By
Ed Garea
It’s
a scene every cinephile has seen at least 100 times and can quote by
heart, perhaps the most iconic scene in Hollywood history. It’s
from To Have and Have Not, Howard Hawks’ light-hearted
1944 take-off on the previous year’s hit, Casablanca.
Lauren Bacall’s character, Slim, a woman of total mystery, is
visiting Humphrey Bogart’s character, a hard-boiled charter-boat
captain she calls Steve, in his hotel room. During the course of
their encounter, she kisses him. “What did you do that for?” asks
Steve. “I’ve been wondering if I’d like it,” she answers.
Steve gives her a quizzical look, “What’s the decision?” “I
don’t know yet,” she says, and she kisses him again.
“It’s
even better when you help,” she tells him.
As
she prepares to leave the hotel room, she turns toward Steve. “You
know, you don’t have to act with me, Steve,” she says. “You
don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything.
Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?
You just put your lips together and blow.” With that she leaves.
Bogart, with the expression of someone who just can’t believe his
luck, thinks it over for a minute. Then he whistles to no one in
particular, except maybe we in the audience.
And
with that we have just grasped the essence of the allure of Lauren
Bacall and why she became a star. She was Cool before there was such
a thing as Cool. Known for her striking looks and husky, sultry
voice, the result of a two-pack-a-day habit, she was the embodiment
of the independent woman, a role she played in one form or another
until her brand of sass died out in the ‘50s, replaced by the icy
aloofness of Grace Kelly and the needy, borderline trashiness of
Marilyn Monroe and her seemingly uncountable imitators.
If
that wasn’t enough, she went and married the King of Cool himself,
Bogart. They became the storybook Hollywood couple. In her memoirs
she said “No one has ever written a romance better than we lived
it.” She called him Bogie and he called her Slim. She gave him a
son, Stephen, named for Bogie’s character in To Have and
Have Not, and a daughter, Leslie, named for Leslie Howard. Betty
cut back on movie offers to be closer to her young family. It was
heaven on Earth . . . while it lasted. Alas, it all came to an end in
1957 when Bogie passed away from cancer of the esophagus at the
age of 57. Betty went into a professional and deeply personal
tailspin.
Slowly
she fought to re-establish herself as an actress, returning to
Broadway, where she had not been since 1942. It took awhile, but good
stage roles finally came her way and she made the most of them. A
second marriage in 1961 to actor Jason Robards, Jr. ended in divorce
in 1969, largely due to his alcoholism.
As
the Bogart legend began to take off in the ‘60s, she was embraced
by the public as his wife and leading lady, yet she felt trapped by
it all, seeing herself as defined only as the Widow Bogart. She
wanted to be known for her own accomplishments in the arts, but in
interviews, she resigned herself to the inevitable. One can’t fight
one’s history.
The
road to becoming Lauren Bacall was not an easy one. She was born
Betty Joan Perske in Brooklyn on Sept. 16, 1924, the daughter of
Jewish immigrants from Poland and Romania, William and Natalie
Perske. Her parents divorced when she was six years old; she would
have no contact with her father after that. Her mother moved to
Manhattan, adopting the second half of her maiden name,
Weinstein-Bacal. So Betty Joan Perske became Betty Joan Bacal.
Her
mother’s family was close-knit, but not an affluent one. Finances
were always a problem as she grew up. Through the generosity of her
Uncle Charlie, she was able to attend the Highland Manor School for
Girls in Tarrytown, N.Y., graduating from grade school at age 11. She
attended Julia Richman High School in Manhattan and studied acting at
the New York School of the Theater.
She
graduated from Julia Richman in 1940 and became a full-time student
at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she met fellow
student, and first crush, Kirk Douglas. However, she was forced to
leave after the first year because her family could no longer afford
the tuition. A scholarship was out of the question: the Academy did
not offer scholarships to women at that time.
With
no other prospects she turned to modeling, landing jobs with David
Crystal, a Seventh Avenue dress manufacturer, and Sam Friedlander,
who made evening gowns. It was 1941, she was 16, and the jobs, when
they came, paid little. During lunch hours she stood outside Sardi’s,
hawking Actor’s Cue, a casting tip sheet, and hoping to
catch the eye of producers. She also worked as an usher at Broadway
theaters, and became a hostess at the newly-opened Stage Door
Canteen.
