Lauren Bacall, who filled the silver screen with sultry class while never yielding an inch to Humphrey Bogart, died Tuesday at her apartment in the Dakota, the Bogart estate said.
She was 89.
One of the last of the golden-age screen goddesses, Bacall cut a tall, slender figure with a mysterious smile and more than a hint of tough-broad attitude that perhaps harkened back to her childhood in the Bronx.
“Dame-est of the dames,” actor John Cusack tweeted.
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are seen in the 1947 film, 'Dark Passage.' It was just one of several films the Hollywood couple appeared in together.
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Actress Lauren Bacall attends the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Inaugural Governors Awards on November 14, 2009 in Los Angeles.
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Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are seen left in 'Dark Passage.' In 2009, right, she received an Honorary Academy Award at the age of 85 after appearing in more than 30 films.
Over a career that stretched into eight decades, Bacall won two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe, the Kennedy Center Honors and an honorary Oscar. In 1999, she was named one of the 25 most important women in Hollywood history by the American Film Institute.
She was one of the few women allowed to hang out with Frank Sinatra’s crowd and it has often been reported that her offhand wisecrack about that rowdy posse’s appearance inspired them to call themselves the “Rat Pack.”
She later became a grande dame of film, television and theater, though she insisted all her life she felt uncomfortable with any designation that seemed to mummify her.
Bacall carved herself an eternal place in Hollywood lore halfway through her first film, “To Have and Have Not,” in which she co-starred with Bogart.
Playing the aptly nicknamed Slim, Bacall had just taken the lead in a budding relationship with Bogart’s Steve by kissing him twice.
If he was interested in continuing, she said, all he had to do was whistle.
“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?” she said in a soft, throaty voice that would become one of her screen signatures. “You just put your lips together and . . . blow.”
Bacall, who was 19 when she made “To Have and Have Not” in 1944, married Bogart the following year, and they remained together until his death in 1957.
Rights Managed/Ronald Grant Archive / Mary Evan It was while shooting 'To Have and Have Not' that Bacall met fellow actor Humphrey Bogart, leading to an 11-year marriage.
Dan Farrell/New York Daily News Bacall is seen at home with her second husband, Jason Robards, and their then 2-year-old son, Sam.
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She reunited with Bogart for “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Dark Passage” (1947) and “Key Largo” (1948).
She co-starred with Kirk Douglas in “Young Man With a Horn” (1950) and shared the bill with Marilyn Monroe in “How to Marry a Millionaire” (1953).
She developed a reputation for being particular about roles and not always being easy to work with. So she took only a relative handful of lead film roles over the years, earning almost equal acclaim for her stage performances.
She won her Tonys for “Applause” in 1970 and “Woman of the Year” in 1981.
Her first Oscar nomination didn’t come until 1997, for Best Supporting Actress in “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” While she had already won a Golden Globe for the role, she did not win.
Her post-Bogart films, not all lead roles, included “Designing Women” with Cary Grant (1957), “Written on the Wind” with Rock Hudson, “Sex and the Single Girl” (1964), “Harper” (1966) and “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974).
Later generations came to know her as a pitchwoman for coffee and cat food, though she did a memorable cameo as herself in a 2006 episode of “The Sopranos.”
Born Betty Jane Perske and raised by a struggling divorced mother, Bacall helped support them both as a model while attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
She got her first small Broadway role in the 1942 show “Johnny 2 x 4.” She was also voted Miss Greenwich Village that year and in March 1943 landed on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Director Howard Hawks’ wife saw the picture and urged Hawks to screen-test her.
After Bogart’s death, she became engaged to Sinatra, only to have him break it off because it was reported in a newspaper. He didn’t speak to her for two decades, a reaction she considered rude, though she often said the marriage would have been a disaster.
She married actor Jason Robards Jr. in 1961 and it lasted until 1969, after which she remained single.
She is survived by a son, Stephen, and daughter, Leslie, with Bogart and a son with Robards, actor Sam Robards.
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