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Lauren Bacall (born 16 September 1924) is a
Jewish-United States|American film and
theater|stage actor|actress. She is also a former
fashion model. Known for her comedic skills and
sultry voice, as well as her sultry looks, she
became a fashion icon and role model for
modern-day women early in her career. Also known
for her marriage to, and movies with, husband
Humphrey Bogart. She is also a cousin of Shimon
Peres, former Prime Minister of Israel.



==Life and career==
Born in New York City as Betty Joan Perske, she
was an only child. Her parents got divorced when
she was six years old, and she would not see he
father. She would develop a very strong
relationship with her mother. Her mother moved
with her to California when she moved to film from
Broadway theatre|Broadway. 

Bacall first studied dance, something she did for
13-years, and had a dream of to dance with Fred
Astaire, something she never got to do. She then
studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic
Arts, with Kirk Douglas. She had a crush on
Douglas, who was 24 and eight years older than her
16 at the time, and although he wanted to, "teach
me everything he knew about 'sex'," she was scared
and rejected his advances. During this time she
became a theater usher to earn money, and watch
the performances. 

She made her acting debut, as Betty Bacall, on
Broadway theater|Broadway in 1942, in Johnny Two
by Four. Her stage surname is derived from her
mother's Romanian maiden name. Her idol was Bette
Davis, she wanted to be the Bette Davis of
theater.

She started modeling part-time to pay the bills.
While modeling in the garment center one day, the
models started talking about religion, and when
they ask her what she “was”, and she told them
that she was “Jewish”, she felt that they
acted different toward her. Later, when she first
went to Hollywood, she noticed that Film
director|director Howard Hawks would make
off-color remarks about Jews, this made her
nervous, and she did not let Hawks know at the
time that she was Jewish. Something which she says
she has come to regret in the many years since. By
the time he found out, their relationship was to
the point that it did not matter to him. 

Bacall wanted a career on the stage, that was her
life's dream. But, Hawks' wife was reading the
magazine Harper's Bazaar that featured Bacall on
the cover, who was earning a living modeling while
waiting for her stage career to take off. Mrs.
Hawks, Slim (the nickname of the character in To
Have and Have Not), showed the photo to her
husband and he made a phone call to New York to
bring her to Hollywood for her screen test. 

Hawks, wanted to mold her, and be her lover, she
was not interested. He gave her several screen
tests, taught her to speak in a lower tone, and
not liking the name Betty, gave the first name of
'Lauren'. She was so scared in front of the camera
that Hawks had her drop her head a little and pull
her hair over one side of her face. This caused
her to look with her eyes, something that would be
called "the look", and become a sensual trademark.

She met Humphrey Bogart on the set of her first
movie, To Have and Have Not (film)|To Have and
Have Not (1944 in film|1944). After three of four
weeks their feelings for each other started to
change, the first time she knew that Bogart was
interested in her was when he came into her
dressing room at the end of the day’s shooting
and said, “goodnight”, she said,
“goodnight” back, he then lifted her chin and
kissed her. This was something he had never done
before, and it startled her. After that, despite a
25-year difference in age, she could not stop
thinking about him, but he was married to Mayo
Methot. Confused, she confided in her mother, who
wanted her to stay away from him, but she started
seeing him off the set. Bogart wanted a wife
first, not an actress first, and she was willing
to alter her career to spend time with him. 

She insisted that Hal Wallis check out Kirk
Douglas while he was in New York. Douglas had a
small part in a Broadway play. Wallis liked what
he saw and brought him to Hollywood, the result
was that Dougals made his film debut in The
Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946 in film|1946;
opposite Barbara Stanwyck). 

A 20-year old Bacall made worldwide headlines, and
created a sensation, when on a visit to the
National Press Club in Washington D.C. (10
February 1945) her press agent (Charlie Enfield,
chief of publicity at Warner Brothers), had her
sit on a piano, one that the Vice-President of the
United States, Harry S. Truman, happened to be
playing. The photos of the incident
http://www.nandotimes.com/nt/images/century/photos
/century0275.html caused somewhat of a scandal
with the prime-and-proper, and even Truman’s
wife, Bess, was upset about it. Bacall says that
she still gets postcards photos of the event to
this day. 