Her
efforts eventually landed her a walk-on part in a Broadway play
called Johnny 2 x 4. Though it paid only $15 a week and
closed in eight weeks, it was a beginning. Meanwhile, her job as an
usher led her to make the acquaintance of Paul Lukas, who would serve
as an informal mentor, with his advice proving crucial to her career
development.
Later
that year, producer Max Gordon cast her in Franklin Street, a
comedy directed by George S. Kaufman. The play had a hard time
catching on with the public and closed out of town for what was
called “retinkering.” It would be her last time onstage for 17
years.
Returing
to New York, a friend introduced her to Nicolas de Gunzburg, an
editor at Harper’s Bazaar. He invited her to come to
his office the next morning and took her to meet Diana Vreeland, the
fashion editor. Vreeland spotted her talent and photogenic potential,
and asked her to return the next day to meet the photographer Louise
Dahl-Wolfe. She took test shots, and a few days later Vreeland called
with a job offer. It paid $10 an hour, a substantial sum in those
days.
During
this time Betty added an extra “L” to her last name to avoid the
constant errors in pronunciation. She worked steadily for Vreeland,
appearing in a number of advertisements. But it was a full-page,
color picture of her standing in front of a window with the words
“American Red Cross Blood Donor Service” on it - a poster of a
besuited, independent woman caught up in the war effort. Lit rather
provocatively and noirishly, the picture caught the eye of Columbia
Studios, David O. Selznick, and Howard Hughes, each of whom sent
inquiries. But it was a woman she had never met, Nancy “Slim”
Hawks, which led to the offer she couldn’t refuse. Slim showed the
picture to husband Hawks, who immediately
spotted a connection between the young model and his wife. Hawks and
partner Charlie Feldman offered to sign her to a seven-year, personal
contract. Betty accepted, and, at the age of 18, left for Los Angeles
by train with her mother. She would start at the princely sum of $124
per week.
Hawks
became a surrogate father and she in turn allowed him to live out his
fantasy of becoming a Svengali, taking a kid from nowhere and molding
her into a superstar. He renamed her “Lauren,” to add a little
glam, as ”Betty” was too friendly. He also had her work on
deepening her voice (he disliked women screeching), sitting in her
car up on Mulholland Drive reading The Robe aloud by
the hour, and the aforementioned two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. She
was also on call as a protégé at parties, so Hawks could show her
off to various studio heads and the like, all the while searching for
the perfect vehicle to launch her film career.
He
finally found it in his adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To
Have and Have Not. Hawks planned the film to be a wittier take
on Casablanca, and, as with all his adaptations, the only
resemblance between the original and the adaptation was the title.
Hawks created a character for Bacall, a woman of mystery named Marie
Browning. From scant clues provided in one of the original drafts of
the screenplay, it seems that Slim is a kept woman whose sugar daddy
was killed by stray gunfire during a police raid at the hotel where
they were staying. However, in the final cut, Hawks dispensed with
explanations - they weren’t necessary. We first meet her when she
picks the pocket of an obnoxious client (Walter Sande) of the story’s
main character, charter ship owner Harry Morgan (Bogart). She quickly
develops a flirtatious relationship with Morgan. He calls her “Slim”
(Hawks honoring his wife), and she calls him “Steve.” He buys her
an airline ticket to take her off the island, but she stays around to
be with him.
To
Have and Have Not is set on the Caribbean island of
Martinique. The original location was to have been Cuba, but the
Cuban government complained to Washington, which, in turn, informed
Jack Warner. Besides, Martinique was more mysterious and romantic.
Controlled by Vichy, it had the natural parallels to Casablanca. The
leader of the Resistance approaches Steve to smuggle in an important
figure, but he refuses. However, needing the money, Morgan agrees and
soon incurs the wrath of the police. Therein hangs the plot.
