Vamp with a volcanic temper: One of the most mesmeric beauties ever to smoulder on screen, she bewitched Bogart AND Sinatra - only to be betrayed by both. No wonder Lauren Bacall had the most acid tongue in Hollywood 

By Michael Thornton

Published: 17:07 EST, 13 August 2014 | Updated: 18:09 EST, 13 August 2014

Film goddess: The star in 1946, pioneering what would become known in Hollywood as The Look

'Bogie!' drawled Lauren Bacall in her rasping trombone voice as she sat curled up in her cavernous, art-filled apartment in New York. 

‘And by the way, honey, he spelled it with an “ie” and not an “ey”, like his goddam biographers do.’

Settling that limpid gaze directly on me, she continued: ‘It’s all anyone ever asks me about. My life with Humphrey Bogart. 

'I feel like losing my mind when complete strangers come up to me while I’m having dinner in a restaurant and ask me what it was like being married to him. I tell them that being a widow is not a profession and they look crushed.’

Once she started, she was unstoppable. ‘Sure, we had 12 great years together, Bogie and me, but hell, it wasn’t the way people think it was, or like we did it in the movies. What marriage ever is?

‘A famous love story is hard to maintain when you both live in the spotlight. What we had together wasn’t perfection, but it was real, and I’ve never been able to replace it.’

The magnificent, gutsy, outspoken and occasionally terrifying Miss Bacall — Betty to me and her friends — who died on Tuesday at the age of 89 following a stroke, won two Tony awards, an Academy Award nomination, and an Honorary Oscar during her glittering 70-year career.

But despite being a vivid, charismatic and hugely talented performer, she never quite succeeded, to her fury, in throwing off the mantle of being ‘Humphrey Bogart’s widow’.

She was born Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx district of New York on September 16, 1924, the only child of Jewish parents from immigrant families. Her Polish-born first cousin is Shimon Peres, the former President of Israel.

Her mother was a secretary and her father was a salesman, though they divorced when she was five.

Once out of school, and already 5ft 8½in tall, she started modelling, but was deeply self-conscious about the size of her feet. ‘I was a lousy model,’ she said. ‘I was this flat-chested, big-footed, lanky thing.’

However, she had cat-like green eyes and she was quite exceptionally photogenic. The turning point came at 18 when she landed the front cover of the magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Her cover photograph was spotted by the wife of A-list movie director Howard Hawks, who brought her to Hollywood for a screen test.

Visually, she certainly passed muster, but Hawks was put off by her high-pitched nasal New York twang. Showing the steely determination that characterised her entire approach to life, she went away, worked on her voice, and came back with a smokey, sultry growl.

Hawks gave her the screen name Lauren Bacall, which she hated, and told her he wanted to put her in a movie with either Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart.

‘Cary Grant, terrific!’ she replied. ‘Humphrey Bogart, yuk!’

But Bogart it was, and she made an unforgettable screen debut opposite him in 1944 in To Have And Have Not.

Though she was outwardly cool and assured, working with the great movie legend, 25 years her senior, caused her to shake so badly with nerves that the only way she found she could control her shakes was to lower her chin to her chest, keeping her body rigid, and look up at him through her eyelashes.

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Look of love: She made an unforgettable screen debut opposite Bogart in 1944 in To Have And Have Not

Passion: It rapidly became obvious that married Bogart and Bacall were falling in love off-screen as well as on

Whirlwind: Within three weeks of meeting, the Hollywood starlets were having an affair, and seven months after the movie premiered, Bogart divorced his wife and married Bacall. She was 20; he was 45

Archive: Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart's wedding

The effect was so astonishingly seductive that it instantly became known in Hollywood as ‘The Look’, and columnists hailed her as the great new sex symbol, calling her ‘Slinky! Sultry! Sensational!’

One scene was to etch itself into the memories of moviegoers for ever. It was when Bacall said to Bogart: ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and . . . blow.’

Bogart was still married to his alcoholic third wife, Mayo Methot, but it rapidly became obvious that he and Bacall were falling in love off-screen as well as on.

Within three weeks of meeting, they were having an affair, and seven months after the movie premiered, Bogart divorced his wife and married Bacall. She was 20; he was 45.

