lauren bacall (1924 - 2014)
biography
frank capra
richard attenborough
isabelle adjani |
[ l a u r e n b a c a l l : b i o g . ]
"Bogie always told me not to relive
the past."
13th August 2014: Lauren Bacall passed away Tuesday morning from a massive stroke at her Manhattan home. Her appartment was at The Dakota building on the Upper West Side, best known as the former home of John Lennon and Polanski's Rosemary's Baby.
One of the last of the truly great names from Hollywood's golden era has now gone. Just saying her surname outloud makes you feel nostalgic for that long long lost era. Bacall. Bogie & Bacall. A true star whose star will shine for as long as they keep making movies.
How could anyone forget that look, that voice? She just had that magnetic star quality few really have ever possessed.
From a spark to a flame? What did she mean to you? Were you ever fortunate enough to meet her? E-mail here ihuppert5@aol.com and I'll put your comments up with just you initials as your signature.
'Slinky! Sultry! Sensational!' was how Lauren Bacall came to the screen, along with press
releases as to how her husky voice had been developed by making her shout across a canyon for six months. But she
was not a joke at all. James Agee described her:
She was born (Betty Pepske - she hates the name Hollywood gave her) in New York City in 1924 and was brought up by a divorced mother, who had her
study dancing and acting and enrolled her at the AADA - which she quit
after one term. She was an usherette briefly, then got a couple of minor stage jobs and - she was strikingly handsome -
several modelling assignments. One Harper's Bazaar cover was seen by Howard Hawks, who
tested her and signed her to a seven-year contract, 32 weeks a year. (Columbia asked her to be the Harper's Bazaar girl in Cover Girl, but she
knew his was likely to provide a better future.)
Hawks showed the test to Warners - who promptly bought half her contract -
and trained her for a year. While coaching her, Hawks began to see her potential more clearly, and when he and Warners cast her opposite Humphrey Bogart
in To Have and Have Not (1944) he moulded her into a younger, a female Bogart - though he
let her often make her own decisions. She was even more cynical than Bogie and more coolly independant: to his
second kiss she responds 'It's even better when you help.'
The sexual antagonism between them worked sufficiently to carry this mangled version of Hemingway to success; and they married the following year.
Warners were so pleased with her that they bought the other half of her contract from Hawks and raised her
weekly pay from $550 to $1,000, the start of a new seven-year contract, to go to $1,250 in the second year
and thence to $1,500 with $500 weekly annual increases to a ceiling of $3,500. She was to be paid 52 weeks a year instead of
the usual 42, but they believed she was a strong actress who should not be overexposed; the sales force was calling for a reteaming
with Bogart and indeed one was in the can, but release was delayed till after the next one, since it was more topical and Jack Warner thought her better in it.
Confidential Agent (1945) was in fact set in pre-war Britain, with Bacall as a local girl who aids Spanish Republican Charles Boyer.
The New York Times thought her performance:
It is curious that Warners should have preferred that to Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946), the one
with Bogart; the magic between them worked again, he as a private eye and she as a wealthy, insolent
divorcee. She did two more with him, Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), but these were roles
which any competent actress might have played. She was a strongly individual heroine, but clearly less effective than before. Meanwhile, Hollywood had
proliferated with imitators, from the variable Lizabeth Scott downwards.
Encouraged by Bogart - who wanted her to be as independant of Warners as he now was - she quarrelled frequently
with the studio over roles; but not, alas, over those in Young Man with a Horn (1950) and Bright Leaf, both
old favourites. In the former, she was the wealthy socialite who seduces Kirk Douglas from his music and Doris Day; in the second, the
madam who comforts Gary Cooper on excursions from wife Patricia Neal.
The sixth suspension in six years was over the co-starring role with Errol Fynn in Rocky Mountain (Patrice Wymore - his wife - played it);
then she bought herself out of her contract, just a few months before Warners dropped many players in a panic at the threat from TV.
She signed a long-term contract with 20th, but made only two films for them over a two-year period; after a long absence, How To Marry a Millionaire (1953). as a gold-digger,
and A Woman's World (1954), as the bored wife of executive Fred MacMurray. Not
surprisingly, she proved to be a stylish light comedienne, incisive and elegant, a shrewd
woman-about-town who knows the answers before the questions are asked. In the former she stole scenes from Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable; in the latter there was little competition
from June Allyson or Arlene Dahl.
Changing mood again, she embarked on a quiet romance with Richard Widmark in The
Cobweb (55) at MGM, the only good 'serious'
film she made - but not a success. It would be
more difficult to divine her motives in taking
on conventional parts in either Blood Alley, a
mediocre John Wayne vehicle, or Written on
the Wind (56), a lurid melodrama with Rock
Hudson, especially as the Wayne film was a
silly anti-Red drama, and Bogart and Bacall
were considered to be on Hollywood's Left.
Still, Wayne admired her and made one of his
rare comments on a co-star:
When Grace Kelly departed for Monaco,
MGM substituted Bacall in Designing Woman
(1957), a comedy about spouses with different
interests, with Gregory Peck - an actor whom
Bogart particularly despised. Bogart died
while she was completing it and working to
forget (she had been, by all accounts, a
particularly devoted wife) might explain her
acceptance of The Gift of Love (58) at 20th,
with Robert Stack. That one was a two-time
loser, having failed 10 years earlier as Sentimental Journey with Maureen O'Hara.
She
went to Britain to play another action-tale
heroine in North West Frontier (1959), with
Kenneth More, and then had a Broadway
success in Goodbye Charlie. In 1961 she
married Jason Robards Jr (they were divorced
in 1969). Films were not too kind: the unsuccessful Shock Treatment (1964), as a mixed-up
psychiatrist; Sex and the Single Girl (1965), as
Henry Fonda's quarrelsome wife; and Harper
(1966), with Paul Newman, as the enigmatic
wealthy woman. That film had some in-jokes
- Newman was a Bogart-likkkeeee private-eye - but
Bacall's striking apparition was warmly welcomed for its own sake. Despite the infrequency
of her appearances she had, like all strong
players, kept her hold.
There was another stage role and in Cactus
Flower (1967) for a couple of years she was,
literally, the toast of Broadway; and she was
again when she did the musical version of All
About Eve called Applause! (1970). She said at
this time:
She played it in London
two years later, and filmed it there for
American TV; and in England she was one of
the several stars suspected of Murder on the
Orient Express (1974). Opposite John Wayne in The Shootist (1976) she was his landlady, their
friendship ripening as the film progressed. A
TV movie, Perfect Gentlemen (1978), co-starred
her with Sandy Dennis; and a memoir, By
Myself, found its way to the bestseller lists
and redirected Hollywood attention to her:
Health (1980), as an 80-year-old food expert,
with Carol Burnett and James Garner; and
The Fan (1981), as a Broadway star menaced by
a psychotic admirer. Bacall's own particular
glitter could not hide the fact that the piece
was unworthy of her.
She would like to work
more, she has said, but she turns down much:
She returned to Broadway in 1981 in
Woman of the Year, a musical based on the
Tracy-Hepburn film, for a long run - and a
Tony Award. In 1985 she played Sweet Bird
of Youth in London, subsequently taking it
to Australia and the West Coast. It was not,
frankly, one of her finest moments, for she
totally lacked the vulnerability essential to the
role.
Films then again beckoned: an Agatha
Christie thriller, Appointment with Death
(1987), directed by Michael Winner; Mr North
(1988), directed by Danny Huston after his
father John died, as a boarding-house keeper;
The Tree of Hands (89) in Britain, from a
novel by Ruth Rendell; and The Actor, made
in France, with Anthony Quinn.
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