Watch Kelsey Grammer's tribute to Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall, 89, Latest Entertainment News - The New Paper
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Watch Kelsey Grammer's tribute to Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall, 89

Lauren Bacall, the sultry actress with the heavy-lidded eyes and husky voice who captured Casablanca actor Humphrey Bogart’s heart both on and off the movie screen, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.

Bacall was married to Bogart from 1945 until his death in 1957. They had two children.

In the video above, you can watch Kelsey Grammer's stylish film-noir tribute to the actress for the Turner Movie Channel.

The public knew her as Lauren, the screen name hung on her by director Howard Hawks, while friends used her given name, Betty.

Bogart simply called her “Baby” in a love story that ended prematurely with his cancer death in 1957.

 

 

Her real name was Betty 

She was born Betty Joan Perske on Sept. 16, 1924, in New York City, the only child of immigrant parents.

She ​ was only 19 when Hawks cast her in her first movie, 1944’s “To Have and Have Not,” as an American girl who shows up at a seedy hotel in Martinique.

She won a place in Hollywood history with her sexy query to Bogart: “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together – and blow.”

Marriage to Bogart

Bacall and Bogart were married the next year after he ended his turbulent third marriage to actress Mayo Methot. Bacall and Bogart went on to star together in “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Dark Passage” (1947) and “Key Largo” (1948).

She appeared in more than 30 other movies, including “Young Man With a Horn” (1950), “How to Marry a Millionaire” (1953) and “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974).

Along the way, she became the self-proclaimed “den mother” to her two children, Stephen, and Leslie, and a regular crowd of Bogart’s drinking buddies.

The look

Much of Bacall’s allure came from what was known as “The Look,” a sexy but soft glance.

She explained it by saying: “I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of ‘The Look.’”

After Bogart’s death in 1957 at age 57, Bacall had a well-publicised affair with Frank Sinatra and a stormy eight-year marriage to actor Jason Robards that produced a son, Sam, who would become an actor.

Of her career and life, Bacall once said: “I travelled by roller coaster, a roller coaster on which the highs were as high as anyone could ever hope to go. And the lows! Oh, those lows were lower than anyone should ever have to go – 10 degrees below hell.”

In 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded her an honourary Oscar “in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures.” - Reuters