” could not have started Bacall’s career more strikingly. One moment, she’s standing next to the great Hoagy Carmichael singing “How Little We Know,” a song written for her by Johnny Mercer; the next she turns around to face us from an open door and asks, “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and ... blow.”

Bacall and Bogart married on May 21, 1945. They subsequently appeared together in the late-1940s film noir classics “The Big Sleep” and “Dark Passage.” They were happy by all accounts, although his drinking would sometimes annoy and his sailing made her seasick. “My obit is going to be full of Bogart, I’m sure,” she told Vanity Fair in 2011. “I’ll never know if that’s true.”

Bacall worked with other greats of the era as well. She was directed by John Huston and co-starred with Gary Cooper, Edward G. Robinson and Charles Boyer. Her comedic role in the big 1953 hit “How to Marry a Millionaire,” alongside Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, was just as artfully done as the dramatic part she played three years later in Douglas Sirk’s high drama, “Written on the Wind.”

By this time, Bogart was ill with esophageal cancer. He died in January 1957. “I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t met him,” Bacall said in an interview with Larry King for CNN. “I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me. He gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man.”

She married Jason Robards in the early 1960s. It was a tempestuous relationship, one that Bacall ended primarily because of Robards’ alcoholism.

Bacall worked more sporadically starting in the 1960s, appearing on Broadway — and collecting two Tony Awards — as well as in a few star-studded movies like “Murder on the Orient Express.” She co-starred with John Wayne in “The Shootist,” his last picture. The two were fond of each other despite their obvious political differences. In this, Lauren Bacall was as startlingly honest as in every other part of her life: “Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be,” she said in an interview. “You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind.”

In addition to desultory film work, including a small part in the adaptation of Stephen King’s “Misery,” Bacall dabbled in television in the subsequent decades, including cameos in “The Sopranos” and “Family Guy,” and gathered awards and honors as varied as her accomplished roles — Golden Globes, Kennedy Center Honors, a National Book Award and in 2009 an honorary Oscar. Through it all, she carried herself with an uncommon poise, a penchant for plain speaking and an identity as remarkable as any of her peers, of whom there were few.

In 1999 the American Film Institute voted Bacall one of the 25 most significant female movie stars in history. When King asked her if she thought of herself as a legend, her response was unambiguous. “No, I don't like ‘legend.’ I mean, I don’t like the category. And to begin with, to me, a legend is something that is not on the earth, that is dead … because legends are built and evolve in the past. They’re not the present.”

Lauren Bacall died today in her home in New York. “Her life speaks for itself,” said Stephen Bogart, her son with Humphrey Bogart, named after her character’s pet name for Bogie’s character in “To Have and Have Not.” “She lived a wonderful life, a magical life.”