They would star in three more movies together — The Big Sleep, Dark Passage and Key Largo — and went on to have two children: Stephen, in 1949, and daughter, Leslie, born in 1952.

In the minds of the public and the fan magazines, Bacall was ‘Bogie’s Baby’ and theirs was one of Hollywood’s great love stories.

He was a heavy smoker, an even heavier drinker, and a lifelong womaniser. And although Bacall knew how to manage him, matched him drink for drink, cuss word for cuss word, and stood up to him in every slanging match, behind the scenes the marriage was not quite as idyllic as people wanted to imagine.

Bogart had a mistress, Verita Bouvaire Thompson, with whom he had begun an affair two years before he met Bacall. His relationship with Verita continued throughout his marriage to Bacall.

Verita travelled with Bogart, ostensibly as his personal secretary, bartender and hairdresser. She was later to reveal — in her 1982 memoir, Bogie And Me: A Love Story — that she slept with Bogart’s toupée under her pillow.

The star, who was almost bald, hated wearing a toupée, but she used to tell him: ‘You look like hell without it, like an old man.’

One friend of Bogart, the writer Dean Shapiro, said: ‘The Bogie and Bacall myth wasn’t really what it seemed. They were supposed to be this great Hollywood couple, but Bogie was carrying on with Verita on the side.’

Other friends revealed that Verita shared Bogart’s passion for sailing and drinking, and that their relationship often left Bacall ‘stranded’. Verita claimed that Bogie called her from his deathbed.

In the late Eighties, Verita opened a piano bar in New Orleans called Bogie and Me. When Hurricane Katrina hit the city, Verita refused to leave her home.

Doomed love: Lauren Bacall with Frank Sinatra in 1957. He broke off their engagement when she told a reporter

She said: 'He saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been. But the truth is, he behaved like a s***'

‘Lauren Bacall failed to chase me out of Hollywood,” she said defiantly. ‘Katrina won’t force me out of New Orleans.’

If Bacall knew about the affair, she ignored it. She had a temper that was the equal to Bogart’s own.

Noel Coward never got over his astonishment at seeing Bacall, in an outburst of fury, kick the all-powerful Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper ‘up the bottie under my very eyes’ while calling her ‘a lousy bitch’.

Both she and Bogart were formidably strong characters.

In 1947, they travelled to Washington to take part in major political protests in favour of the Hollywood Ten — film industry employees who were being branded as Communist sympathisers.

Their outspoken stance horrified the major studios, and Bogart was prevailed upon to distance himself from the furore by writing an article in the March 1948 issue of Photoplay magazine under the title: ‘I’m no Communist.’

Bacall, however, remained implacably silent, refusing to be told whom she could or couldn’t support politically. A lifelong Democrat, she hated Richard Nixon.

Bacall reached the peak of her popularity in 1953, when she co-starred with Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe in the hugely successful screen comedy, How To Marry A Millionaire. 

She got on well with Grable, but Monroe exasperated her almost beyond endurance. She regarded her as selfish, ill-mannered and unprofessional, and found it hard to say anything polite about her even after her untimely death at the age of 36.

‘If it hadn’t been for the patience of Grable, that film would never have been finished,’ she once told me.

Smouldering: The star in 1945 soon after her acting debut, which turned her into Hollywood royalty

In her autobiography, By Myself, Bacall was searchingly, almost painfully honest about the death of Humphrey Bogart at the age of 57 in 1957 from cancer of the throat and oesophagus — and about how difficult and irritable he was towards her during that final illness.

She describes in graphic detail her shock and horror on watching Bogie’s crumpled corpse being carried from the house in a body bag by the funeral directors. At his funeral, she placed a small gold whistle on his coffin in memory of the most famous line in their first movie together.

She remained loyal to him for the rest of her days.

Asked whether Bogart was really as tough as he seemed, she replied: ‘In a word, no. Bogie was truly a gentle soul.’

For a long time after his death, Bacall suffered an identity crisis, both personal and professional.

The only way she could find of filling that vacuum was to gravitate towards a relationship with another superstar, Frank Sinatra.

