Lauren Bacall Biography Quotes 19 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in the Bronx, New York City, to Jewish parents of Eastern European ancestry. Her father, William Perske, was a salesman; her mother, Natalie (Weinstein-Bacal) Perske, a secretary who later adopted the simplified family name Bacal and guided her only child with steely determination. Her parents separated when she was young, and she was raised primarily by her mother and a close-knit extended family. Drawn to performance early, she studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and supported herself as an usher and a model while auditioning for stage and screen.

Discovery and Transformation
Bacall's life changed in 1943 when a Harper's Bazaar cover shot by photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe, championed by fashion editor Diana Vreeland, caught the eye of Nancy "Slim" Hawks. Slim showed the magazine to her husband, director Howard Hawks, who brought the 18-year-old to Hollywood. Hawks refashioned Betty Perske into Lauren Bacall, encouraged her to lower and steady her voice, and taught her the poise that became her hallmark. Nervous on set, she learned to keep her chin down and look up from under her brows, an accident of stage fright that became "The Look".

Breakthrough and Hollywood Stardom
Bacall's film debut came in Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (1944), opposite Humphrey Bogart. With her smoky contralto and wise, unflappable presence, she delivered one of cinema's most quoted lines: "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?" The film made her a star. After a rocky reception for Confidential Agent (1945) with Charles Boyer, she surged back with The Big Sleep (1946), again directed by Hawks and co-starring Bogart, followed by Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). She showed range in Young Man with a Horn (1950) with Kirk Douglas and Doris Day, the effervescent comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) alongside Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, the glossy melodrama Written on the Wind (1956) with Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone, and the urbane Designing Woman (1957) with Gregory Peck.

Marriage to Humphrey Bogart
On the set of To Have and Have Not Bacall and Humphrey Bogart fell in love. He was more than two decades her senior and then married; after his divorce, they wed on May 21, 1945, at Malabar Farm in Ohio, the country home of writer Louis Bromfield. The Bogart-Bacall partnership became one of Hollywood's defining love stories. They had two children, Stephen (born 1949) and Leslie (born 1952), and balanced careers with a home life that friends remembered as loyal and unpretentious. Bogart's illness and death from esophageal cancer in 1957 shattered that world. In the painful aftermath, a much-publicized romance with Frank Sinatra, reportedly reaching the brink of engagement, ended abruptly amid intense media attention.

Stage Renaissance and Second Marriage
Seeking artistic renewal, Bacall turned increasingly to the stage. In 1970 she originated the lead in Applause, the musical adaptation of All About Eve, and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She followed with another Tony-winning turn in 1981's Woman of the Year, with a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, confirming her as a commanding presence in live theater. Between those triumphs she worked steadily onscreen and abroad, appearing in projects such as North West Frontier (1959), Harper (1966) with Paul Newman, and later Sidney Lumet's star-studded Murder on the Orient Express (1974), in which she played the formidable Mrs. Hubbard.

In 1961 she married actor Jason Robards Jr.; they had a son, Sam Robards, later an actor himself. The marriage ended in 1969, strained by Robards's alcoholism. Through personal upheavals Bacall maintained a reputation for candor and backbone, characteristics that would shape her public persona as much as her deep voice and incisive gaze.

Later Film Work and Recognition
Bacall moved comfortably among genres and generations. She appeared with John Wayne in The Shootist (1976), contributed to Robert Altman ensembles such as Ready to Wear (1994), and delivered a late-career highlight in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) for director-star Barbra Streisand, earning a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She lent her singular voice to the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2005) as the Witch of the Waste, and made sharp, knowing appearances in films such as Birth (2004) and in television, memorably spoofing her own legend in The Sopranos. In 2009 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented her with an Honorary Award, recognizing a lifetime of achievement that bridged studio-era glamour and contemporary relevance.

Author and Witness
Bacall chronicled her life with unsparing detail in By Myself (1978), which won a National Book Award, followed by Now (1994). The expanded volume By Myself and Then Some (2005) revisited her journey from the Bronx to Hollywood, through joys and griefs shared with figures like Humphrey Bogart, Howard Hawks, Frank Sinatra, Jason Robards, and many collaborators who defined mid-century American entertainment. Her memoirs captured the realities behind the lacquer of studio mythmaking and the day-to-day discipline that underpinned her cool surface.

Personal Character and Craft
What colleagues remembered most was professionalism and presence. Bacall's voice, tempered under Howard Hawks's guidance, carried a musical authority that made even a throwaway line sound consequential. She cultivated economy of gesture and a gift for timing that served her equally in film noir repartee, sophisticated comedy, and the rigors of musical theater. Offscreen she was direct, wry, and loyal to family and friends, including her children Stephen, Leslie, and Sam, who grew up with the knowledge that their mother's legend was the result of hard work as much as charisma.

Legacy
Lauren Bacall died on August 12, 2014, in New York City, after a stroke, at age 89. She had long made her home in Manhattan, carrying herself with the same unfussy elegance that marked her screen debut seven decades earlier. Her legacy spans archetypes: the cool, modern woman of the 1940s, the resilient widow who remade her career on the stage, the elder stateswoman who mentored younger artists while still taking risks. She is remembered not only for iconic films with Humphrey Bogart and Howard Hawks, or for sharing the marquee with Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, John Wayne, and Barbra Streisand, but for a style of integrity that connected the glamour of the studio age to the honesty of later eras. Through her performances, her books, and the indelible image of a young woman lowering her chin and daring the world to meet her gaze, Lauren Bacall secured a permanent place in American cultural history.

Our collection contains 19 quotes who is written by Lauren, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Motivational - Live in the Moment - Life - Honesty & Integrity.

Other people realated to Lauren: John Huston (Director), Peter Stone (Writer), Douglas Sirk (Director), Kirk Douglas (Actor), Doris Lilly (Journalist), Lionel Barrymore (Actor), Kenneth More (Actor), Bruce Bennett (Actor), Edward G. Robinson (Actor), Alvah Bessie (Screenwriter)