Remembering Lauren Bacall

I would be remiss at the beginning of this post if I didn't mention Robin Williams.  I am not doing a post on him because, frankly, it is too painful for me to speak about and I did a couple of quick things on Facebook yesterday.  Robin Williams was a genius and I am certain that he has found his peace and I pray that his family take comfort in the outpouring of love directed his and their way.

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“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”   Lauren Bacall, who actually aged....

When my daughter came and told me that Lauren Bacall had died last evening, it felt like another blow, though it was anything but unexpected.  She was 89 after all.

She was a 19 year old Betty Perske when she was discovered by Howard Hawk's wife Slim, who saw this picture on Harper's Bazaar and rightly saw that this was a person who needed to be seen on a bigger screen:

He cast her opposite Humphrey Bogart in To Have or Have Not and the rest, as they say, was history:

I have loved Bogey and Bacall since I was a child - together in movies, apart in movies, if there was an old movie on TV starring one or both of them, I was watching it.

And while she is rightly remembered for the four memorable movies she made with her husband, I admit to loving her equally as much in The Shootist opposite John Wayne and Designing Woman with Gregory Peck.

After Bogey's death a marriage with Jason Robards proved ill-fated and in many interviews from the 1970s onwards, she lamented her ability to find love like she had experienced with Bogey.

And could she ever tell a story!

Her autobiography, Bacall by Myself is a great read - I devoured it as a teenager.

And I defy anyone to tell me that this lady didn't know how to turn herself out:

Betty Bacall was one of the last of her era - that golden period of movies where giants like Bogey and Tracy and Hepburn and Gable and Peck and Leigh and Olivier marched across our movie screens unsullied by the voracious 24 hour gossip cycle that exists today.  She had few contemporaries left - Olivia de Havilland and Kirk Douglas spring to my mind - and I suspect she was not sad to leave.

I imagine her being stopped by St. Peter at the pearly gates yesterday.

"Say it," he'd say.

"Oh come on," would be the reply.  "I'm in a hurry.  I've got someone to meet, someone I haven't seen for more than 50 years."

"Pretty please,"

"If it will shut you up..."

"It will.  And you'll find him in the first bar at the right as soon as you get through the gates.  He's the one wearing the white dinner jacket."

"Okay,"  deep breath.  "You know how to whistle don't you, St. Peter?  You just put your lips together and blow."

"Ah, they don't make them like that anymore...."

So long Lauren Bacall - you were a class act.