After To Have and Have Not (film)|To Have and Have
Not, she also appeared with Bogart in The Big
Sleep (1946 in film|1946), Dark Passage (1947 in
film|1947), and Key Largo (movie)|Key Largo (1948
in film|1948). If you watch the love scenes in
“To Have and Have Not” and “The Big Sleep”
you can really see the romance blossoming.

Bacall was married to Humphrey Bogart from 1945
until his death from cancer in 1957, at the time
of their marriage she was 20 and Bogart was 45.
Katharine Hepburn and Bacall, as well as Spencer
Tracy and Bogart, became great friends after the
filming in 1951 of The African Queen (with Bogart
and Hepburn). She became great friends with Arthur
Schlesinger and Alistair Cooke in 1952, and gave
campaign speeches for Adlai Stevenson. She also
had a "school-girl" crush on Stevenson, something
Bogart let her indulge in because of her age.

After Bogart's death Bacall had an affair with
singer and actor Frank Sinatra who "wanted to take
care of her," but she knew that he was "a
womanizer," and would never be faithful to her.
She told Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies
(TCM) in an interview that because of this she
ended the romance, but in her book she writes that
after Sinatra proposed, and later when the press
released the story, he got mad at her and "dropped
the curtain", cutting her off completely, and went
to Las Vegas. 

She was later married to the actor Jason Robards
from 1961 until their divorce in 1969, because of
his addiction to alcohol. She is the mother of two
sons, news producer, documentary film maker, and
author Stephen Bogart and actor Sam Robards, and
one daughter, Leslie Bogart, who became a nurse
and yoga therapist.

In 1955 she co-starred with John Wayne in Blood
Alley, she would also co-star with Wayne in his
last picture, The Shootist, in 1976. Like Bogart,
Wayne was dying of cancer when he made his last
film, and Bacall saw the signs and the parallels.
In Blood Alley she was “terrified of him”,
but, now it was different. She found that she was
very attracted to him, although she had a hard
time understanding why. Wayne was about as far to
the right, politically as staunchly conservative,
as one could get, while she was over on the far
left, a liberal. Although political polar
opposites, still there was a common ground, and a
common attraction. Wayne, like Bogart, also loved
being out on his yacht, being on the sea, every
chance he could get. 

In 1980 she was living in the Dakota, a building
of townhouses in New York City. She was in her
bedroom on the night of 8 December, with her dog
(she always has a dog, now it is Sophie), and she
heard what she thought was a car exhaust backfire.
She looked out the window and saw nothing. A few
minutes later when she turned on the 11:00 p.m.
news she learned that her friend and neighbor John
Lennon had been shot and killed. 

She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for her role in The Mirror Has Two
Faces (1996 in flim|1996). She received the
Kennedy Center Honors in 1997.

Bacall's Broadway stage roles have  included 
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 portrayal of "Margo
Channing" in the musical Applause (a musical
version of the classic movie All About Eve.

She says that "absolutely" two of her favorite
films were Designing Woman, a rare comedy for her,
and The Shootist.

Lauren Bacall has written two
autobiography|autobiographies, Lauren Bacall By
Myself (1978) and Now (book)|Now (1994). In 2005,
Bacall decided to revamp her books by updating and
renaming the sole autobiography By Myself and Then
Some.

In 2004, Bacall started appearing in
advertisements for the Tuesday Morning discount
store franchise.

See also: the Humphrey Bogart#Bogart and
Bacall|Bogart and Bacall section in the Humphrey
Bogart article.

====Quotes====
=====Famous movie quotes=====
From To Have and Have Not (1949): "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."

Bacall is known for speaking her mind, like her
friend Katharine Hepburn, she says what she
thinks.

=====On Harry S. Truman's piano playing=====
From an interview with Turner Classic Movies host
Robert Osborne:

* "...badly, playing the Missouri Waltz, or
something."

=====On Howard Hawks=====
Of Mr. Hawks, Bacall told Larry King on CNN: 

* "He was a svengali. He wanted to mold me. He
wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart
got involved." 

=====On Frank Sinatra=====
She told Turner Classic Movies host Robert
Osborne:

* "He was a womanizer, he wanted to be in the sack
with everybody." 

She said of Sinatra to Larry King:

* "Well, his attention span was not long, shall we
say."