When
Bacall was informed who her co-star would be, she was less than
thrilled. Bogart did nothing for the young Betty Bacall. In her
memoirs she told of her mother and sister taking her to
see Casablanca when it opened in New York. Although
they all loved it, Rosalie was gaga over Bogart, proclaiming him to
be sexy. Bacall didn’t share her sister’s enthusiasm; her idea of
the ideal man was Leslie Howard or Cary Grant. That opinion was soon
to change. As she said in her memoir, By Myself: “She
thought he was sexy. I thought she was crazy . . . So much for my
judgment at the time.”
When
she finally met Bogart, she found him to be warm, funny, and
supportive of a nervous young actress just embarking on her career.
Bacall was so nervous at first that her head shook. To combat the
shaking she tilted her chin downward to steady herself. She then
looked up with her eyes toward the camera. The result was
electrifying. When the film was previewed, audiences were enraptured.
Bacall was both provocative and preposterous. If an older actress had
delivered those lines about knowing how to whistle, audiences might
have broken out into laughter. But when a young woman, trying to
convince everyone in the room that she’s worldly, speaks them, the
same lines evoke silent admiration. Hawks took advantage of the way
she tilted her head, dubbing her as “The Look” in publicity.
Their
relationship developed slowly. They became fast friends and the crew
could see chemistry developing. One night, according to Bacall, after
the day’s filming was finished, Bogart stood behind Bacall in her
dresser as she brushed her hair. Suddenly he lifted her chin up and
kissed her. Real life transcended their characters and Bacall knew
she was in love.
There
were two obstacles to their happiness. One was Hawks, who quickly
caught on to what was happening. Jealous (he was intent on having her
himself), he warned her not to risk ending her career just as it
began. He also threatened to send her to Monogram Studios, sure death
for a young actress on the rise. When she told Bogart later, he
calmed her by pointing out that Hawks had too much invested to ship
her to Monogram. He was proved correct when Hawks next cast the two
in The Big Sleep. Hawks and the studio basked in the
success of To Have and Have Not, and there was no way
they would allow the private romance to derail further business,
especially when they could build on said rumored romance to stir
ticket sales.
The
other obstacle was more daunting: Mayo Methot. She was Bogart’s
third wife and his most tempestuous relationship. Known about town as
“the Battling Bogarts,” they endured many a physical
confrontation, usually brought on and fueled by large quantities of
alcohol. The difference between the two was that while Bogart liked
to drink, Mayo was a full-blown drunk whose worst side came out when
loaded. She was not only dangerous, but also potentially lethal -
once stabbing Bogart in the back during one of their fights. Bogie
and Betty had to take care not to arouse Mayo, who, at any rate, was
always suspicious of her husband.
During
the filming of The Big Sleep Bogart told Bacall that
he was giving Mayo one last chance. She had agreed to sober up, and
it was the decent thing to do. Bacall was devastated. Their
off-screen relationship affected the on-screen relationship as their
innuendo took on new meaning. Bogart also began to miss days on the
set. He was drunk, depressed, trying to save his marriage. He finally
walked out on Mayo after coming home one day to find her liquored up
and on the warpath. He took an apartment at the fabled Garden of
Allah and began divorce proceedings. As his divorce wore on, the
lovesick Bogey wired Bacall, “Please fence me in Baby - the world’s
too big out there and I don’t like it without you.” When he was
finally granted the divorce from Mayo, he and Bacall were married on
May 21, 1945, at Malabar Farm in Lucas, Ohio, the home of Bogart’s
close friend, writer Louis Bromfield. Bogie wept freely as he saw his
bride walk up the aisle. He was 45; she was 20.
After
their honeymoon it was back to work at Warner’s. Hawks had
acknowledged defeat by selling her contract to Warner Bros. Bacall’s
next assignment was the 1945 thriller, Confidential Agent,
with Charles Boyer and Peter Lorre. Herman Shumlin was the director,
and unlike Hawks, offered no guidance to the fledgling actress. The
result was a performance that came off cold, not cool, without the
zing of her Hawksian characters. “I didn’t know what the hell I
was doing,” she said in her memoir. “I was a novice.”
