Happy birthday to Lauren Bacall

“He’s the ugliest handsome man I’ve ever seen.”

— Lauren Bacall on Humphrey Bogart

When Lauren Bacall was 17, she modeled for a season for the designers on 7th Avenue. By her own admission, she was not very good at it. Here is what she said, when she came to do a seminar at my school:

“I was flat-chested and very skinny. The clothes of that time just didn’t look good on me.”

If you think of how female body-types go in and out of fashion, you can see that she is quite right, as gorgeous as she is. Her body-type is actually “in” now. But the clothes didn’t hang right on her shoulders, she had slim hips, etc. Not at all right for the time.

However – she happened to meet a man during this time who arranged an introduction with Diana Vreeland, legendary fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar at the time.

Diana Vreeland, who was a bit of a visionary, actually – saw something in the teenage “Betty”. Now it is obvious that Vreeland saw what it was in her that would captivate an audience. She saw the “star” – the star that was already there.

So Vreeland put Betty Bacall on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.

Bacall stands in front of a huge Red Cross sign. She has a flat blank face, she stares straight at the camera – there is nothing coy about her. Her skin is pale, her lips are bright red. She doesn’t look like what models looked like in that time period. She looks like what models look like now. There is a very clear identity on her face – you can see her personality – which models didn’t quite have at that time. Think of the runway models now – how they stalk right at you – with this flat blank “Yeah, this is who I am” stare. That was what Bacall looked like on that cover.

The Harper’s Bazaar cover was, as Bacall described it, “the twist of fate that changed my life forever”.

Slim Hawks, Howard Hawks’ wife, saw the cover and showed it to her husband, saying: “What about this girl?” Howard Hawks had been looking for a project. He was a Svengali, he wanted to create a certain type of woman for movies. He (according to Bacall) had a fantasy about women, and a fantasy about how they should be on screen. He had never seen it before (the quality he was looking for was “insolence” – not “toughness” but “insolence”), and he wanted to find his muse for this particular rare female dynamic. As a result of Lauren Bacall’s Harper’s Bazaar cover, Howard Hawks called this skinny teenager out to Hollywood to put her under his own personal contract, to develop projects for her – the first being To Have and Have Not – starring (of course) Humphrey Bogart. Her performance in that film has got to go down in history as one of the greatest and most startling film debuts of all time.

Also, you know, there was the little thing of that romance that began on that film.

But before all that came along – Hawks was very careful about her. He wanted her to maintain a sense of mystery and power. She was not just another starlet. He wanted to orchestrate her career- which he ended up doing – brilliantly.

Bacall came and talked at my school, and told a very funny story about those early days, when Hawks was “holding her back”, trying to find the right project (and co-star) for her. Bacall said:

“Hawks said to me, ‘I have a feeling that you would be great in a movie with either Cary Grant … or Humphrey Bogart.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Ooooooh, Cary Grant! That sounds like a good idea!!”

She told us that she had spent the majority of her life “quaking in fear”. Hard to imagine, but true. At every step along the way, she had huge obstacles to overcome – of fear, shyness, self-confidence problems … She was terrified to meet Diana Vreeland. She was terrified of modeling. She was terrified to meet Howard Hawks. She was terrified of what would happen to her after Bogie died. She was terrified to star in “Applause” on Broadway – the musical version of All About Eve (she ended up winning the first of two Tonys by the way). She is ruled by fear.

Her stage fright is debilitating (always has been) and she trembles uncontrollably. Her head shakes (she mentions becoming aware of it on her first day of shooting To Have and Have Not) … her hand trembles … it is beyond her control. The “tricks” she performs on herself, to just allow herself to be up there in front of people (head down, chin down, arm down … ) – are extraordinary, I admire the smart-ness of her coping skills very much … but lots of people have coping skills and don’t become PHENOMS at the age of 19. Her “coping skills” (head down, chin down, look up while head is down so head doesn’t shake, arm down, cross one arm over the other) – all of that stuff became her “look”, her persona, what she was famous for.

Amazing! What began as a way to stop her head from shaking – became her “trademark”.

Bacall is smart. She’s not just smart as an actress, but she has the other kind of smarts: smarts about herself. And the choices she made only made her seem stronger, more specific, more herself. None of those invented gestures come off as studied, or stiff. It looks like Lauren Bacall is just one cool dame, who doesn’t NEED a lot of extraneous movement. When really it all began as a way to deal with nervousness. I love that!

“I am always associated with [Bogart] in people’s minds – ‘the greatest love story ever told.’ You can’t get away from that. He’d never believe it, of course… It’s great that he’s still appreciated by so many, because he’s worth it. He was a very special human being, Bogart.”

The famous cover, the “twist of fate” below the fold.

Happy birthday, Betty Bacall.