Age, Biography, and Wiki
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx, New York City, to Jewish parents. Her early life was marked by her parents' divorce when she was five years old, after which she lived with her mother. Throughout her life, Bacall was known for her striking features and her distinctive voice, which became a hallmark of her acting style. She began her career as a model before transitioning to acting, making her film debut in "To Have and Have Not" at the age of 19.
| Occupation | Autobiographer |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 16 September 1924 |
| Age | 100 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Virgo |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 12 August, 2014 |
| Died Place | New York City, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Bacall stood at a height of 5 ft 8 in (1.727 m). While her exact weight is not widely documented, her tall stature and slender build were notable throughout her career.
| Height | 727 m |
| Weight | |
| Body Measurements | |
| Eye Color | |
| Hair Color |
Dating & Relationship Status
Lauren Bacall's most notable relationship was with Humphrey Bogart, whom she met on the set of "To Have and Have Not" in 1943. At the time, Bogart was married, but they eventually wed in 1945 and remained together until his death in 1957. They had two children, Stephen and Leslie Bogart. After Bogart's passing, Bacall married Jason Robards in 1961, with whom she had a son, Sam Robards. The couple divorced in 1969.
Bacall's parents divorced when she was five, after which she no longer saw her father. She later took the Romanian form of her mother's last name, Bacall. She was close to her mother, who married Lee Goldberg and moved to California after Bacall became a star. Through her father, Bacall was related to Shimon Peres (born Szymon Perski), the eighth prime minister and ninth president of Israel. Peres did not know about the relationship until Bacall told him.
She made her acting debut on Broadway in 1942 at age 17 as a walk-on in Johnny 2 X 4. 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."
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.
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 and deeper voice instead of 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 5 ft, 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.
The few films in which Bacall appeared during this period were all-star vehicles such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964) with Henry Fonda, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood; Harper (1966) with Paul Newman, Shelley Winters, Julie Harris, Robert Wagner and Janet Leigh; and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), with Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Martin Balsam and Sean Connery. In 1964, Bacall appeared in two episodes of Craig Stevens's Mr. Broadway: first in "Take a Walk Through a Cemetery" with husband Jason Robards, Jr., and later as Barbara Lake in the episode "Something to Sing About" with Balsam. In 1976, Bacall costarred in The Shootist with John Wayne, with whom she had worked in Blood Alley (1955).
1996 was a pivotal year for Bacall's career. She was chosen by Barbra Streisand to play her mother in the romantic comedy The Mirror Has Two Faces, also starring Jeff Bridges, George Segal and Brenda Vaccaro. Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote of her performance "Bacall, posing, rolling her eyes and snapping out the one-liners with consummate skill, is in to play the source of all of Rose’s insecurities, the mother who was drop-dead gorgeous and who never told her kind of funny-looking daughter she was pretty." She received widespread critical acclaim, and at age 72, she earned her first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, which she was widely expected to win, but lost to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient. She also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
Bacall had a relationship with Frank Sinatra after Bogart's death. During an interview with Turner Classic Movies's Robert Osborne, Bacall stated that she had ended the romance, but, in her autobiography Lauren Bacall by Myself, she wrote that Sinatra ended the relationship abruptly after becoming upset that his marriage proposal had been leaked to the press, believing Bacall to be responsible. However, Bacall states in Lauren Bacall by Myself that when she was out with her friend Irving "Swifty" Lazar, they encountered the gossip columnist Louella Parsons, to whom Lazar revealed the news. Bacall wrote in By Myself that Sinatra only found out the truth years later. Bacall then met and began a relationship with Jason Robards. Their wedding was originally scheduled to take place in Vienna, Austria, on June 16, 1961. The wedding plans were shelved after Austrian authorities refused to grant the couple a marriage license, due to Robards being unable to produce divorce documents from his previous marriage, and Bacall being unable to produce Humphrey Bogart's death certificate. They were also refused a marriage in Las Vegas, Nevada, due to similar documentation issues. On July 4, 1961, the couple drove to Ensenada, Mexico, where they wed. The couple divorced in 1969. According to Bacall's autobiography, she divorced Robards mainly because of his alcoholism.
Bacall had two children with Bogart and one with Robards. Son Stephen Humphrey Bogart (born January 6, 1949) is a news producer, documentary film maker, and author who is named after Bogart's character in To Have and Have Not. Their daughter Leslie Howard Bogart (born August 23, 1952) is named after the actor Leslie Howard. A nurse and yoga instructor, she is married to Erich Schiffmann. In his 1995 memoir, Stephen Bogart wrote, "My mother was a lapsed Jew, and my father was a lapsed Episcopalian", and that he and his sister were raised Episcopalian "because my mother felt that would make life easier for Leslie and me during those post-World War II years". Sam Robards (born December 16, 1961), Bacall's son with Robards, is an actor.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Humphrey Bogart (m. 1945-1957) Jason Robards (m. 1961-1969) |
| Sibling | |
| Children |
Net Worth and Salary
Lauren Bacall's net worth at the time of her death in 2014 was estimated to be $50 million. Her estate was valued at approximately $26.6 million, with a significant portion of her wealth inherited by her children. Notably, her apartment at The Dakota in New York City was valued at $9 million in 2014 and later sold for $23.5 million in 2015.