But when she made the mistake of informing the gossip columnist Louella Parsons that they were engaged, Sinatra was furious. He took back his marriage proposal and cut off all contact with her.

Sinatra’s ex-wife, Ava Gardner, who loathed Bacall, called him up. ‘Don’t tell me you were really going to marry her?’ she asked.

‘Hell, no,’ he replied. ‘I was never going to marry that pushy broad.’

Bacall’s own take on this public humiliation was characteristically spirited. ‘Frank did me a great favour. He saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been. But the truth is that he behaved like a complete s***.’

In July 1961, she married the great, but alcoholic, actor Jason Robards — perhaps best known for his role in All The President’s Men — when she was four months pregnant. Their son, Sam, was born in the following December.

Their marriage was stormy and disastrous.

‘I invited a few friends over to celebrate Jason’s 40th birthday,’ Bacall remembered. ‘Jason showed up at 2am — loaded. I grabbed a bottle of vodka, smashed it into the cake and yelled: “Here’s your goddam cake!” The marriage ended when I came across a letter written to him by his girlfriend.’ They were divorced in 1969.

Huge Broadway hits in the comedy Cactus Flower in 1965, and in the musical Applause in 1970, established her as a star independent of Bogart.

She was fierce behind the scenes and would display a dragon-like ferocity if she felt anyone else in the cast was encroaching on her territory.

During the London run of Applause, she took a holiday and in her absence, the British musical star Sheila Mathews played the lead.

But when Mathews committed the heresy of being photographed by a national newspaper in the star dressing room, Bacall stormed back early from her break and sat in the darkened theatre watching her replacement.

Making her own way: Huge hits on screen (pictured with Gregory Peck in Designing Woman, 1957) and on stage established Bacall as a star independent of Bogart - but she could never shake the label as his widow

Tempestuous, explosive and eternally uncompromising, she was one of the last great movie icons of our age

Afterwards she marched backstage, summoned Mathews to her presence and barked: ‘Honey, you just played your last show.’

The Hollywood actress Kathleen Turner, who was often compared with Bacall, reportedly introduced herself to Bacall with the words: ‘Hi, I’m the young you.’ She found herself looking at a frozen, unsmiling and imperious mask.

In 1996, appearing with Barbra Streisand in the film The Mirror Has Two Faces, Bacall was nominated for an Oscar. Everyone in Hollywood was convinced she would win. When she didn’t, and the camera zoomed in on her face, her expression spoke volumes — all of them unprintable.

After appearing with Nicole Kidman in the 2003 movie, Dogville, Bacall developed a fierce antagonism towards Kidman’s ex-husband, Tom Cruise, calling him ‘a maniac’, and adding: ‘I can’t understand the way he conducts his life.’

In 2009, Bacall was at last awarded an Honorary Oscar ‘in recognition of her central place in the golden age of motion pictures’.

‘Bogie’s Baby’ still had an infallible way with one-liners. Gazing at the gold statuette, she turned to the audience and growled: ‘A man at last!’

In her increasingly reclusive last years, she said: ‘A woman isn’t complete without a man. But where do you find a man — a real man — these days?’

After her death on Tuesday, her grandson, Jamie Bogart, said: ‘She was a tough personality.

She wanted the best and if you weren’t doing the best, she let you know about it . . . catch her on a bad day and it could be interesting.’

‘Interesting’ is the understatement to end all understatements as a description of the battling and bellicose Bacall.

Tempestuous, explosive and eternally uncompromising, she was one of the last great movie icons of our age.

There could never be another Bogie — and there will certainly never be another Lauren Bacall.

My terrifying date with the ultimate diva, by literary critic GRAHAM LORD

An experience: Prolific journalist and critic Graham Lord felt even Bogart and Sinatra - tough as they were - must have had their hands full with Bacall

Of all the people I ever interviewed, Lauren Bacall was by far the most difficult.

Bacall and her first husband, Humphrey Bogart, had been great friends of David Niven, and it was good of her to agree to talk to me about him in 2002 when I was writing the great actor’s biography. But trying to fix an interview with her was a nightmare.

By the time I finally walked into her New York apartment block on West 72nd Street, where John Lennon had been murdered two decades before, our appointment had been scheduled and rescheduled at least half a dozen times by a series of ever-changing secretaries.

