13 Aug 2014

Sultry star and feminist idol Lauren Bacall dies aged 89

Screen legend Lauren Bacall, who began her legendary partnership with husband Humphrey Bogart 70 years ago and remained a star in her own right to the end, dies of a stroke.

Lauren Bacall blazed her way into the consciousness not only of moviegoers but her co-star Humphrey Bogart in her very first movie, To Have and Have Not, in 1944.

Pressing her chin against her chest and tilting her eyes upwards, to disguise her nervousness, the 19-year-old movie virgin had invented “The Look” that was to become a trademark of her sultry style. Within two years she and Bogart were married – despite being less than half his age.

You know how to whistle, don’t you?

But she was no tame Hollywood starlet.

Her famously gravelly voice combined with a slinky onscreen swagger gave her a commanding presence. As Bogart put it “she’s a real Joe”. It was her scene with him, in To Have and To Have Not, where she asks “You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together and blow”, that revealed her as a movie talent of the highest potential.

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart (Getty)

She may have been almost a quarter of a century younger, but on screen Bogie and Bacall were partners who made a series of memorable films – The Big Sleep (1945), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). Their happy marriage produced two children – Stephen and Leslie.

On Bogart’s untimely death from cancer in 1957, Bacall had a golden whistle placed in his urn, engraved with the words “If you need anything, just blow.”

Bacall’s career was not only film noir.

She tried comedy, starring with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable in Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, and – to rave reviews – with Gregory Peck in Designing Woman.

She also and appeared opposite Kirk Douglas in Young Man with a Horn. But she later admitted that her marriage had caused her to put her career second. Her habit of turning down scripts she did not find interesting had also earned her a reputation for being difficult.

Lauren Bacall in 1950 (Getty)

Nobel-prize winning writer William Faulkner, who had know Bacall since the 1940s, said of Bacall in 1950 that she was not someone satisfied with being just a pretty face, “but rather who decided to prevail”.

After Bogart’s death Bacall had a romance with Frank Sinatra – which he ended when their “engagement” was mistakenly made public. In her autobiography, Bacall later said “Frank did me a great favour – he saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been.”

She did marry again in 1961, to the actor Jason Robards, and they had a son Sam. But they were to divorce in 1969, partly as a result of his alcoholism.

Her friend actress Maggie Smith said in 2005: “she is one of the most courageous people I know. She has lived a long time on her own. I don’t think she always likes it, but she never complains.”

Her stage career saw her win two Tony awards for Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981), but her only Oscar was an honorary award given in 2009.

Her candid autobiography, Lauren Bacall: By Myself, won a National Book Award in 1980. While publicising an update, By Myself and Then Some, in 2005, Bacall told Susie Mackenzie of the Guardian “I am still working, I’ve never stopped and, while my health holds out, I won’t stop.”

Her taste for interesting parts held good to the end. In 2006 she made a cameo appearance in an episode of the mafia drama The Sopranos – a role that called for her to end up beaten and swearing on the pavement after being mugged.