Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in The Bronx, New York City. She made her acting debut on Broadway in 1942, at age 17, as a walk-on in Johnny 2 X 4. As a teenage fashion model, she appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute.

About Lauren Bacall in brief

Summary Lauren BacallLauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in The Bronx, New York City. She made her acting debut on Broadway in 1942, at age 17, as a walk-on in Johnny 2 X 4. As a teenage fashion model, she appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, as well as in magazines such as Vogue. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute. Bacall received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2009 for recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. She died of cancer on December 17, 2013, aged 89. She is survived by her husband, three children, and six grandchildren. Her funeral was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on December 18, 2013. Her final film was The Shootist, directed by John Wayne, which she co-starred in at Wayne’s personal request. She also won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in The Mirror Has Two Faces. She had a daughter, Lauren Bacall, with her second husband, Lee Goldberg, and a son, Jonathan Bacall. Her father was born in New Jersey, to parents who were born in Valozhyn, a significant center of Jewish life, in present-day Belarus. Through her father, she was a relative of Shimon Peres, the eighth Prime Minister of Israel and ninth President of Israel.

Her mother emigrated from Iași, the Kingdom of Romania, through Ellis Island. She later took the Romanian form of her mother’s last name, Bacall; she later changed her first name to Lauren, and she chose a variant of her maiden name, as her screen name was Lauren Bacal. She starred in the romantic comedies How to Marry a Millionaire with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, and Designing Woman with Gregory Peck. Her husband, Hollywood producer and director Howard Hawks, trained her to make her voice lower and deeper, instead of her normal high-pitched, nasal voice. She won a Tony Award for Applause and Woman of the Year for her role in Applause. She appeared in the film noir Dark Passage and the romantic comedy Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart. Her last film, The Big Sleep, was released in 1968. She went on to have a successful career as a model and actress in Europe and the U.S. She retired from acting in 1992. She wrote a book about her experiences in Hollywood called “My Life as an Actress” and later wrote a memoir about her life as an actress, “A Life as An Actress” She died on December 16, 2013 at the age of 89. Her son Jonathan Bacal, who is also an actor, is the son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and is the grandson of former U.N. Secretary-General William J. de Gunzburg.