^1945
Betty Joan Perske (September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014), professionally known as Lauren Bacall (/bəˈkɔːl/ bə-KAWL), was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. She was known for her alluring, sultry presence and her distinctive, husky voice. Bacall was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Bacall began a career as a model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency before making her film debut at the age of 20 as the leading lady opposite her future husband Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944). She continued in the film noir genre with appearances alongside her new husband in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), and she starred in the romantic comedies How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Designing Woman (1957). She portrayed the female lead in Written on the Wind (1956) which is considered one of Douglas Sirk's seminal films. She later acted in Harper (1966), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and The Shootist (1976).
She found a career resurgence for her role in the romantic comedy The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) for which she earned the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for the Academy Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. During the final stage of her career, she gained newfound success with a younger audience for major supporting roles in the films Misery (1990), Dogville (2003), Birth (2004), and the English dubs of the animated films Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and Ernest & Celestine (2012).
For her work on theater, she made her Broadway debut in Johnny 2x4 (1942). She went on to win two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her performances in Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). She also acted in the play Goodbye Charlie (1959), the farce Cactus Flower (1965), and Wonderful Town (1977). She made her West End debut in The Applause (1970) followed by Sweet Bird of Youth (1985).
Early life and education
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in the Bronx, New York City, the only child of Natalie (née Weinstein-Bacal; 1901–1969), a secretary who later legally changed her surname to Bacal, and William Perske (1889–1982), who worked in sales. Both of her parents were Jewish. Her mother emigrated from Iași, Romania through Ellis Island. Her father was born in New Jersey to parents who were born in Valozhyn, a predominantly Jewish community in present-day Belarus.
Bacall's parents divorced when she was five, after which she no longer saw her father. She later took the Romanian form of her mother's last name, Bacall. She was close to her mother, who remarried Lee Goldberg and moved to California after Bacall became a star. Through her father, Bacall was related to Shimon Peres (born Szymon Perski), the eighth prime minister and ninth president of Israel. Peres did not know about the relationship until Bacall told him.
Bacall's family moved soon after her birth to Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway. Money from a wealthy family allowed Bacall to attend school at the Highland Manor Boarding School for Girls in Tarrytown, New York, a private boarding school founded by philanthropist Eugene Heitler Lehman, and Julia Richman High School in Manhattan.
1944–1959: Hollywood contract and leading roles
After meeting Bacall in Hollywood, Hawks immediately signed her to a seven-year contract with a weekly salary of $100 and personally began to manage her career. He changed her first name to Lauren, and she chose Bacall, a variant of her mother's maiden name, as her screen surname. Slim Hawks also took Bacall under her wing, dressing Bacall stylishly and guiding her in matters of elegance, manners and taste. At Hawks' suggestion, Bacall was trained by a voice coach to speak with a lower and deeper voice instead of her normally high-pitched, nasal voice. As part of her training, Bacall was required to shout verses of Shakespeare for hours every day. Her voice was characterized as a "smoky, sexual growl" by most critics and a "throaty purr". Bacall stood 5 feet 81⁄2 inches, unusually tall for actresses of the era, and was only an inch shorter than Humphrey Bogart.
^Bacall and Hawks
1990–1999: Film resurgence and West End debut
In 1990, Bacall took a small but central role as James Caan's agent in Rob Reiner's Misery, based on the novel by Stephen King, and an important role in the British television movie A Little Piece of Sunshine, based on a novel by Frederick Forsyth. The following year, Bacall played the lead in the independent film A Star for Two (1991) with Anthony Quinn, Lila Kedrova and Jean-Pierre Aumont, and played a supporting role in All I Want for Christmas (1991).
In 1993, Bacall was very active in television, pairing again with her lifelong friend Gregory Peck and his daughter Cecilia Peck in Arthur Penn's television movie The Portrait, and costarring with an all-star European cast in A Foreign Field. She appeared in Robert Altman's Prêt-à-Porter (1994), an ensemble film set in Paris during fashion week. In 1995, she was cast in her friend Ingrid Bergman's role in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a television remake of the 1973 movie by the same title. Years earlier, Bergman had played the role in the film version of Cactus Flower (1969) that Bacall had played on Broadway in 1965. In 1995 portrayed Claire Zachanassian in the Terrence McNally play The Visit at the Chichester Festival.
1996 was a pivotal year for Bacall's career. She was chosen by Barbra Streisand to play her mother in the romantic comedy The Mirror Has Two Faces, also starring Jeff Bridges, George Segal and Brenda Vaccaro. Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote of her performance "Bacall, posing, rolling her eyes and snapping out the one-liners with consummate skill, is in to play the source of all of Rose’s insecurities, the mother who was drop-dead gorgeous and who never told her kind of funny-looking daughter she was pretty." She received widespread critical acclaim, and at age 72, she earned her first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, which she was widely expected to win, but lost to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient. She also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
On May 21, 1945, Bacall married Humphrey Bogart. Their wedding and honeymoon took place at Malabar Farm, Lucas, Ohio, the country home of Pulitzer Prize–winning author Louis Bromfield, a close friend of Bogart. At the time of the 1950 United States census, the couple was living at 2707 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills with their son and their nursemaid. Bacall is listed as Betty Bogart. She was married to Bogart until he died in 1957.
^1998
Death
On August 12, 2014, Bacall died after suffering a stroke at her apartment in The Dakota, the Upper West Side building near Central Park in Manhattan. She was confirmed dead at New York–Presbyterian Hospital, at the age of 89.
Bacall was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. At the time of her death, Bacall had an estimated $26.6 million estate. The bulk of her estate was divided among her three children: Leslie Bogart, Stephen Humphrey Bogart, and Sam Robards. Additionally, Bacall left $250,000 each to her youngest grandsons, the sons of Sam Robards, for college.
If you want to read a lot more, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Bacall
- SERVES
- 6
- COOK TIME
- 5 Min
Get out your chopsticks and get ready to enjoy this easy recipe for Kung Pao Beef! Why call for take-out when we can create this classic Asian dish ourselves and save time and money?
- 1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 2 pounds flank steak, thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2/3 cup salted peanuts
- 4 scallions (green onions), thinly sliced
- In a large bowl, combine teriyaki sauce, cornstarch, crushed red pepper, and ginger. Add steak and toss to coat.
- In a large skillet or wok, heat oil over high heat. Add steak mixture and cook 5 to 7 minutes, or until steak is cooked through, stirring constantly.
- Sprinkle with peanuts and scallions, and serve.
And births this date include...
1939 – Francis Richard 'Dick' Scobee, American astronaut (d. 1986)
1949 – Archie Manning, American football player
1959 – Nicole Brown Simpson, American murder victim (d. 1994)
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