In honour of the glorious Lauren Bacall’s 89th birthday, let’s revisit this perfect Vanity Fair profile from 2011:
The apartment is cavernous, on a high floor of the Dakota, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Huge windows overlook Central Park, 30 feet above the tree line, with the grand residential buildings of Fifth Avenue in the distance. My meetings with Lauren Bacall, who is 86, are at three P.M. in the winter, so the light is silvery blue in the wood-trimmed parlor, where Bacall has set the scene for our sessions. A tall wooden chair, for her, is positioned in the center of the room, near a low, white-and-green-upholstered club chair, for me. A single lamp burns in a distant corner. She is dressed, every time, in a black shirt, black pants, and black orthopedic shoes. She always has with her Sophie, an excitable papillon, and what she refers to as “my friend,” her aluminum walker, with tennis balls on its feet. The “fucking fracture that I’ve got on the hip” is the result of a bathroom fall a few months back, a frustrating how-do-you-do after a life of near-perfect health. “Can you imagine? It’s the only time I have been in the hospital except for the times when I gave birth,” she says.
Tyrnauer describes her performance as Schatze in 1953′s How to Marry a Millionaire as Bacall “at the height of her beauty,” and it’s hard to argue the point. She was gorgeous and perfect in To Have and Have Not, but only nineteen years old and scared as a rabbit. How to Marry a Millionaire is not one of the great screwball comedies, but I watch it constantly, and Bacall (and Marilyn Monroe and Betty Gable) are just stupendous and confident and funny! Terribly funny. It’s on Netflix Instant, don’t miss it. I watched it repeatedly as a child before realizing that guy thought Betty Grable was agreeing to have sex with him, of course. Now, here is a lovely tribute reel to Bacall narrated by another great voice, the less-perfect Kelsey Grammer:
Tags: actors, beauty, how to marry a millionaire, lauren bacall
I am a TCM baby all the way. It is the only thing I miss about not having cable. From age 11 I was determined to watch every single movie made before 1970 that I could get my hands on. I’ve done pretty well so far, I think.
I used to have this thing against Lauren Bacall, like I didn’t ~get~ her appeal, until I watched How to Marry a Millionaire – then I wondered how I’d ever disliked her in the first place. The Big Sleep sealed the deal with me forever.
You obviously have a great mind, and great taste, because I feel the same about the TCM lack w/ no cable. Granted, I haven’t had cable since TNT was stil playing the classics that are now on TCM, and AMC didn’t have any series of their own. The run up to the Oscars was always my favorite! And while I /liked/ Lauren Bacall before, once I saw HTMM, I /loved/ her!
Yes, 31 days of Oscars! Summer Under the Stars! I FUCKING LOVE TCM. And holy shit, I forgot the world once existed without any AMC original series. Mind blown.
THOSE BEDROOM EYES
No comment could express well enough how wonderful Lauren Bacall is.
Also, be quiet Kelsey Grammar, plenty of us were that smitten at first sight. Pretty sure I’ve watched the scene where she sings in “The Big Sleep” a hundred times now.
here it is just in case you all aren’t up to a hundred views yet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSj92Wvr-As
I could watch that a hundred times today. And another hundred tomorrow. Forever and ever, amen.
No comment could express well enough how wonderful Lauren Bacall is.
Also, be quiet Kelsey Grammar, plenty of us were that smitten at first sight. Pretty sure I've watched the scene where she sings in "The Big Sleep" a hundred times now.
here it is just in case you all aren't up to a hundred views yet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSj92Wvr-As
I could watch that a hundred times today. And another hundred tomorrow. Forever and ever, amen.