Posted on 08/21/2014 9:11:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
Lauren Bacall's death at 89 got front-page coverage complete with picture in the New York Times, and it deserved to. Like so many American images and voices in our vast celluloid memory bank, she may have been more familiar than famous -- if the definition of fame has something to do with greatness rather than just exposure. But familiar she definitely was, at least to the generation of American moviegoers who grew up with movies the way their grandchildren now grow up with the Internet.
Her husky voice still resonates somewhere in the back of old-timers' clogged grey matter. ("You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and ... blow.") That line was almost her trademark and, like any well-known trademark, it became too familiar to stir real passion in real, messy life off the silver screen. The line may have been emblematic of her whole rise -- and decline -- as an American symbol. The once daring has a way of becoming only cliché. A celebrity she definitely was, but a great actress? If so, it was hard to see it inside the glossy cover.
There are stars and there are satellites, and even the finest moon shines with only a reflected light. And she was mainly Humphrey Bogart's reflection. He was the personification of the masculinity of his time, the Tough Guy, the hero despite himself, the man's man. What he had may be hard to put into words, but he had It -- whatever It may be. And she was only its female echo.
If you doubt that, think of how many roles Bogart starred in as Bogart -- not just noir gangster movies but classics like "Casablanca," "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," "The African Queen" ... Bogart without Bacall is easy enough to envision, but Bacall without Bogart? Bless her for trying in her always calculated way, but some things can't be manufactured, only mined -- like many another natural resource. Yes, there are remarkable, even inseparable twosomes in our visual memories -- Tracy and Hepburn, Myrna Loy and William Powell in the Thin Man movies, Abbott and Costello, Thelma and Louise, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in their heyday, Holmes and Watson, Astaire and Rogers ... name your own favorite. Mine may be Astaire and Rogers, and such couples needn't be equal to stay in the mind, only complementary.
It was said of Ginger Rogers back when Women's Lib was the phrase in vogue that she did everything Fred Astaire did -- only backwards and in high heels. But the comment is a little too flip, a little too politically correct. Else why, when watching them, no matter how much talent and just life force Ginger Rogers emits, all eyes stay on the elegant Astaire, who might as well be wearing top hat and tails for whatever stylized dance number he was doing at the time.
Bacall tried to keep up with Bogie, but she had to know she was the warm-up act, not the main event, and there were times when she clearly resented it. "I think I've damned well earned the right to be judged on my own," she once said, but wouldn't have had to say it if it were true. Hers was a derivative fame despite her claim to being a star in her own right
Even that trademark pose of hers, the downcast look, the soft purr, the seductive layer of toughness, she owed to one of her first scenes with Bogart: "My hand was shaking, my head was shaking, the cigarette was shaking, I was mortified. The harder I tried to stop, the more I shook. ... I realized that one way to hold my trembling head still was to keep it down, chin low, almost to my chest, and eyes up at Bogart. It worked and turned out to be the beginning of The Look." Her naturally low voice didn't hurt, either. It was effective, but you wouldn't confuse it with natural, while Bogart was ... Bogart.
Ah, yes, The Look. It didn't have to be spelled out, as in this more explicit age. It was a subtler and therefore sexier era. You might as well compare Rosemary Clooney's voice with Mick Jagger's barbaric yawp. Walt Whitman ("I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world") would have loved it -- right up to moment he actually had to listen to it.
Hard-boiled New Yorker or not, Lauren Bacall remained Betty Perske, the nice if always aspiring middle-class Jewish girl from New York. They had their political differences, Bogart and Bacall, but it made no difference. It only added another fillip to their romance, and its intensity. She was Madly for Adlai back in the cool Fifties while he, an older man, retained his conservative instincts. No matter. Love is what matters.
Tough but tender, and utterly devoted to him, she would see the stoical Bogart through his last, terminal bout with cancer. He would die at 57. And she would go on, a still familiar figure, contented, maybe, a proud mother of three, involved with her four grandchildren, still working now and then, but ... never as happy as she was with Bogart.
BERTIE HIGGINS
“Key Largo”
Wrapped around each other
Trying so hard to stay warm
That first cold winter together
Lying in each others arms
Watching those old movies
Falling in love so desperately
Honey, I was your hero
And you were my leading lady
We had it all
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our old late, late show
Sailing away to Key Largo
Here’s lookin’ at you kid
Missing all the things we did
We can find it once again, I know
Just like they did in Key Largo
Honey, can’t you remember
We played all the parts
That sweet scene of surrender
When you gave me your heart
Please say you will
Play it again
‘Cause I love you still
Baby, this can’t be the end
We had it all
(We had it all)
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our old late, late show
Sailing away to Key Largo
Here’s lookin’ at you kid
(Here’s lookin’ at you kid)
Missing all the things we did
We can find it once again, I know
Just like they did in Key Largo
We had it all
(We had it all)
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our old late, late show
Sailing away to Key Largo
she was in John Wayne’s last movie...The Shootist..
they both were great...
Correct, they both were
I would dare say that if Humphrey Bogart were alive today he would be punching Greenfield's lights out.
Can someone explain the mentioning of "Thelma and Louise" to me? First, they were characters, not actors. Secondly, they were in only one movie together...and they both dies.
Greenberg’s lights out.
Holmes and Watson were fictional too.
A very strange article.
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She got herself ‘into’ that club early one and never looked back.
If you carefully examine the whole constellation of media idols the press and others foist on us, the common denominator is PRIMARILY and ALWAYS the frequency and degree to which they espouse the most Liberal views.
AND, the extremes they reach in their Liberalism, the scope and vitriol with which they express their Anti-Conservatism determines the height of their gilded pedestal and the special reverence the MSM demonstrates to them and (in this case) to their memory.
They don't even have to have talent or anything ELSE! They can be convicted criminals, drug addicts, serial murderers, they can be spouse beaters, they can be pedophiles...etc. None of that matters, if they are openly, unreservedly and maliciously Liberal.
“I think Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce “
Man,you are dating yourself.
I loved them too. :-)
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Fine, if that’s the opinion of one author. I just disagree with him freely.
If the author wants to belittle Becal as the reflection off Bogie, who is today’s manly man? Not the tough guy act, just being himself and the IT shone through?
Give me Betty’s sultry beauty any day. Who in today’s lot of so many actresses has IT?
Bacall, correction.
Amen, well said.
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