Lauren Bacall appeared in films spanning 68 years, won an Oscar and was firmly established as a major Broadway star and fashion icon — but cinched immortality very early in her career as the co-star and wife of Humphrey Bogart.
Bacall, who died yesterday at the age of 89, made an unforgettable screen debut. At age 19, the former fashion model from the Bronx was cast opposite Bogart in Howard Hawks’ “To Have and Have Not” (1944) as a sultry stranger who seduces Bogart’s world-weary fishing boat captain into helping the anti-Nazi resistance in 1940 Martinique.
“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve,” her smoky-voiced character Slim says to Bogart’s Steve in one of the most suggestive and excerpted scenes in movie history. “You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.”
The Bogart-Bacall chemistry was so palpable that they were immediately reteamed for Hawks’ even more classic film noir, “The Big Sleep,” which was held back from release until 1946 because of World War II. Instead, the film she made next — the espionage thriller “Confidental Agent” flopped — and substantial portions of “The Big Sleep” were reshot to enlarge her role and exploit the sizzling wordplay between Bogart’s private eye Philip Marlowe and her character, a cynical divorcee who sometimes sings in a gambling house. “So you’re a private detective,” she memorably says in their first meeting. “I didn’t know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you’re a mess, aren’t you?
If Bacall had done nothing else, that would probably have earned Bacall a place on the American Film Institute’s list of 25 female film legends — she was the very last survivor on the list after Shirley Temple died in January. The former Betty Joan Perske did just two more films with Bogart — “Key Largo” (1947) and “Dark Passage ” (1948) before he parted company with their mutual employer, Warner Bros. They also appeared together in a TV production of the play “The Petrified Forest” with Henry Fonda before Bogart’s death from cancer in 1957.
Bacall’s no-nonsense style tended to go against the grain of Hollywood’s idea of femininity in the 1950s, so she was cast as a crypto-lesbian femme fatale in “Young Man with A Horn” (1950) and ended up playing well-dressed, smart-mouthed second fiddle to Marilyn Monroe in “How to Marry a Millionaire” (1954). Neither she nor Gregory Peck were comfortable in the screwball comedy “Designing Woman” (1957), but she also worked with major stars like John Wayne and Rock Hudson.
By this point, Bacall was a major draw on Broadway in such plays as “Goodbye, Charlie” (1959) and “Cactus Flower” (1965), though she was replaced in the film versions by Debbie Reynolds and Ingrid Bergman, respectively. She won Tony awards for best actress in musicals based on a couple of classic films, “Applause” (1970, derived from “All About Eve”) and “Woman of the Year.”
Her movie career was less significant, though she finally received her only Oscar nomination for playing Barbara Streisand’s mother in 1996. She was considered a favorite for Best Supporting Actress but lost to Juliette Bincoche for “The English Patients.”
Bacall did win a Kennedy Center Honor the following year. “Listen, I never went into this business thinking of winning anything,” she said at the time. “I went into it because I loved it and I wanted to be good at it. It was a form of expression for me. I love to hide behind characters. So [any recognition] I get is a perk. It’s just an extra. Just the fact that all that happened to me last year, it is — well — fabulous.”
In a statement posted on Twitter Tuesday night, the Bogart Estate expressed deep sorrow and “great gratitude for her amazing life.”
That sums it up pretty much perfectly.