Amidst the obituaries for big stars Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall there is a lot of talk of Williams’ bravery in talking about his debilitating mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse. Lauren Bacall’s death is mostly marked by tributes to her beauty and to misty-eyed sentiment about that old school Hollywood glamour that she came to represent. Its often the case with beautiful women that their achievements can be undone by people transfixed by their smouldering celluloid gaze.
Lost a little over time, and over a longer life with a less tragic ending than poor Robin Williams, seems to be any acknowledgement of Bacall’s own courage. It might be arguable as to whether or not the sexism in the film industry is as rife or simply takes a different less blatant track, but there was just as much grit thrown in the path of this screen goddess of the 40s and 50s as there is to the fame-haunted celebrities of now. Bacall was a naive 19-year-old when she first entered what she called the “roller coaster” world of film and she matured under the same spotlight that burned out so many young women. Immediately she raised hackles of the studio bosses by falling in love with her first co-star - the 44-year-old married Humphrey Bogart - and risked the disfavour of movie audiences by being the other, very young, woman as Bogie battled his way publicly through his third divorce to be with her. Theirs was a very visible love story which lasted until Bogie’s death in 1957 but Bacall never pretended they had some airbrushed, no-flaws marriage. They adored each other but rowed and had pressures like anyone else.
Her attitude to celebrity was never to be overawed by it - “Stardom isn’t a career,” she said. “Its an accident.”
From a poor and Jewish background - the former cinema usherette born Betty Perske might have been thought to have few choices and little power but she made choice her thing - simply ignoring the casting couch, suspended 12 times by one studio for refusing to do crap movies she hated, marching in anti-McCarthyist protests in Washington, campaigning for a Democrat presidential candidate when Hollywood much preferred to nestle under the right-wing, nursing her dying husband and enduring the sometimes foul temper of the terminally ill with stoicism, but talking about it later with admirable, gloss-free frankness.
Bacall was only in her early thirties when she was left a widow with two young children, with many Hollywood observers anticipating her to then sink without trace, under the shadow of the dead legend, perhaps to slip into the alcoholic escapism of so many of her Brat Pack friends. But Betty Bacall was born of stronger stuff, her main vices a cigarette and a perchant for father-figures, she had lost a soul mate but Bogie had not left a fortune by any means and she had their children to raise.
In later life she unflinchingly took roles of characters that were older or close to her own age - something few ambitious Hollywood actresses would dream of doing then or now. Her face remained unfrozen by surgery and awesome in reflection of her early looks and older character.
Bacall’s face may have made a beautiful black and white poster but she was far more than the accident of her sensuous looks or the talent of her acting. Bacall was a women who made herself a pioneer of plain speaking, by being honest about who she was and what she believed in. A gutsy broad who rode her life and its hardships with self-effacing dignity: “You just learn to cope with whatever you have to cope with. The world doesn’t owe you a damn thing,” she said.
Let’s not do ourselves or our golden female stars of screen a disfavour in death, beautiful creatures yes, but sometimes heroines of life too.