=====On being a Democrat=====
From the Larry King interview: 

* BACALL: "I'm a total Democrat. I'm
anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know
it. Even though..."
* KING: "Wait a minute. Are you a liberal?" 
* BACALL: "I'm a liberal. The L word!" 
* KING: "Egads!"

=====On Nicole Kidman=====
From the Associated Press on Nicole Kidman:

* "She's not a legend," Bacall said. "She can't be
a legend at whatever age she is. ... You have to
be older."

From the Larry King interview:

* KING: "I'm told the media tried to stir up a
fuss when you took issue with a reporter
describing Nicole Kidman as a legend. You worked
together in "Dogville" and the film "Birth" and
the legend label was used by a British morning
show hostess. And you said she's not a legend,
she's a beginner."

* BACALL: "God if the press ever quoted anyone
correctly it would be brilliant."

* KING: "Straighten it out."

* BACALL: "I love Nicole. Nicole and I happen to
be very great friends. Besides that, the press
never get it straight. They do not print what you
say."

* KING: "You can't get it wrong here. What did you
mean?"

* BACALL: "Well, number one, this is what
happened. We were in Venice for "Birth" at the
Venice Film Festival. And you know when you have a
day when you go from one room to another with the
roundtables with about five journalists sitting
around at each table throwing questions at you all
the time. So in one of these rooms, I'm sitting
there. And one of the journalists said, you're an
icon and Nicole Kidman's an icon and what do you
think about that?

* And I said, why do you have to burden her with
the category? She's a young woman. She's got her
whole career ahead of her. Why does she have to be
pegged as an icon or as anything? Let her enjoy
her time. Don't, you know, suddenly put her in a
slot. And that was all I said. The word "legend"
never came up. It was "icon." To begin with. And,
of course, Nicole was there. And she says, you
know the press. Because my only interest was that
she was not hurt or that she did not
misunderstand."

=====On Tom Cruise=====
She slammed Tom Cruise in the 8 August 2005 issue
of Time Magazine:

* "When you talk about a great actor, you're not
talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so
shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and
absolutely unacceptable to use your private life
to sell anything commercially, but I think it's
kind of a sickness."

==Filmography==
*To Have and Have Not (film)|To Have and Have Not
(1944)
*Confidential Agent (1945)
*Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946) (Cameo)
*The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep (1946)
*Dark Passage (1947)
*Key Largo (movie)|Key Largo (1948)
*Young Man with a Horn (1950)
*Bright Leaf (1950)
*How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
*Woman's World (1954)
*1955 Motion Picture Theatre Celebration (1955)
(short subject)
*The Cobweb (1955)
*Blood Alley (1955)
*Written on the Wind (1956)
*Designing Woman (1957)
*The Gift of Love (1958)
*North West Frontier (1959)
*Shock Treatment (1964)|Shock Treatment (1964)
*Sex and the Single Girl (1964)
*Harper (1966)
*Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
*The Shootist (1976)
*The Fan (1981)
*HealtH (1982)
*Appointment with Death (1988)
*Mr. North (1988)
*John Huston: The Man, the Movies, the Maverick
(1989) (documentary)
*Tree of Hands (1989)
*Misery (1990)
*A Star for Two (1991)
*All I Want for Christmas (1991)
*A Foreign Field (1993)
*Ready to Wear (1994)
*The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)
*My Fellow Americans (1996)
*Day and Night (1997)
*Diamonds (1999)
*The Venice Project (1999)
*Presence of Mind (1999)
*The Limit (2003)
*Dogville (2003)
*Birth (2004)
*Howl's Moving Castle (2004) (voice in English
dubbed version)
*Manderlay (2005) 
*These Foolish Things (2005) (currently in
post-production)
*Firedog (2005) (voice) (currently filming)

==External links==
* imdb name|id=0000002|name=Lauren Bacall
*
http://home.nyc.rr.com/alweisel/premierebacall.htm
Idol Chatter: Lauren Bacall
*
http://robots.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/06/lkl.01.h
tml Interview with Larry King on CNN
*
http://www.porthalcyon.com/features/200505/ratpack
03.shtml Article about the "origin" of the "Rat
Pack" taken mainly from her book "Lauren Bacall,
By Myself", (New York: Knopf, 1978)


Commons|Lauren Bacall