Lauren Bacall, Actress, Dies at Age 89

Golden Age Screen Goddess Whose Marriage to Bogart Helped Make Her Hollywood Royalty

Photos: Bacall's Life on Stage and Screen

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Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart Ronald Grant Archive / Mary Evans

Seldom in Hollywood has a star risen from obscurity to headliner with such rapidity as Lauren Bacall.
Ms. Bacall, who died Tuesday at age 89 in New York, was among the last of the golden age screen goddesses, despite having appeared in relatively few films. She went on to star in Broadway plays and musicals.
Part of the reason for her legend was that she was Mrs. Humphrey Bogart—Hollywood royalty almost from the start.
In an early scene in "To Have and Have Not" she fixed Mr. Bogart with a smoldering gaze that became known as "the Look."
"You know how to whistle, don't you Steve?" she said. "You just put your lips together and blow." Audiences never recovered.
That her chin-down posture was required to control the 19-year-old film rookie's nerves wasn't apparent. Walter Winchell welcomed her with a column headlined "The Bacall of the Wild." Life magazine put her on the cover and wrote, "Her simplest remarks sound like jungle mating cries."
Within months, her leading man divorced his wife and married her. In short order Bogart and Bacall starred in more classic thrillers including "The Big Sleep" and "Key Largo."
Despite the promising start and dozens more movie credits, Ms. Bacall's early films—even by her account—were her best, and she never built a body of work to compare with actresses of similar stature, such as Katharine Hepburn.

Born Betty Perske in New York City, Ms. Bacall grew up with her mother after her parents divorced. She attended private schools paid for by the family of her mother, who reverted to her maiden name of Bacall and worked as a secretary.
She took acting classes while in high school, and played hooky to watch films starring Bette Davis, her idol. After graduating, Ms. Bacall worked as an usher and got small roles in plays. She had more success modeling.
She was discovered in Hollywood when Howard Hawks's wife spotted her on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. The director gave her a screen test, signed her to a contract and made her a star. He also gave her a new name: Lauren. Ms. Bacall always preferred her friends to call her Betty.
After marrying Mr. Bogart in 1945, Ms. Bacall had two children while continuing to make movies but less frequently. She appeared with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable in "How to Marry a Millionaire" and with Gregory Peck in "Designing Woman." But the memorable roles were fewer, especially after the death of Mr. Bogart in 1957.

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Lauren Bacall backstage during the 82nd Academy Awards in March 2010 in Hollywood, Calif. ASSOCIATED PRESS

"I finally felt that I came into my own when I went on the stage," Ms. Bacall told Vanity Fair in 2011.
She starred in "Cactus Flower" on Broadway for two years starting in 1966 and then "Applause," a hit 1970 musical adaptation of "All About Eve." Ms. Bacall played Margo Channing, the fading actress played by Bette Davis in the original film.
She had another long-running Broadway hit in "Woman of the Year." The Wall Street Journal's critic remarked in 1981, "One has to reach for the familiar words—class, style, pizzazz—to describe her."
Returning to the movies in the 1970s, Ms. Bacall had a lengthy second film career in featured roles. Always famous for her throaty voice, she played the Grand Witch in the 2008 video release of "Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King" but also had parts in highbrow fare such as Lars von Trier's "Dogville" and Robert Altman's "Prêt-à-Porter."
After Mr. Bogart died, Ms. Bacall was briefly engaged to Frank Sinatra. She married the actor Jason Robards, but they divorced in 1969. Their son, Sam Robards, has a long list of credits in films and on Broadway.
Ms. Bacall wrote a memoir, "By Myself," that won the National Book Award, and a sequel, "Now." She lived since the early 1960s in an apartment at the Dakota, a distinctive address on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
She was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997 and an honorary Oscar in 2009. She said in the Vanity Fair interview that she regretted her Oscar acceptance speech.
"Because I only talked about Bogie," she said.