The insolent stare succumbed to a stroke: Lauren Bacall died – Reuters

             

                     
                 

                     
                 

             

 
                     

The director Howard Hawks taught her to be insolent to men, she was ready to teach Humphrey Bogart to whistle and did more than that, took it home.

                 

                     Even if I had only done two movies in which Hawks produced a primer for the couple of games of seduction and double entenders – the whistle and the cigarette Whether or not ( 1944), talking about sex as the speaker of horse racing, each running ahead of others who come back in The Big Sleep (1946) – Lauren Bacall already would be one of the most extraordinary creatures that film fabricated.

This tough, cheeky lady, no patience for the lack of character and moral cowardice Democrat to the bone, died this Tuesday at 89 years, at his home in New York, reported AFP his partner in Humphrey Bogart Estate, JF Robbert de Klerk. The actress had a “cerebral vascular accident strong” and could not resist. There was a post of the source Bogart family in an official Twitter account:. “With deep sadness, but with great gratitude for his incredible life, confirmed the death of Lauren Bacall”

They called it The Look , and just look at the pictures to see why. Hawks (and one must always return to it) has responsibilities. The wife of the director saw it a day at a cover of Harper’s Bazaar – on March 1, 1943 – and recommended it to her husband. Betty Joan Perske was not yet 19 years, studied dance, missing classes to watch movies with Bette Davies (must have been something in it …), was a model and had in its portfolio with two or three failures on Broadway. But before the picture of the Harper’s Bazaar Hawks knew what to do. Hired her.

He taught her to take advantage of the low voice, because there would be “less appealing” thing than a girl squeal. And there she went (told in his autobiography By Myself ) for Mulholland Drive read aloud to the canyons . Three weeks later … Hello, how are ya . Betty Joan Perske metamorphosed into Lauren Bacall. Hawks – he himself tells it in his book of conversations Hawks on Hawks , Joseph McBride – taught him something even more essential: to be bad with men to get rides home. “Why not try to insult them?”

And so came a 19 year old girl who was so impudent as the most insolent of the stars of the firmament of Hollywood of those years. Humphrey Bogart. He had never seen anything like it, though Marlene Dietrich had he approached the Hawks reclaim what he thought was hers: “You know, what am I 20 years ago.” (Hawks knew it was true.)

Have or Have not , Bacall called Slim because that was the name of the wife of Hawks. After all, we need to return to it, Slim Keith, wife of jet set New York fashion icon (she herself appeared in Harper’s Bazaar) , inspiring Truman Capote, inveterate smoker and, according to his biography, Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life , the owner of the clothing that uses Bacall Have or Have not and the author of the famous ‘You know how to whistle, do not you?’ – that recognizes, Bacall took a personal tone comic film noir

The Bogart / Bacall couple still would draw on his film chemistry Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), but Lauren devoted himself to family life choice that took, damaged the evolution of his career. It did not help that it has entered into several disputes with the studio, Warner, for refusing roles, being suspended (12 times). Even seemingly always unbreakable, eg alongside Marilyn Monroe in the How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) – a fiber supplement to secure the volatile blonde to earth – or in melodramas Vincent Minnelli ( Cobweb , 1956, Designing Woman , 1957), or Douglas Sirk ( Written on the Wind in 1958), Bacall was too early a magnificent side-show. (Bogart, who had two sons, Steve and Leslie, died in 1957, and between 1961 and 1969 was married to Jason Robards, who had Sam)

But remained a working girl , also no patience for the benefits of “film legend”, and having to earn a living. He won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Barbra Streisand. And should have realized that remained in the memory of many people and it was on behalf of this that Robert Altman ( Prêt-à-porter , 1995), Lars von Trier ( Dogville, in 2003 and Manderlay in 2005), or Jonathan Glaser ( Birth , 2004) called it.