In tribute to Lauren Bacall

16th September 1924 - 12th August 2014 

Lauren Bacall, who died yesterday aged 89, was smart, sexy, sophisticated; a Hollywood goddess who could floor the most self-assured gentlemen with an elegantly raised eyebrow; a woman with whom one did not trifle. Betty Perske (as she was born) was a rare thing in tinsel town – a beauty with a brain and an always ready wisecrack. Men wanted her, albeit from a somewhat awestruck distance. Women wanted to be her. 

I first came across her in my teens when reading about the Oliviers with whom she was close friends. I read her autobiographies, By Myself (1978) and Now (1994), learning about her ascent to stardom at the tender age of nineteen, her electrifying partnership with Humphrey Bogart (twenty-five years her senior), her prodigious stage and screen appearances, and her encounters with the glitterati of old Hollywood: Leslie Howard, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin... you name ‘em. A great storyteller and comedienne, I was struck by her candour and the underlying melancholy in her writing. Bogie had left her a widow at thirty-two. Although Bacall had a long career, continuing to appear in blockbusters into her eighties, the four films they made together, To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), remained her most famous and best. As her great and glamorous friends and colleagues, many much older than herself, died off, she carried on with increasing loneliness. An icon from a bygone age.

There are plenty of classic Bacall moments to savour on screen and off. She was wonderfully alluring. Her deep, husky voice contrasts with the high, wavering voices of so many cinematic damsels of the 1940s. I love the story of her trademark, ‘The Look.’ Auditioning for To Have and Have Not, in order to quell her nerves, she kept her chin pressed to her chest, staring upwards at the camera – the sultry stare that this produced was utterly unintentional. I remember a small scene from The Big Sleep where she sits on a desk, slightly lifting her skirt to scratch her knee. It’s hardly risqué but it’s mesmerising. Today’s Hollywood knows nothing so subtle and so effective.

Though I love her films with Bogart, some of my favourites were made without him. In How to Marry A Millionaire (1953), Bacall’s gorgeously cool and haughty, a perfect ally to the ditzy and loveable Marilyn Monroe and the eager and chaotic, Betty Grable. Though penniless models, they hire a plush Manhattan apartment and plot to ensnare rich husbands with varying and hilarious results. In The Shootist (1976), famous for being John Wayne’s last film, she is a strong and determined woman of character in a violent world, providing refuge to the dying gunfighter. It’s a quiet and dignified performance and deserves to be better known. I also love Bacall’s much louder performance as the relentless Mrs Hubbard in Murder on the Orient Express (1974). She is very, very funny as this American grande-dame, ever-advancing down the compartment, demanding the attention of dear Mr Poirot with her foghorn voice and the phrase: ‘My second husband always said...’

Off screen, Bacall wasn’t afraid to give her own opinion either. She was a staunch defender of the old Hollywood – a time when stars were stars and cinema was truly pushing the boundaries. Her trip to the pictures to see one of the recent Twilight films with her granddaughter has been much reported in the newspapers. Completely unimpressed at her granddaughter’s suggestion that this trash was the definitive vampire movie, Bacall recounted: ‘I wanted to smack her across the head with my shoe.’ Avoiding such action for fear of motivating a posthumous biography, Grannie Dearest, she instead presented her granddaughter with a DVD of some proper cinema: Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). ‘Now that’s a vampire film!’

Though a cinematic icon, Bacall was also a star of the stage. She twice won Tony awards for appearances in Broadway musicals: Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. In 1995, she came across the pond to appear at The Chichester Festival Theatre, in the aptly titled, The Visit. This was a mixed success. The VIP apparently caused a bit of a stir in town, complaining that the Cathedral church bells were disturbing her slumber! I’m lucky enough to have in my memorabilia collection a programme from the performance, collected strangely enough from a bric-a-brac sale in Somerset! Oh, if only I could have seen the show itself...

Lauren Bacall was great because she was different from the usual Hollywood ingénue. She was unique and so she became, and remained, a star. Statuesque, sharp-witted, and smart-mouthed, she didn’t need a man to rescue her and sweep her off her feet. She’d choose her own man and he’d have to be up to the mark! She was the perfect foil to the rough, gruff, hard-talking, hard-drinking Bogie and together they created cinematic magic. How odd to think that her first thought on hearing he might be her co-star was: ‘Cary Grant – terrific! Humphrey Bogart– yucch.’ We will remember their magic and we will remember Betty – a cracking actress, a genuine diva, and a shining star.

She taught us how to whistle...

Bogie and his Baby
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