The door was opened by Sam Robards, Bacall’s 40-year-old actor son by Jason Robards, when I arrived at 4.55pm for my five o’clock appointment.

‘Hi!’ he said genially. ‘Come in. I’m afraid she’s out shopping.’

Shopping? Dear God — what now?

‘But I’m sure she won’t be long,’ said Robards. ‘Take a seat.’

I went into the living room overlooking Central Park and looked at the hundreds of books and photographs that covered every wall: photos of Bacall with Bogart, with several presidents, with dozens of film stars, politicians, socialites, writers and society celebrities.

Time passed: five minutes, 10, 15. At 5.20pm I felt a sudden chill at my back, as though a silent poltergeist had materialised behind me.

I turned. There she was at last, the legendary 77-year-old Hollywood star, the woman who had acted with Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, and gone to bed with Bogart and Sinatra.

‘Miss Bacall!’ I said, advancing and offering my hand. ‘It’s so good of you to see me.’

She looked at my hand. ‘You were early,’ she said accusingly, her eyes glittering like ice.

I retrieved my hand. ‘Er, yes: five minutes early, I think.’

‘I do not expect people to arrive early,’ she snapped. It seemed unwise to point out I did not expect people to arrive 20 minutes late.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t like to keep people waiting.’

There was a frigid silence.

‘Do you mind if I use a tape recorder?’ I said.

‘Goddamn it!’ she snarled. ‘Haven’t you set up your stuff yet?’

I was starting to feel I’d just about had enough of this. Who did this woman she think she was?

‘No, Miss Bacall, I haven’t set anything up,’ I said, ‘for three reasons. Firstly, I didn’t know whether you’d object to being recorded. Secondly, I didn’t know whether you wanted to do the interview here or in another room.

‘And thirdly, I thought it would be bloody rude if I started littering your living room without your permission.’ She glared at me.

Fiery: She chuckled wildly as she said Niven was sexually insatiable and Grace Kelly was very active with men

I picked up my briefcase and tape recorder. ‘Obviously this is not a convenient moment for you,’ I said, ‘so I’ll be off, and I won’t bother you again. I’ll see myself out. Goodbye.’

She stared at me. Suddenly she guffawed. I’d obviously passed some sort of alpha male test. ‘OK!’ she said. ‘Siddown! Let’s do it.’

And do it we did, for nearly 45 minutes. She gave me some great material for the book, often chuckling wickedly.

She told me how Niven had been so grief-stricken after the death of his beloved first wife, Primmie, he had become sexually insatiable.

She told me what a jealous, selfish, adulterous, drunken nightmare his Swedish second wife, Hjordis, had been — and how unbelievably cruel to Niv when he lay dying of motor neurone disease.

She told me what great fun Niven had been, ‘one of the best friends I’ve ever had, hysterically funny and a flirt’, and claimed that Niven had been one of the ‘beards’ who helped to cover up Prince Philip’s alleged dalliances.

‘The rumour was that Prince Philip always had women and they covered for him and pretended that his women were their women.’ Absurd gossip, obviously.

But she also told me how Grace Kelly was ‘very active with men’, perhaps even after she married Prince Rainier of Monaco, and that Rainier was often horrible to her.

David Niven, she said, ‘enjoyed the pomp and ceremony of Monaco, which I thought was the biggest joke I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe it!

‘I went once with him. I thought, “I don’t believe this tooting, the Prince and the Princess, dum-da-dum-da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-da, the trumpets blaring.

‘Grace bought into her face on a stamp and into the title in a big way. She loved all of that, but then she was stuck with it. That often happens, you know: be careful what you ask for, you may get it.’

It all made wonderful copy, and afterwards I skipped out of the Dakota building whistling all the way down West 72nd Street. Bacall had been worth it, despite all the hassle — but, my God, she was a difficult woman.

No wonder the secretaries kept leaving. Even Bogie and Sinatra, tough as they were, must have had their hands full.

• Extracted from Lord’s Ladies And Gentlemen: 100 Legends Of The 20th Century by Graham Lord, available as an ebook for £6.99 from amazon.co.uk

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