Golden Age of Hollywood Legendary Actress Lauren Bacall Dies at 89 … Together Again With Humphrey Bogart

Bogie and Bacall, together again … Lauren Bacall passes away at age 89.

Famed actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Lauren Bacall, has passed away at age 89 in New York from an apparent stroke. She was born Betty Joan Perske on September. 16, 1924 in New York City, the only child of immigrant parents. Bacall was a model turned actress when she was discovered after she modeled for Harper’s Bazaar magazine, which published a photograph of her. The rest is Show biz Hollywood history as Lauren Bacall became one of Hollywood’s leading ladies. Bacall was only 19 when Hawks cast her in her first movie, 1944′s “To Have and Have Not.”  Lauren Bacall won two Tony Awards and an honorary Oscar. She  was also nominated for three Emmy Awards. It is hard to believe she never won a best actress Oscar along the way. Lauren Bacall made up one half of my favorite Hollywood couple of all-time, Bogey and Bacall. The two were married from May 21, 1945 until Bogey’s death,  January 14, 1957. The duo also starred together in some of the greatest films ever made, “The Big Sleep,” “Key Largo,”  “Dark Passage”  and “To Have and Have Not.”

Lauren Bacall, the sultry actress with the heavy-lidded eyes and husky voice who captured Humphrey Bogart’s heart both on and off the movie screen, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.

“With deep sorrow, yet with great gratitude for her amazing life, we confirm the passing of Lauren Bacall,” the estate of the Bogart family said on a verified Twitter account.

Bacall was married to Bogart from 1945 until his death in 1957. They had two children.

The public knew her as Lauren, the screen name hung on her by director Howard Hawks, while friends used her given name, Betty. Bogart simply called her “Baby” in a love story that ended prematurely with his cancer death in 1957.

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New York Times Obit:

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve,” her character says to Bogart’s in the movie’s most memorable scene. “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 film was the first of more than 40 for Ms. Bacall, among them “The Big Sleep” and “Key Largo” with Bogart, “How to Marry a Millionaire” with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, “Designing Woman” with Gregory Peck, the all-star “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974) and, later in her career, Lars von Trier’s “Dogville” (2003) and “Manderlay” (2005) and Robert Altman’s “Prêt-à-Porter” (1994).

But few if any of her movies had the impact of her first — or of that one scene. Indeed, her film career was a story of ups, downs and long periods of inactivity. Though she received an honorary Academy Award in 2009 “in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures,” she was not nominated for an Oscar until 1997.

The theater was kinder to her. She won Tonys for her starring roles in two musicals adapted from classic films: “Applause” (1970), based on “All About Eve,” and “Woman of the Year” (1981), based on the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn movie of the same name. Earlier she starred on Broadway in the comedies “Goodbye, Charlie” (1959) and “Cactus Flower” (1965).

She also won a National Book Award in 1980 for the first of her two autobiographies, “Lauren Bacall: By Myself.”

Watch Bogey and Bacall below in two of their film classics. Sorry, they just don’t make movies like this anymore and it is a shame. Lauren Ball and Bogey are together again, Rest in eternal peace.

Key Largo – Movie Trailer from 1948

The Big Sleep from 1946