Betty Joan Perske, known as Lauren Bacall, was born in 1924 and was an American actress with a sharp, independent personality on and off screen. Lauren began as a fashion model, but she needed another job to support herself, so she worked as a theatre usher and hostess at the Stage Door Canteen until she got her first film role in To Have and Have Not.
On set, Bacall became known for her trademark gesture, “The Look,” and she met Humphrey Bogart, who was also acting in the same film.
Bacall and Bogart’s connection started growing, and they soon fell in love. Bogart was married at the time, but within months he divorced his wife and married Bacall. The couple co-starred in three movies, but the marriage stalled Bacall’s career, and she began appearing in fewer films.
“I think many directors never thought of me except as Bogie’s wife. That doesn’t lead to a great career, and I certainly did not fight for a career. So I guess you win some and you lose some. It was by choice.” She once said
In 1957, Bogart died of lung cancer. After a while, Bacall got engaged to Frank Sinatra for only about a month, then went back to the theater.
At the beginning of the ‘60s, Bacall married again, this time to Jason Robards Jr., and she recovered her career, playing major roles in a few films.
She and Robards got divorced in 1969, and shortly after, Bacall played the lead role in the Broadway musical Applause, and after that, she continued to act in some memorable roles such as Murder on the Orient Express, The Shootist, The Fan, Misery, and The Mirror Has Two Faces, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination.
Bacall wrote three autobiographies, By Myself in 1978, Now in 1994, and And Then Some in 2005.
In her 80s, Bacall was still active and in relatively good health, and was one of the last links left to the Golden Age of Hollywood.
“I don’t think anybody that has a brain can really be happy. What is there really to be happy about? I had a good growing-up life, I would say, but I wasn’t really happy, because I was an only child, and I wasn’t part of a whole family, what we in America consider the proper family, a father and a mother and child, which, of course, is a big crock, we know, and yet I had the greatest family anyone could wish for in everyone on my mother’s side. So what you think is happy? Happy shmappy.” she once said.
On August 12, 2014, Bacall passed away from a stroke at her home in New York City. The Humphrey Bogart Estate posted this message on their Facebook page: “With deep sorrow for the magnitude of our loss, yet with great gratitude for her amazing life, we confirm the passing of Lauren Bacall.”
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