Career, Business, and Investments
Bacall's career began as a model before she transitioned to acting, making her film debut in "To Have and Have Not" opposite Humphrey Bogart. She went on to star in numerous iconic films, including "The Big Sleep," "Dark Passage," "Key Largo," "How to Marry a Millionaire," and "The Mirror Has Two Faces." Her success extended beyond film to Broadway, where she appeared in musicals like "Applause" and "Woman of the Year". Bacall also ventured into voice acting, notably in the animated film "Ernest & Celestine".
Bacall began a career as a model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency before making her film debut at the age of twenty 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).
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 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. "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: "I want to feel I've earned my place with the best my business has produced."
Many film scholars consider Written on the Wind (1956), directed by Douglas Sirk, a landmark melodrama. Appearing with Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack, Bacall plays a career woman whose life is unexpectedly turned around by a family of oil magnates. Bacall wrote in her autobiography that she did not think much of her role, but reviews were favorable. Variety wrote: "Bacall registers strongly as a sensible girl swept into the madness of the oil family." While supporting Bogart as he suffered from terminal esophageal cancer, Bacall starred with Gregory Peck in Designing Woman (1957) to solid reviews. The comedy was her second feature directed by Minnelli and was released in New York on May 16, 1957, four months after Bogart's death on January 14. Bacall appeared in two more films in the 1950s: the Negulesco-directed melodrama The Gift of Love (1958) with Robert Stack and the British adventure film North West Frontier (1959), which was a box-office hit.
Bacall was seen in only a handful of films in the 1960s. She starred on Broadway in Goodbye, Charlie in 1959, and went on to a successful stage career. She played Stephanie in the farce Cactus Flower (1965). She won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Margo Channing in Applause (1970). The musical was written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. She performed the role both on Broadway and the West End. Walter Kerr of The New York Times praised her performance declaring, "Take your breath away? Indeed. What's more, she never gives it back." Applause was a musical version of the film All About Eve (1950), starring Bette Davis, Bacall's idol as a child. A young and unknown Bacall had met Davis years earlier in New York. After a performance of Applause, Davis visited Bacall backstage and told her, "You're the only one who could have played the part." Bacall would later win the Sarah Siddons Award in 1972 and 1984, an award inspired by the fictional trophy in All About Eve. She returned to Broadway in the musical Woman of the Year (1981) with book by Peter Stone and music and lyrics by Kander and Ebb. The musical is based on the 1944 film of the same name starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Frank Rich of The New York Times gave the production a mixed review but praised Bacall writing, "The people who concocted this musical know what their show is really about. Miss Bacall is on hand virtually the whole time, and she's vibrant whether no-nonsense or tipsy, domineering or moony, dry or wet. If Woman of the Year is tired around the edges, it is always smart enough to keep its live wire center stage." She went on to win her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
In September 2006, Bryn Mawr College awarded Bacall its Katharine Hepburn Medal, which recognizes "women whose lives, work, and contributions embody the intelligence, drive, and independence" of Hepburn. She delivered an address at the memorial service of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. at the Reform Club in London in June 2007. She finished her role in The Forger in 2009. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed an honorary Academy Award upon Bacall at the inaugural Governors Awards on November 14, 2009. In July 2013, Bacall expressed interest in the film Trouble Is My Business. In November, she joined the English-dubbed voice cast for StudioCanal's animated film Ernest & Celestine. Her final role was in 2014 as a guest voice appearance in the Family Guy episode "Mom's the Word".
Social Network
While Lauren Bacall did not have personal social media accounts during her lifetime, her legacy continues to be celebrated through various fan pages and tributes on platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Her film career saw something of a renaissance taking dramatic roles in independent films. She attracted positive notices for her performances in high-profile psychological dramas such as Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003) and Jonathan Glazer's Birth (2004), both with Nicole Kidman. She voiced Witch of the Waste in Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed animated film Howl's Moving Castle (2004). She was a leading actress in Paul Schrader's The Walker (2007). In March 2006, she introduced a film montage dedicated to film noir at the 78th Academy Awards. She made a cameo appearance as herself on The Sopranos in the April 2006 episode "Luxury Lounge", during which her character was mugged by Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli).
* The 1980 television film Bogie, directed by Vincent Sherman and based on a book by Joe Hyams, tells the story of Bogart meeting Bacall while making To Have and Have Not in 1943, and beginning the affair with her that led to the dissolution of Bogart's marriage to Mayo Methot. Bacall is portrayed by Kathryn Harrold in the film, Kevin O'Connor plays Bogart, and Methot is played by Ann Wedgeworth.
* The 1978 musical Evita, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice, tells the story of Argentina's infamous first lady Eva Peron. In the song "Rainbow High", Eva sings the lyrics "I'm their savior. That's what they call me. So, Lauren Bacall me. Anything goes."
Education
Bacall attended Highland Manor Boarding School for Girls in Tarrytown, New York, and later enrolled in Julia Richman High School in Manhattan. She did not pursue higher education, instead focusing on her modeling and acting career from an early age.
Bacall's family moved soon after her birth to Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway. Money from a wealthy family allowed Bacall to attend school at the Highland Manor Boarding School for Girls in Tarrytown, New York, a private boarding school founded by philanthropist Eugene Heitler Lehman, and Julia Richman High School in Manhattan.
Bacall was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. At the time of her death, Bacall had an estimated $26.6 million estate. The bulk of her estate was divided among her three children: Leslie Bogart, Stephen Humphrey Bogart, and Sam Robards. Additionally, Bacall left $250,000 each to her youngest grandsons, the sons of Sam Robards, for college.
