Lauren Bacall, Screen Siren, Star, Model, Dies

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Wednesday, 13 August 2014 06:51

Written by Janet Walker

Lauren Bacall, actress, model, legend, has died according to the Bogart Family estate who confirmed the former wife of Humphrey Bogart passed away from complications brought on by a stroke. She was 89.

"With deep sorrow, yet with great gratitude for her amazing life, we confirm the passing of Lauren Bacall," read the Bogart Estate family statement sent via twitter, @HumphreyBogart.

Bacall, according to media reports, died at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Tuesday, at 5:21pm of complications from a massive stroke suffered at her home in New York.

Bacall, whose career spanned more than five decades, was forever known as the legendary half of Bogart and Bacall. A star, in her own right, Bacall was one of the last original starlets of Hollywood's Golden Era, when unknown talent could be found at Schwab's Drugstore or as in Bacall's case on a magazine cover modeling for Harper's Bazaar.

Pickup by Howard Hawks, who signed her to a seven-year, $125.00 per week contract, Bacall screen tested, by accident, as he asked his assistant to find out more about the green-eyed, tawny blonde, statuesque model.

The assistant inadvertently sent her a plane ticket and the rest, they say, is Hollywood history. Bacall tested with her future husband, Humphrey Bogart, 25 years her senior. Bogart initiated a romantic relationship with the sultry, cat eyed beauty, which began a love affair that transcended time and became the foundation for artists throughout the decades.

Bogart and Bacall married May 21, 1945, at the estate of Bogart friend and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Louis Bromfield at Malabar Farm then located in Lucas, Ohio. The scandal was as salacious has Hollywood dared voice at the time.

Considered May-December the pair first met when Bacall, 19, and Bogart, 44, and unhappily married, starred opposite in "To Have and Have Not" in 1944.

Soon after, the two married, had two children, and remained happily married until Bogart's death 12 years later of cancer. After his death, she married the actor Jason Robards, they had a son.

Born in 1924, as Betty Jo Perske, in the Bronx to Natalie Weisnstein-Bacal, a Romania immigrant, Bacall often said her childhood was a "confusion." Her parents divorced when she was five. Bacall remained devoted to her mother and moved her to LA after she became a star.

Bacall, adopted her mother's name when Hollywood came calling and was renamed by Howard Hawk's, who pronounced her Lauren. She kept Bacall.

Throughout the course of her more than fifty year career Bacall is credited with 72 acting roles, more than 180 personal appearances in film and television, as a writer she authored eight biographies.

Receiving twenty nominations from peers, critics and fans, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored the screen legend with an Academy Award in 2009.

"The Mirror Has Two Faces," her most critically acclaimed role, outside of the Golden era, in 1996 starring opposite Barbara Streisand and Jeff Bridges, garnered her a Golden Globe win and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She also earned both an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA nomination for the role.

Name by the American Film Institute's one of the top 25 actresses in a century of film, Bacall, treasured, also won various Lifetime Achievement awards from the industry's most prestigious film festivals.

Her final role "Trouble is My Business" is currently in production.

She is survived by three children, Stephen Humphrey Bogart, Leslie Bogart and Sam Robards.

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.