What
helped her at the time was that while The Big Sleep had
finished before Confidential Agent, it wasn’t released
until the next year, 1946, due to changes and reshoots Hawks made to
expand Bacall’s character. It also helped that her next two
movies, Dark Passage (1947) and Key
Largo (1948) were shot with Bogart as her co-star, though in
both movies, the sassy Bacall was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a
more self-effacing and low-key Bacall. She was beginning to wind down
her movie career to concentrate on her marriage and start a family.
And, in keeping with the Warner’s tradition, she was eventually
suspended 12 times by the studio for rejecting scripts.
One
other thing Bacall took time off for was politics. The Bogarts were
among 500 Hollywood personalities to sign a petition protesting what
they termed as the House Committee on Un-American Activities’
attempt “to smear the motion picture industry.” They flew to
Washington as part of a group known as the Committee for the First
Amendment, which also included Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, John Garfield,
Ira Gershwin, and Jane Wyatt. Later, bowing to studio pressure,
Bogart stated publicly that he believed the Washington trip was
“ill-advised.”
The
new Mrs. Bogart’s son, Stephen (named for Bogart’s character
in To Have and Have Not), was born on January 6, 1949.
Daughter Leslie (named for Leslie Howard) followed in August 23,
1952. Still under contract to Warner Bros., Betty cranked out two
films in 1950. The first, Young Man With a Horn, co-starred
Kirk Douglas and Doris Day. The second, Bright Leaf,
co-starred Gary Cooper. Both were considered decent films, but both
fared badly at the box office. It wasn’t until 1953 that she had a
box-office hit, playing the gold-digging Schatze Page in Jean
Negulesco’s How to Marry a Millionaire, along with
Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe.
She
also remained active in politics, supporting Adlai Stevenson for
president in 1952 and 1956. Back on the domestic front, she helped
her husband host informal parties at their home in the Holmby Hills
section of Los Angeles, sometimes as frequently as five times a week.
She accompanied her husband to various film locations, and also ruled
as den mother for what became known as the Hollywood Rat Pack.
According to legend, the group got its name from Lauren Bacall after
seeing Bogart and his friends return from a night in Las Vegas. “You
look like a goddamn rat pack,” she said, and the name stuck.
Tired
of suspensions from turning down crappy roles, Bacall bought out her
contract with Warner’s. But it didn’t pay off the way she hoped,
for all she got was a role in Douglas Sirk’s overrated
soaper, Written on the Wind (1956), an unbilled
cameo in Jed Harris and Rod Serling’s Patterns (1956),
and a career girl who impulsively marries Gregory Peck in the
passable Designing Woman (1957). Fortunately, there
were other avenues to travel.
In
the early ‘50s, the Bogarts began starring in radio dramas., such
as the adventure series Bold Venture (in part based
on To Have and Have Not). They expanded this in the
mid-1950s to include television, starring with Henry Fonda in a live
television version of The Petrified Forest, the 1936 film
that starred Bogart, Bette Davis and Howard. Bogart reprised his role
as Duke Mantee, while Bacall played Davis’s idealistic waitress,
and Fonda played the dreamy Howard role. In 1956 Bacall co-starred
with Noel Coward in a television production of his Blithe
Spirit.
In
1956, Warner Bros. had bought the rights to John P. Marquand’s
novel, Melville Goodwin, U.S.A., a love story about a
military man and a journalist based on Claire Boothe Luce. The studio
pitched the idea to the Bogarts to star. Their last film together
was Key Largo in 1948. The couple accepted, but even
before pre-production planning began, Bogart told his wife that he’d
had lunch with Greer Garson. Greer said she didn’t like his cough
and insisted he go to see her personal physician, Dr. Maynard
Brandsma, an internist at the Beverly Hills Clinic.
Brandsma
examined Bogart and found an inflamed esophagus. Upon further
testing, cancer was discovered. Bacall decided to put her career on
hold to nurse her husband back to health and provide the children
with an anchor during the troubled times. In By Myself,
Bacall takes us through the painful details of Bogie’s demise and
ultimate death. She notes his weight loss and his inability to eat
solid food, the odor of decay in their bedroom and on his lips, the
dumbwaiter he used to go from his room on the second floor to the
first floor when guests arrived, and the never-ending hope they both
had in a recovery until the doctors finally confessed to Bacall that
everything they tried to eliminate the cancer had failed. She also
described wearing the old robe she had worn in Dark
Passage on the night he died in their bed, the sack in which
Forest Lawn crematorium took Bogie’s lifeless body away, and how
she tried to hide it from the children.
