Lauren Bacall Biography

Lauren Bacall Bio

Husky and sultry Lauren Bacall is one of the most legendary stage, film, and television actresses still around. Although most of her best work was accomplished in the 1940s and 1950s, the length and duration of her acting career, her fashion sense and style, and the fact that she was (and still is) a role model, has inspired many women of many generations since her time.

Lauren Bacall was born as Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. In 1930, the only child of Jewish immigrants William Perske and Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, she saw her parents divorce. Lauren was a dancer and fashion model before making her Broadway acting debut in 1942 in Johnny Two by Four.

Big-name Hollywood director Howard Hawks cast Lauren in her first major film role in To Have and Have Not in 1944, after his wife, Slim, spotted her on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She met Humphrey Bogart on the set of the film, and the two started an off-screen relationship even though Humphrey was married to Mayo Methot. To Have and Have Not pushed Bacall into international fame and stardom.

BaCall also made worldwide headlines when she visited the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in 1945. Her press agent, Charlie Enfield, asked her to pose on the piano being played by Harry S Truman, vice president of the U.S. Bacall did, and it made news everywhere.

After BaCall’s film debut, she starred with Humphrey in Howard’s dark film The Big Sleep in 1946; the thriller Dark Passage in 1957, directed by Delmer Daves; and the suspense Key Largo in 1948, a film by John Huston.

Bacall went on to star in several high-profile and critically acclaimed films in the 50s, such as Young Man with Horn in 1950, with Doris Day and Kirk Douglas, and How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953, directed by Douglas Stirk and co-starring Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, and Robert Stack. After this succession of roles Bacall’s film career petered out in the 1960s. She made up for it with notable Broadway performances during this time, for which she won several Tony Awards. Then in 1976, Bacall starred opposite John Wayne in The Shootist, John’s last film.

Lauren Bacall went on to prove herself as a talented actress with major award nominations and wins, including a Golden Globe win and Academy Award nomination for The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1996, starring Barbra Streisand and Jeff Bridges. In 1997, Lauren also received the Kennedy Center Honors, and two years later the American Film Institute voted her one of the top 25 most significant female actresses of all time. She has also appeared in more recent films with Nicole Kidman—Dogville in 2003 and Birth in 2004.

Besides an actress, fashion model, and dancer, Lauren Bacall is also a published author. She wrote three autobiographies: By Myself, published in 1978; Now, published in 1994; and By Myself and Then Some in 2004.

The relationship begun by Lauren and Humphrey Bogart escalated into marriage in 1945—although Humphrey was twenty-five years her senior. They had two children together, Stephen and Leslie. Humphrey died in 1957 from cancer, and Lauren had a brief relationship with Frank Sinatra before marrying Jason Robards in 1961. Although the marriage only lasted eight years, they had a son named Sam.

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