Hollywood’s Dark Screen Siren

In her first film, Lauren Bacall was in a disturbing love triangle between her director Howard Hawks and co-star Humphrey Bogart. Years later, Hawks was asked about what happened. His answer was brutal: “The point of being in the theater is that you must not make it seem stale no matter how many times you do it.” With her fatal looks and iconic deep voice, Bacall was a staple of Golden Age Cinema. Her life is practically a checklist of Tinseltown achievements and scandal. During most of her life, Bacall was remarkably private, but secrets never stay buried forever.

In 1932, her parents divorced and her father completely disappeared from her life. While it brought the young girl and her mother closer together, it was clear from interviews and those who knew Bacall that her feelings toward her absentee father were less than loving.

As soon as Bacall hit high school, her ambitions were clear: she wanted to be famous. And because love for acting wasn’t only born out of a desire for attention, she was a bona fide fan of both stage and screen, and one of her favorite stars was Bette Davis. When she was 13, she went to see Davis star in “Marked Woman.” The film introduced her to her new favorite idol, Humphrey Bogart. Watching him, she told a friend, “I’m crazy about that man. Just crazy about him.”

As a struggling actress, Bacall took on modeling jobs and even briefly worked as a theater usher. Then, when she was 18, she became a model for Harper’s Bazaar. Soon after, a socialite, Slim Keith, spotted Bacall on the cover and found her intriguing. She showed the magazine to her husband, film director Howard Hawks. Hawks asked his secretary to reach out to Bacall, but instead, Bacall found herself on the end of a bizarre twist of fate.

Hawks’s secretary misunderstood. Instead of simply calling, she sent Bacall a plane ticket to Hollywood to audition for an upcoming picture he was working on. It was an unlikely and life-changing stroke of luck. Bacall had the look, but she also had hardly any acting experience. With just a few plays under her belt, she explained her apprehension to Hawks, but he saw it as an advantage. Bacall didn’t have any of the bad habits that other actresses he’d worked with had, and he was going to shape her as an actress from the ground up.

When she went for her first screen test for Hawks’s film “To Have and Have Not,” she was so nervous that she couldn’t help trembling. In order to steady herself, she lowered her chin and tilted her eyes up to the camera. Not only did it help control her nerves, but the sultry pose became her signature look, and it certainly charmed Hawks and the bigwigs at Warner Brothers.

Hawks decided that not only would he cast Bacall in the film, but he would focus more on her character, eliminating a love triangle plot and making her the sole romantic interest of the actor he’d chosen to play the main character: none other than Bacall’s childhood crush, Humphrey Bogart. He also spent hours a day on set with her, stepping away from behind the camera and coaching her whenever he could.

If it seems like Hawks was a little too focused on his young protégé, well, he was. Despite the fact that his own wife had discovered Bacall, Hawks was a notorious womanizer and he had his sights set on the young actress. Considering he’d pulled this type of nonsense before, it was no surprise, but Hawks didn’t know what he was in for. Lauren Bacall was emphatically not interested in her boss, but that doesn’t mean she was above falling for another colleague.

The chemistry between Bacall and Bogart was undeniable, and it translated into red-hot passion off-screen. There was just one problem: his wife, actress Mayo Methot. Lauren Bacall was immediately taken with Bogart, and apparently, the feeling was mutual because one day after filming, he reached over and kissed her before asking for her phone number. Bacall, then 19, wrote it on a matchbook for Bogart, who was 44 years old at the time.

At first, they kept their affair secret, but under the scrutiny of a domineering director and jealous wife, it became a race to see who would find out first. Spoiler alert: it was Hawks, and his reaction was unhinged. Hawks had signed Bacall to a contract at the beginning of filming, but now he threatened to ruin her career before it even started. She turned to Bogart for advice, who grew equally angry at Hawks for his ridiculous behavior. The two got into a fight, and things got so bad that production on the film stopped for two weeks. Eventually, studio head Jack Warner had to intervene.

When “To Have and Have Not” came out, it wasn’t an instant hit, but one thing was undeniable: critics loved Bacall. A scant eight days after the film came out, Bogart announced that he’d moved out of the home he shared with his wife.

After the success of “To Have and Have Not,” the studios insisted on pairing Bogart and Bacall for another movie, and in the fall of 1944, they began to make “The Big Sleep.” It looked for a second like Bogart would seamlessly move from his marriage into a relationship with Bacall, but what he did next shattered Bacall’s heart into a million pieces. Eleven days after announcing his separation, he made another announcement: that he would stay with Methot. The news of their reconciliation absolutely devastated Bacall.

