Betty Joan Perske (September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014), known professionally as Lauren Bacall (), was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. She received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures.
Bacall began a career as a model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency before making her film debut at the age of nineteen in To Have and Have Not (1944) as the leading lady opposite Humphrey Bogart, whom she later married. She continued in the film noir genre with appearances alongside Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948) and she starred in the romantic comedies How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Designing Woman (1957). She portrayed the female lead in Written on the Wind (1956), which is considered one of Douglas Sirk's seminal films. She later acted in Harper (1966), Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and The Shootist (1976).
Bacall found a career resurgence for her role in the romantic comedy The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), for which she earned the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for the Academy Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. During the final stage of her career, she gained newfound success with a younger audience for major supporting roles in the films Misery (1990), Dogville (2003), Birth (2004) and the English dubs of the animated films Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and Ernest & Celestine (2012).
In theater, Bacall made her Broadway debut in Johnny 2x4 (1942). She went on to win two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her performances in Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). She also acted in the play Goodbye Charlie (1959), the farce Cactus Flower (1965) and Wonderful Town (1977). She made her West End debut in Applause (1970) followed by Sweet Bird of Youth (1985).
Early life and education Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in the Bronx, New York City, the only child of William Perske (1889–1982), who sold medical instruments, and Natalie (; 1901–1969), a secretary who later legally changed her surname to Bacal. Both of her parents were Jewish. Her mother emigrated from Iași, Romania, through Ellis Island. Her father was born in New Jersey to parents who were born in Valozhyn, at that time a predominantly Jewish community in present-day Belarus.Bacall, Lauren. By Myself and Then Some, HarperCollins, New York, 2005.
Bacall's parents divorced when she was six, after which she no longer saw her father. She later took her mother's Romanian surname, Bacal, but added a fanciful "L". She was close to her mother, who married Lee Goldberg and moved to California after Bacall became a star. Through her father, Bacall was a second cousin of Shimon Peres (born Szymon Perski), the eighth prime minister and ninth president of Israel, through their shared patrilineal great-grandparents Yehuda and Elke Perski. Peres did not know about the relationship until Bacall told him.
Bacall's family moved soon after her birth to Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway. Wealthy uncles funded Bacall's education at the Highland Manor Boarding School for Girls in Tarrytown, New York, a private boarding school founded by philanthropist Eugene Heitler Lehman, and at Julia Richman High School in Manhattan.
Early career and modeling
In 1941, Bacall studied for a year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where she met classmate and future actor Kirk Douglas. She worked as an usher at the St. James Theatre and as a fashion model in department stores.
She made her acting debut on Broadway in 1942 at age 17 as a walk-on in Johnny 2x4. By then, she lived with her mother at 75 Bank Street and, in 1942, she was crowned Miss Greenwich Village. As a teenage fashion model, Bacall appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar and in magazines such as Vogue. A 1948 article in Life magazine referred to her "cat-like grace, tawny blonde hair and blue-green eyes."
Though Diana Vreeland is often credited with discovering Bacall for Harper's Bazaar, it was in fact Nicolas de Gunzburg who introduced Bacall to Vreeland. He had first met Bacall at a New York club called Tony's, where de Gunzburg suggested that Bacall visit his Harper's Bazaar office the next day. He then turned her over to Vreeland, who arranged for Louise Dahl-Wolfe to shoot Bacall in Kodachrome for the March 1943 cover.
The Harper's Bazaar cover caught the attention of "Slim" Keith, the wife of Hollywood producer and director Howard Hawks. Keith urged her husband to invite Bacall to take a screen test for his forthcoming film To Have and Have Not. Hawks asked his secretary to find more information about Bacall, but the secretary misunderstood and sent Bacall a ticket to travel to Hollywood for the audition.
Hollywood 1944–1959: Hollywood contract and leading roles
After meeting Bacall in Hollywood, Hawks immediately signed her to a seven-year contract with a weekly salary of $100 and personally began to manage her career. He changed her first name to Lauren, and she chose Bacall, a variant of her mother's maiden name, as her screen surname. Slim Hawks also took Bacall under her wing, dressing Bacall stylishly and guiding her in matters of elegance, manners and taste. At Hawks's suggestion, Bacall was trained by a voice coach to speak with a lower, deeper voice rather than her normally high-pitched, nasal voice. As part of her training, Bacall was required to shout verses of Shakespeare for hours every day. Her voice was characterized as a "smoky, sexual growl" by most critics and a "throaty purr". Bacall stood , unusually tall for actresses of the era and a half-inch taller than Humphrey Bogart.
