Lauren Bacall was one of the few genuine stars still left from what was known as the Golden Age of Hollywood.
She started her career as a successful model working for the likes of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. While still in her teens she was spotted on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar by the wife of Hollywood director Howard Hawks who was looking for a young starlet to play opposite his leading male star Humphrey Bogart, in the classic crime caper To Have and Have Not (1944).
The screen test went well and the studio signed her for a seven year contract. More importantly the nineteen year old met the great Humphrey Bogart and the couple had an immediate attraction to each other. They married in 1945 a year after the film’s release. Bogart was twenty five years her senior. The couple went on to make another three film’s together The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948) which also starred another giant of the gangster / crime genre Edward G Robinson and was directed by John Huston.
Lauren Bacall oozed sex appeal and was known for her distinctive sultry looks and husky voice. In her autobiography she recalled that due to her nervous quivering chin in her audition for To Have and Have Not she was told to tuck her chin into her chest, look at the camera while tilting her eyes upwards and “The Look” was born.
Bacall continued her acting career non-stop through the next seventy years. One of her last acting assignments was a character voice-over for Seth McFarland’s Family Guy cartoon series in 2013.
Lauren Bacall in Family Guy 2013
Along the way Bacall won numerous nominations and awards for stage, TV and cinema from 1970 through to 2009 when the Academy presented her with an Honorary Oscar.
Lauren Bacall died of a stroke on August 12, 2014 at the age of 89. A sad farewell to a very classy lady.
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