At
Bogie’s funeral she displayed a model of his beloved boat, the
Santana. She found keeping the real one too painful and, after a last
trip during which she cleaned out his personal effects, she sold it.
In trying to recover from her husband’s death, she fell into a
relationship with Frank Sinatra that nearly bloomed into marriage;
that is, until Frank got wind their engagement was leaked to the
press and, blaming Bacall, cut her off cold. It turned out that
Swifty Lazar had spilled the beans, but their relationship was over,
and Bacall, in her memoirs, counts it as a blessing.
She
was becoming disenchanted with Hollywood, noting that “Film is not
a woman’s medium,” and that “If you weren’t the hottest kid
in town, men stayed away from you.” It was probably this
disenchantment that led her back to the Broadway stage. In 1959,
she starred in the George Axelrod comedy, Goodbye Charlie,
playing a womanizer who is killed and returned from the grave as a
woman. It only lasted for 109 performances, but her next parts would
all be in hits.
Meanwhile,
she met, and married, actor Jason Robards, Jr. While the union
produced her third child, Sam, it ultimately failed due to Robards’
drinking. While Bogart could be a heavy drinker, there was a
difference: Robards was a full-blown alcoholic, Bogart was not.
Bacall, a non-drinker herself, was astounded at what alcohol did to
her husband. When sober, Jason was fast, quick-witted, fun to be
around, the loving parent. But, under the influence, he became surly,
abusive, and neglectful of his children, leaving it to his wife to
fill both parenting roles. Bacall, for her part, took time off to
raise Sam. She also became a regular on the salon circuit between New
York and Washington. Before she met Robards, Bacall moved to New
York, purchasing a large apartment at the Dakota on Central Park
West. This would be her home for the rest of her life.
As
Sam got older, and to put space between her and Jason, Bacall took a
lead role in Abe Burrows’ 1965 play, Cactus Flower,
playing the prim assistant to a womanizing dentist played by Barry
Nelson. Cactus Flower, based on the French play, Fleur
de cactus by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, was a
huge hit, eventually playing for almost three years and 1,234
performances - ironically at the same theater where Bacall ushered in
the early ‘40s. When I.A.L. Diamond adapted it into a movie, Bacall
was overlooked in favor of Ingrid Bergman, who won a Golden Globe in
the part.
As
for Hollywood, Bacall appeared in only three films during the
‘60s. Shock Treatment (1963), Sex and the
Single Girl (1964), with Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis, and
Paul Newman’s semi-noir, Harper (1966).
She
divorced Robards in 1969 after learning he was having an affair. She
notes in By Myself that the marriage was dead long
before the discovery, and that the years allowed her to become less
dependent on the men in her life.
In
1970, she returned to Broadway in the hit musical Applause,
an adaptation of the 1950 film classic, All About Eve,
with Bacall as the aging diva, Margo Channing, a role made famous by
Bette Davis. Although she wasn’t much of a singer, the role was a
perfect fit. It was also another hit, opening at New York’s Palace
Theater and running for 896 performances. She won the 1970 Tony Award
for Best Actress in a Musical. When Bacall’s contract was up in
1971, she bowed out and, in an ironic note, was replaced by Anne
Baxter, who had played Eve Harrington in the original film. Bacall
would go on to play in the London production of the show and star in
a 1973 TV-movie adaptation, using the London cast.
In
1981, she won another Tony for starring in the musical adaptation of
the 1942 Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn classic, Woman of
the Year. It opened at the Palace Theater and ran for 770
performances.
Her
film work in the ‘70s, like the ‘60s, was sparse. She appeared as
Mrs. Hubbard, one of many suspects, in the all-star Murder on
the Orient Express (1974) and played the landlady in John
Wayne’s last film, The Shootist (1976).
