Actress Lauren Bacall, who advanced the cause of independent women and create iconic films during the Golden Age of Hollywood, died today at the age of 89.
She appeared in 62 motion pictures and 10 TV shows and movies. She was awarded an honorary Academy Award, and won two Golden Globes. She was nominated and won dozens of other awards. She starred in films when the silver screen was the height of American elegance, populated by Hollywood royalty.Â
Films including To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, Key Largo, and How to Marry a Millionaire. Later, Murder on the Orient Express, The Fan, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and The Mirror Has Two Faces.
She was Lauren Bacall, and she died today at the age of 89.
She married her frequent co-star, Humphrey Bogart, when she was 20, he 45. They were married until his death.
Later, she married Jason Robards.Â
“Born Betty Joan Perske, ‘a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx,’ she stunned audiences in the forever-after-famous ‘you know how to whistle’ scene in the 1944 romance ‘To Have and Have Not,’ in which she was as flirtatious as possible within the parameters of the Hays Code,” Variety reports tonight.
Audiences were impressed; her co-star, the 44-year-old Bogart, even more so. They were soon married and remained devoted to one another for the next 12 years, until Bogart’s death in 1956.
It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that Bacall would emerge from the shadow of being Bogart’s wife/widow and hit her stride, this time onstage, where she scored successes in the comedy “Cactus Flower†and then won two Tonys in musicals “Applause†and, later, “Woman of the Year.â€
Her gravel-voiced, sultry persona, however, immediately transformed her into a celebrity. The voice was said to have come from a year shouting into a canyon. Regardless, “the Look,†her slinky, pouty-lipped head-lowered stare, influenced a generation of actresses.
That had less to do with her acting assignments than with her social and political reputation — lying long-legged on President Truman’s piano, bravely protesting with her husband against the House Un-American Activities hearings as early as 1947, campaigning for Adlai Stevenson (twice), or hosting the Rat Pack in Holmby Hills with Bogie and later, in New York, with another famous husband, actor Jason Robards Jr. It has been suggested that her career — she was under contract at Warners for several years — was harmed by her political outspokenness. Bogart did some of his best work in those years, but then, he was Bogart.
Her fierce independence caused her to be suspended from Warners no fewer than seven times. Backed by Bogart, she justifiably complained about the poor material she was handed. That independence sometimes crossed over into diva territory and became more pronounced as time passed.
With deep sorrow, yet with great gratitude for her amazing life, we confirm the passing of Lauren Bacall. pic.twitter.com/B8ZJnZtKhN
— BogartEstate (@HumphreyBogart) August 12, 2014
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