1944, Warner Bros. Archives

September 16, 1924– Betty Joan Perskey:

“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.”

It is my all-time favorite film quote. It’s from Howard Hawk’s To Have And Have Not (1944). In the 1990s, I had a variation of it as my outgoing message on my answering machine (do you remember answering machines?) until I got too many complaints from people who found it salacious. She famously uttered those words, but she didn’t write them. Jules Furthman wrote the screenplay based on an Ernest Hemingway novel. It is a testament to her acting that the words seem to be hers.

Betty Joan Perske was born in The Bronx, the only child of Jewish parents. She grew-up in Brooklyn. Her parents divorced, but thanks to a set of wealthy uncles, she attended private school.

When she was 15-years-old she enrolled at the American Academy Of Dramatic Arts, where Kirk Douglas was a classmate. She made her stage debut in a small role on Broadway when she was 18-years old. By then, she was living with her mother in Greenwich Village, where she entered a contest and won the title Miss Greenwich Village.

She found work as a theatre usher and as a fashion model. Diana Vreeland was introduced to her by a friend that had met Bacall in a nightclub and the next day she was photographed in that new Kodachrome film for the March 1943 cover of Harper’s Bazaar, a cover that is iconic.

The Harper’s Bazaar cover was admired by Slim Hawks, wife of Howard Hawks. She suggested Betty Joan be screen tested for his new film. Hawks asked his secretary to find out more about her, but the secretary misunderstood and sent Betty Joan a ticket to come to Hollywood. At 19-years-old, she landed the starring role opposite Humphrey Bogart in To Have And Have Not, proving that overnight success is not a myth.  Interstingly, Bacall’s character is named “Slim”. Bogart and Bacall married a year later and went on to make five films (and two children) together, including The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). She was with him until his death from cancer in 1957.

To Have And Have Not (1944) Warner Bros. Archives

Hawks had signed her to a seven year contract with a weekly salary of $100, and the right to manage her career. She smartly changed her name to Lauren Bacall; she liked the name Lauren and her mother’s name had been Bacal. Slim Hawks guided Bacall on how to dress stylishly and coached her in all things elegant and tasteful. Remember, Bacall was still a teenager.

During her screen tests for To Have And Have Not, Bacall was so nervous that she pressed her chin against her chest, faced the camera and tilted her eyes upward to calm her quivering. The effect came to be known as “The Look”.

After the 1940s, Bacall never got that “Role of a Lifetime”. She had become known for her work in black and white Film Noir.  Technicolor robbed her of that distinctive beauty, with a face made shade and shadow. Color film took away much of her mystery. She didn’t become a top-billed star of another film until the tacky thriller The Fan in 1981, about a stalker’s obsession with an aging movie star. I wish I could say that it is a fun camp fest, after all, there are musical numbers, but it’s sad and an unseemly project for a star of Bacall’s wattage.

Her only big box-office hit in the 1950s was How To Marry A Millionaire, and except for the perverse sexual politics, it’s not all that interesting. Yet, it did afford the opportunity for Bacall to use her astringent, authoritative womanliness to contrast with Betty Grable’s brightness and Marilyn Monroe’s Monroeness.

Bacall did make some interesting films in that decade, they just weren’t big at the box-office. In The Cobweb (1955), directed by Vincente Minnelli, she plays a shrink at a mental institution. She nicely underplays against the broader work of costars Charles Boyer, Richard Widmark and Lillian Gish. Douglas Sirk’s great landmark melodrama Written On The Wind (1956), has Bacall playing a smart career woman whose life is unexpectedly turned upside-down by a rich family of oil magnates. In her memoir, Bacall writes that she doesn’t think she was very good in it, but I love her performance and she holds her own with Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack.

Minnelli directed her again, this time opposite Gregory Peck in Designing Woman (1957), and despite the fact that Bogart was dying of cancer during filming, Bacall’s performance is breezy and delightful, and the film made money.