It
turned out that her best work in the ‘70s was in a completely new
field. Her 1978 memoir, Lauren Bacall: By Myself was
a best seller and in 1980, won a National Book Award for Biography
and Autobiography.
The
1980s were a mixed bag as far as Bacall’s film appearances went.
She began with Robert Altman’s uneven ensemble piece, HealtH, in
1980. She then starred in the critical and financial bomb, The
Fan (1981). She also appeared in the
star-studded Appointment With Death (1988), with
Peter Ustinov as Agatha Christie’s master detective, Hercule
Poirot. Despite good reviews, it performed poorly at the box office.
She
also returned to her first love, the stage, in 1985, as Harold Pinter
directed her in the first London production of Tennessee
Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. The ‘90s - and her late
‘60s - arrived, and Bacall continued to work. As she said in By
Myself, “My goal in life has always been to work. I wouldn’t
know what to do with myself if I had nothing to do but wander.”
To
be honest, Bacall also needed the money. Although Bogart left a
decent estate when he died, the government glommed over half.
Maintaining an apartment at the Dakota and a house in the Hamptons
costs real money, lots of it. Which is why, as age broadened her
features, she restyled herself with the help of a trainer and a
make-up artist. She also found time to pen a second volume of
memoirs, titled Now, in 1994.
In
1990, Bacall had a small role as pulp fiction writer James Caan’s
supportive agent in Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen
King’s Misery. She spent most of the ‘90s appearing
in guest roles on television or in TV movies. As for theatrically
released films, she had a minor role in Robert Altman’s
all-star Pret-a-Porter(1994), and a really great role in
Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces (1997),
where she played Streisand’s narcissistic, yet vulnerable, mother.
It was perfect casting and Bacall was nothing short of brilliant. The
role brought her an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting
Actress.
Having won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actor’s Guild
awards for Best Supporting Actress, the smart money was on her to
win. But astonishingly, the Oscar went to Juliette Binoche for her
part in The English Patient. I’ll never forget the look
on Bacall’s face when Binoche was announced as the winner. I was
dumbfounded. Hollywood had the chance to do the right thing and award
an Oscar to a legend that blew away critics and public alike in her
role. It wasn’t as if it were charity, giving an award to someone
who had clearly seen better days. Bacall’s nomination in 1997 was
her first, despite some 40-odd years of superb performances. It’s
been put forward that Miramax Films, which produced The
English Patient, campaigned heavily for their movie. However,
consider some of the other travesties in Oscar’s history. Simply
put, Bacall was screwed out of the award. Even Binoche was astonished
by her victory.
However,
Bacall was tougher than people supposed. The year before, she was
given the Cesar, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for her lifetime
body of work. Two years prior she was presented with the Commadeur
des Arts et Lettres by the Minister of Culture, Jacques
Toubon. Shortly after the Oscars, Bacall was selected as a Kennedy
Center Honors recipient. In 1999, the American Film Institute
voted her one of the 25 most significant female movie stars in
history. As for the Academy, it took them until 2009 to present
Bacall with a statue for “lifetime achievement.”
It
was also during the ‘90s that Bacall began using her distinctive
voice in television commercials and cartoons, doing everything from
being a spokesperson for the Tuesday Morning discount chain to
producing a line of jewelry with the Weinman Brothers Inc. to using
her voice to hawk High Point coffee and Fancy Feast cat food.
As
the new century dawned, her taste in films changed. No longer looking
to secure parts in commercial movies, she instead looked to
independent films. She appeared in two films for Danish director Lars
von Trier, Dogville (2003)
and Manderlay (2005), Birth (2004)
for Jonathan Glazer (2004), and The Walker, for Paul
Schrader (2007).
She
also did a cameo in The Sopranos (2006) as herself,
and is mugged by a masked man, who later turns out to be Christopher
Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli), mugs her. Her last listed credit was
in 2014 as the voice of Evelyn in the cartoon Family Guy.
Bacall
passed away on August 12, 2014, in her home at the Dakota from a
stroke. She was 89 years old. Sons Stephen Bogart and Sam
Robards, daughter Leslie Bogart, and six grandchildren survive her.
If
she had lived, she would be doing what she loved best – working.
