Lauren Bacall was never a teenager in movies, even though she began in them as a teenager. To me, this was a character woman, almost from a start. With exception of the four with Bogart, was Bacall ever a glamourobject? I think of ones where she might have been --- How To Marry A Millionaire comes to mind --- but there she was worldly wise beyond hopes of co-starring Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe, Bacall a most pragmatic of the three, and consequently the most interesting (Grable and Monroe seem silly and 50's plastic beside her). She'd also be good as the wife disillusioned by marriage to Fred MacMurray in Woman's World, a role played when Bacall was not yet thirty. She seemed not to have had an ingénue stage, let alone naïveté in ways of life and love. Did life with Bogie and society with his jaded pals take bloom of youth off Betty? She'd say no to Warner bosses where others in her start-up position wouldn't dream of such insolence, but that was where a strong husband helped. So what if Bacall went on suspension? Bogart's income could more than support the house.
WB struck back in small ways. If she wouldn't do The Girl From Jones Beach or some crummy western, they'd not let her join Bogart at Columbiafor Dead Reckoning. To put a cherry on being petty, there came nono even to Bacall joining her husband briefly on stage while he was in New York pumping Tokyo Joe, another not made on Burbank premises. To Warner minds, the only thing worse than one ingrate Bogart was a pair of them. Bacall wanted to work, but only in movies as good as ones she did with her husband, so after all of chaff was weeded out, there was only Bright Leaf and Young Man With A Horn to satisfy both her standards and the Warner pact she'd signed. Bacall started out raw, had to learn on the job, got burned by Confidential Agent, for which critics and some of a public singled her out for ridicule. Maybe that was what made her cautious for time that was left on the contract.
Howard Hawks did two with the Bogarts and then went away piqued because he felt HB had taken away his personal property. What a shame this team didn't jell for a whole series, and at WB where resources were so rich.But then there was John Huston and Key Largo, but unfortunately no more beyond that. Problem was Warner cutting costs as postwar receipts fell. The vehicles as result got more commonplace and the star couple naturally balked. We like Dark Passage for vintage noir, but the team couldn't sustain on many more like it. From late 40's impasse with Warners, it would be Bogie and Bacall paired on planes to far-off location for pictures hewas making, the dutiful wife picking up the Fox jobs and free-lance opportunity when both of them were at Holmby Hills address. He'd drive her to work each day on Blood Alley or be sarcastic about Gregory Peck in Designing Woman, one that Bogart might have done with her had his health not already become an issue.
She'd write about all of that, and the whole of a career, in two (or is it three?)outstanding memoirs, which Bacall was said to have penned without assist. They sure read like truth, and hers was a singular voice. Bacall did some good ones during the 50's (Written On The Wind, The Cobweb, aforementioned Woman's World), ran somewhat aground in the 60's (Shock Treatment, Sex and The Single Girl and down a cast list from Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood), but had good sense to get on stage to make a new career with music and comedy. She'd become a diva of sorts, marry again (Jason Robards), try to comprehend and finally embrace the Bogart mythology in her books and a documentary for Turner. To keep up with times, Bacall guest voiced on hep TV cartoons and was knocked about by hoodlums on The Sopranos, so moderns would not lose sight of who she was. There was even an AA nomination for The Mirror With Two Faces, another of Barbra Streisand vanity projects where Bacall stole the show with another expert character turn. She was an actress good enough to go on and on, age merely an enhance to her authority.
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