Bogart’s marriage to Methot was his third, and he was determined to make it last. But finally, he reached his breaking point. Production on “The Big Sleep” paused for Christmas, leaving Bogart at home with his wife. Drinking had always exacerbated their problems, and the holidays were no exception. Finally, he left her for good and ran straight back to Bacall.

On May 10th, 1945, Bogart and Methot were finally divorced. Just 11 days later, he wed Bacall in a small ceremony on a friend’s farm in Ohio. Many thought it wouldn’t last; after all, Bogart already had three marriages under his belt, and there was that 25-year age gap. As Bogart’s wife, Bacall was immediately thrust into the upper echelons of Hollywood society and inadvertently coined a phrase that would make the history books. Frank Sinatra’s famous circle of friends, the Rat Pack, actually began as Humphrey Bogart’s drinking buddies. Bogart adopted the name when Lauren Bacall, in a failed attempt to scold the crew, called them a darn rat pack.

The mood on the set of “To Have and Have Not” had been fraught, to say the least. The set of “The Big Sleep” was a different story. Hawks, Bacall, and Bogart had all put aside their differences and were determined to make a film that would blow their first collaboration out of the water. “The Big Sleep” was a smash hit and remains one of the most critically lauded examples of film noir to this day.

Bacall and Bogart had a winning formula and they stuck with it, completing a total of four films together. During the first few years of her marriage, Bacall only appeared with Bogart. At the time, she was more interested in her husband than her fledgling career, and unless a script really piqued her interest, she turned it down. Many began to whisper that she was difficult or too picky. In 1945, the Hollywood Women’s Press Club gave her the runner-up award for least cooperative actress.

Bacall had the golden touch, and the films that she did choose to appear in were critically acclaimed. But in her six years with Warner Brothers, they gave Bacall six different suspensions, each one given for refusing roles. Finally, after a long dispute, the studio released Bacall from her contract in 1951. Few directors took Bacall seriously, and she said that they only saw her as Mrs. Bogart.

Despite having three marriages under his belt, Bogart had never had any children, but to Bacall, they were a necessity. When she didn’t immediately get pregnant, Bogart began taking hormones to hurry the process, but they had an unexpected side effect. The star rapidly began losing his hair, and by the time that he showed up to make his next film, he was completely bald. Luckily, it wasn’t all for nothing, and Bacall soon became pregnant with her first child. In 1949, she gave birth to Stephen Humphrey Bogart, named after his father’s character in “To Have and Have Not,” the film that had brought the couple together. Soon after, Leslie Howard Bogart came along. Bacall finally had her happy family, but sadly, nothing good can last forever.

She was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, but there was one thing about Bacall’s life that she struggled to keep hidden. She personally identified as Jewish her whole life, but unfortunately, she had to downplay her religion to succeed in Hollywood. Bogart even convinced her to baptize their two children as Christians for the sake of making life easier for them in a less than tolerant American public.

If Jack Warner thought that Bacall would flop after leaving his studio, he had another thing coming. Bacall’s first film after having kids was “How to Marry a Millionaire.” With a star-studded cast including Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, the film was a smash hit.

In the early 50s, the owners of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre extended an invitation to Bacall to have her hands and feet mark the cement in front of their iconic building. But to everyone’s surprise, she refused. She said that she didn’t yet think of herself as a major star.

With Bacall set to star in a string of films at Fox, Bogart had also made a quick exit from Warner Brothers, preferring to start his own film company. In 1955, he was planning his next big project when he began to experience throat pain and difficulty eating. Bacall pressed him to go to a doctor, and when he finally gave in, the prognosis was devastating. Bogart had esophageal cancer.

With tensions high at home, acting became something of a release for Bacall. During Bogart’s illness, she made the critically acclaimed film “Designing Women.” At the same time, doctors performed surgery to remove Bogart’s esophagus, two lymph nodes, and a rib. Even with such a dramatic procedure, it wasn’t enough, and he began chemotherapy. After multiple surgeries and months of chemo, Bogart could barely walk up and down the stairs anymore. About one year after his diagnosis, he fell into a coma, and the next day the inevitable happened. Humphrey Bogart died at the age of 57. The disease had so ravaged his body that he only weighed 80 pounds.