As she grew older, Bacall acquired both gravity and a comfortable lightness that she never had earlier. In her 50s, 60s and 70s, she moved with the grace of a dancer and her work had a seasoned richness, even when she was doing cat food commercials. She was fearless, and she worked with innovative directors Robert Altman and Lars von Trier.

Bacall made more than 75 films in a career lasting more than 50 years. She was nominated for an Academy Award only once, for Best Supporting Actress in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) as Barbra Streisand’s oppressive mother. She was expected to win, but the Oscar went to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient. The audience seemed shocked, and Bacall received negative push-back for looking so stunned to still be seated, but I thought her disappointment was touchingly honest. In 2009, Bacall was honored with a special Oscar for “A Lifetime Of Superior Work In Films”. Her final film was the crime caper The Forger (2012); she was 88-years-old and still looked seductive.

When her film career slowed down in the 1960s and 1970, Bacall turned to Broadway, first in the sparkling comedy Cactus Flower (1965) and then winning Tony Awards for her roles in the musicals Applause (1970) and Woman Of The Year (1981). Applause is a musical version of the film All About Eve (1950) with Bette Davis in her greatest role as stage star Margo Channing. Davis was Bacall’s acting idol, and when she went backstage to congratulate Bacall on her performance, Davis told Bacall: “You’re the only one who could have played the part”.  In 1999, at 75-years-old, Bacall starred on Broadway in a revival of her friend Noël Coward’s comedy Waiting In The Wings.

After Bogart passed away in 1957, Bacall had a sizzling affair with Frank Sinatra right after his marriage to Ava Gardner had ended. Bacall wrote that Sinatra abruptly ended their relationship after becoming furious that the story of his marriage proposal to Bacall had been leaked to the press. Bacall had loved Bogie, with all his faults. He felt the same. Bogart drank and his moods were unpredictable and complicated, like alcoholics always are. It was the same old story with Jason Robards, whom she married in 1961 and then divorced eight years later.

Bacall was a staunch Democrat and defender of liberal causes. 70 years ago, Bacall and Bogart traveled to DC, along with other Hollywood stars, in a group that called itself The Committee For The First Amendment. She appeared alongside Bogart in a photograph printed at the end of an article he wrote titled “I’m No Communist” in the May 1948 edition of Photoplay Magazine, written to counteract negative publicity resulting from his appearance before The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Bacall’s friendship with Adlai Stevenson bothered Bogart. She campaigned for Stevenson when he was the 1952 Democratic nominee for POTUS. The next year, she wrote a column in Look Magazine titled I Hate Young Men, where she was open about the men she found attractive, intellectually and erotically. Stevenson was on the list. So were Alistair Cooke and directors Nunnally Johnson and John Huston. For Bacall, fascinating always trumped hot. Bogart didn’t seem to mind the article. But, he was aggravated by Bacall’s taking time off from filming to attend a campaign event with Stevenson, and her obsession with the politician and his attention to her. She was in her mid-30s at this time, with Stevenson and Bogart in their mid-50s.

She costarred opposite John Wayne in Blood Alley (1957), and in his last film, The Shootist (1976). They were close friends, despite very real political differences.

Bacall:

“I am an anti-Republican… A liberal. The L-word. Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind.”

Bacall has produced two volumes of exceptionally written, dry, self-deprecatingly witty, forthright memoirs: By Myself (1978) and Now (1994), plus she published an updated version of her memoir with a new final chapter published as By Myself And Then Some (2004).

Bacall left this world just a month before her 90th birthday in 2014. She took that final bow at her longtime apartment in my favorite NYC residential building, The Dakota, on the Upper West Side overlooking Central Park. I really loved her and I was sad when I heard the news, but I reflected on the career that lasted from 17-years-old into her late 80s; it was a life well-lived.

The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), TriStar Pictures, photo via YouTube

When I was living in NYC in the 1970s, I once followed her for 14 blocks. At one point I allowed myself to be right beside her. I considered offering myself as her escort to her destination, but just as I finally got up the nerve, she stopped in front of The Russian Tea Room where she greeted Liza Minnelli with a kiss and they swooped inside. A truly great gay NYC moment for me.

“I  think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”