During her screen tests for To Have and Have Not (1944), Bacall was so nervous that, to minimize her quivering, she pressed her chin against her chest, faced the camera and tilted her eyes upward. This effect, which came to be known as "The Look", became another Bacall trademark, along with her sultry voice. Bacall's character in the film used Slim Hawks's nickname, "Slim" and Bogart used Howard Hawks's nickname "Steve". The on-set chemistry between the two was immediate, according to Bacall. She and Bogart, who was unhappily married to Mayo Methot, began a romantic relationship several weeks into shooting. Bacall's role in the script was originally much smaller, but during production, the part was revised and extended several times.
After its release, To Have and Have Not catapulted Bacall into instant stardom and her performance became the cornerstone of her star image that extended into popular culture at large, even influencing fashion as well as filmmakers and other actors. Warner Bros. launched an extensive marketing campaign to promote the picture and to establish Bacall as a movie star. As part of the public-relations push, Bacall visited the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 1945, and sat on a piano as Vice President Harry S. Truman played it.
After To Have and Have Not, Bacall appeared with Charles Boyer in Confidential Agent (1945), which was poorly received by critics. By her own estimation, she had been terribly miscast and the film could have caused considerable damage to her career, but her next performance as the mysterious, acid-tongued Vivian Rutledge in Hawks's film noir The Big Sleep (1946), co-starring Bogart, provided a quick career resurgence. The Big Sleep laid the foundation for Bacall's status as an icon of film noir, with which she would be strongly associated for the rest of her career. She was often cast in roles that were variations of the independent and sultry femme fatale character of Vivian. As described by film scholar Joe McElhaney, "Vivian displays an almost total command of movement and gesture. She never crawls."
Bacall was cast with Bogart in two more films. In the film noir Dark Passage (1947), she played an enigmatic San Francisco artist. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: "Miss Bacall... generates quite a lot of pressure as a sharp-eyed, knows-what-she-wants girl." Bacall appeared in John Huston's melodramatic suspense film Key Largo (1948) with Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Lionel Barrymore. In the film, according to film critic Jessica Kiang, "Bacall brings an edge of ambivalence and independence to the role that makes her character much more interesting than was written." Bacall and Bogart were parodied in the Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies shorts Bacall to Arms (1946) and Slick Hare (1947).
Bacall rejected scripts that she did not find interesting and thereby earned a reputation of being difficult. However, she further solidified her star status in the 1950s by appearing as the leading lady in a string of films that won favorable reviews. Bacall was cast with Gary Cooper in Bright Leaf (1950) and as a two-faced femme fatale in Young Man with a Horn (1950), a jazz musical co-starring Kirk Douglas, Doris Day and Hoagy Carmichael. From 1951 to 1952, Bacall costarred with Bogart in the syndicated action-adventure radio series Bold Venture.
Bacall starred in the first CinemaScope comedy, How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), a runaway hit among critics and at the box office that was directed by Jean Negulesco. She received positive notices for her turn as witty gold-digger Schatze Page.Movie Reviews: "How to Marry a Millionaire", Rotten Tomatoes.com; retrieved August 13, 2014. "First honors in spreading mirth go to Miss Bacall," wrote Alton Cook in the New York World-Telegram & Sun, "The most intelligent and predatory of the trio, she takes complete control of every scene with her acid delivery of viciously witty lines." After the success of How to Marry a Millionaire, Bacall declined the opportunity to press her handprints and footprints in the Grauman's Chinese Theatre's famed cement forecourt. She felt that "anyone with a picture opening could be represented there, standards had been so lowered" and did not feel that she had yet achieved the status of a major star and was thereby unworthy of the honor:Endres, Stacey. Hollywood's Chinese Theatre: The Hand and Footprints of the Stars, Pomegranate Press (1992) e-book "I want to feel I've earned my place with the best my business has produced."
Bacall was under contract to 20th Century-Fox. Following How to Marry a Millionaire, she appeared in yet another CinemaScope comedy directed by Negulesco, Woman's World (1954), which failed to match its predecessor's success at the box office.Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History, Scarecrow Press, 1989 p225'The Top Box-Office Hits of 1954', Variety Weekly, January 5, 1955 A television version of Bogart's early film success The Petrified Forest was performed as a 1955 live installment of the weekly dramatic anthology Producers' Showcase, featuring Bogart in his original role of Duke Mantee and starring Bacall and Henry Fonda. In the late 1990s, Bacall donated the only known kinescope of the performance to the Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media), where it remains archived for viewing in New York City and Los Angeles. Bacall starred in two feature films, The Cobweb and Blood Alley, both released in 1955. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, The Cobweb takes place at a mental institution where Bacall's character works as a therapist. It was her second collaboration with Charles Boyer and the film also stars Richard Widmark and Lillian Gish. A New York Times critic wrote: "In the only two really sympathetic roles, Mr. Widmark is excellent and Miss Bacall shrewdly underplays."