Bacall was devastated. She had spent a year caring for him and hoping he’d recover; now she was a widow, alone with two children at the age of 32, and without the only support system she’d ever known. For Bacall, it seemed like the world had stopped, but outside, everything kept spinning, leaving her in a daze. In this state of vulnerability, someone saw an opportunity and leapt for it: none other than Bogart’s old friend, Frank Sinatra.

He stepped in, inviting her to dinners and parties filled with her old group of friends. Bacall, afraid to stop for a second and ponder her loss, reluctantly accepted. Over time, this friendship turned into something more. She later revealed that even though she knew she was going through the motions, she couldn’t deny the chemistry between herself and Frank Sinatra. They dated for a few months before Sinatra proposed, and then within days, he coldly broke things off. The reason? They wanted to keep things quiet, but Bacall had told a friend about the engagement, who then turned around and told notorious gossip columnist Louella Parsons. The next day, the Bacall and Sinatra engagement was front-page news. Sinatra was furious; he thought Bacall had been the one to tell the press, and he immediately dumped her.

After losing Bogart, Bacall had left Hollywood to return to her hometown of New York, where she bought an apartment in the infamous Dakota building. It was there that she met actor Jason Robards, who was appearing on Broadway and who was awaiting a divorce from his second wife. Soon after they began seeing each other, they got engaged.

Their engagement was a whirlwind, but it took three tries for Lauren Bacall to legally wed her second husband in 1961. The Austrian government refused to give them a marriage license for their planned nuptials in Vienna. Shockingly, they were also turned down by Las Vegas. In the end, the couple drove down all the way to Mexico to finally tie the knot, a full month after they had originally planned. Why were they in such a hurry? Well, Bacall was pregnant, and she gave birth to their son, Sam Robards, just a few months after their hurried marriage.

She was ecstatic to once again be surrounded by family. She was in her element on stage in New York and slowly plotted a return to film, but she couldn’t ignore her problems forever. By 1968, Bacall could no longer overlook what was happening under her roof. Robards was a heavy drinker, and by this point, it was completely out of control. So the woman who hadn’t been alone since she was 19 years old made a shocking decision: she divorced Robards after seven years of marriage. It was a liberating decision, and Bacall was ready to soar.

Beyond their son Sam, there was one good thing that Bacall got from her time with Robards: he was an accomplished theater actor, and she rediscovered her love for the stage. It was there that she finally gained a sense of accomplishment and a new confidence. In 1970, she won a Tony for her performance in “Applause,” playing a character originated by Bette Davis on screen, and it led to an unforgettable encounter.

When Bacall was young, Bette Davis had been her idol, and Bacall had once even tracked her down to the hotel she was staying at in New York. Well, Davis came to see “Applause” one night and turned the tables by making her way backstage to meet Bacall, where she congratulated her on her performance.

Bacall continued to work steadily over the next few decades, being as choosy with her roles in the 80s and 90s as she’d once been in the 50s. And then, after a 50-year career, she got the surprise of a lifetime. Bacall appeared in a supporting role in the romantic comedy “The Mirror Has Two Faces” in 1996, which earned her her first and only Academy Award nomination. She won the Golden Globe, and everyone expected her to win the Oscar, only for her to lose in an upset to Juliette Binoche. (“I thought Lauren was going to get it, and I think she deserves it.”) The Academy would eventually award her an honorary Oscar in 2010.

Just a month before her 90th birthday, Bacall suffered a stroke and passed away at her longtime Manhattan home. She’d been a mysterious figure throughout her life, but in her final years, she’d started to spill the secrets that had never come out before.

When Bacall spurned Howard Hawks, the director who discovered her on the set of her first film, he was furious, and he was even madder when he discovered that she’d been having an affair with Humphrey Bogart. Years later, when asked about the love triangle, he said, “Bogie fell in love with the character she played, so she had to keep playing it the rest of her life.”

Years after Humphrey Bogart’s death, Bacall confessed that she was completely lost without him and would regularly wake up screaming, tormented by nightmares about him. During his funeral, Bacall made a final heartbreaking tribute. She placed a whistle on his coffin. He’d given it to her years earlier in reference to “To Have and Have Not,” the film that had brought them together. It included an iconic moment where Bacall’s character says to Bogart, “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.” Bogart had it engraved with the words: “If you need me, just whistle.”

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