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BBC Four Collections -
specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.
For this collection, Sir Michael Parkinson has selected BBC interviews
with influential figures of the 20th century.
More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections
are available on BBC iPlayer.
Lauren Bacall, 50 years ago,
though looking at you, it's hard to believe it,
you became instantly, with your first screen appearances, a movie star.
Appearances in To Have And Have Not and The Big Sleep.
Since then, you have had many other major movie parts,
you've acted onstage in straight plays and in musicals
and you have published two volumes of autobiography.
Lauren Bacall By Myself
and, more recently, just out, Lauren Bacall Now.
Tell me about you now. Do you look back over your life much?
No, I don't. But I'm afraid I have to correct you on one thing
because Now is not an autobiography.
It is not a continuation of By Myself.
It is a book, really, that concerns more my feelings about life
and about work and children and friends and losses.
Things like that.
I don't look back. I don't live in the past.
I... The past is automatically part of me
and, er... I am reminded of it from time to time,
and I refer to it from time to time,
but I don't dwell on it at all.
There is too much to do now, if you'll pardon the pun!
There is much too much to do.
I would prefer living in the present.
I feel that living in the past, you miss the present.
What keeps you busy now?
Work. I have been
very fortunate these last couple of years in particular
when I have really worked non-stop. And I am very grateful for that.
I feel that keeping busy and active,
curious, interested
is...essential.
And so I feel very fortunate that I have been able to do that.
You've always been a worker.
You've always been surrounded by people who work.
Is work the most important thing in your life?
I would say aside from my children, I would say it is.
I would say in actual fact, health would be the most important thing
because without that, there would be no work.
But I, er, knock wood, I hope that I remain healthy for a while.
But work is what enables me to look forward to the days
and to think of other things
and see what I can do as far as creativity is concerned,
in acting and in writing. If I'm not acting, I'm writing.
And if I'm not writing, I lecture occasionally.
Or I do something on television or I host something.
I am not a layabout.
I am not anyone who is comfortable doing nothing for too long.
The first book, which was autobiography, was called By Myself.
Did you mean by that
that you had achieved what you had achieved by yourself,
or did it point to a sort of aloneness about you?
No, I don't think I achieved it by myself at all.
I think it is hard to achieve anything, really,
totally by yourself. By Myself, the reason I called it that
was that I had written the book by myself.
Er, every word...
You mean other stars don't?
Well, I think many don't.
I did, and I... Just because I am one of these awful people
that insists on doing everything herself, you know.
And because I live by myself and I am by myself.
It was a combination of all those things.
Is that living by yourself, has that been from an early age,
a feeling of independence and of self-reliance, or of loneliness?
I'm not lonely.
Independence and self-reliance have always played a part in my life.
I was brought up by my mother who was a worker,
she was independent and she taught me to be.
I, in turn, have taught my children to be.
So, I mean, I wanted to be on my own.
I felt it was... It's something... You always want to break away.
No matter how close you are to your family, you want to break away
and make your statement about life
and decide what you are going to be in your life
and make your dreams come true.
What lesson would an ambitious young woman reading now, your book,
what lesson would you want or expect her to take from it?
That's an interesting question.
It is a hard one to answer easily because...
I think the value...
of honour among friends
and character, er...
which would help to define your relationship with your friends
and your children as well as the people you work with.
I think that the value that I have placed on friendship is enormous.
And I would think that,
depending how much experience people have had in their lives,
I would hope that they would carry that thought away with them.
And also the value of work, obviously.
Work playing the part that it does.
Having saved me through many a bad time.
I remember that after Bogie died,
John O'Hara wrote me a very long letter and said,
"Your friends may tell you that you should stay away and not work,"
and he said, "Believe me,
"if you start work tomorrow, it will not be too soon. You must do that."
And he was right. Because you are then forced to think of other things.
And one must, you have to get on with your life.
Those first movies made you a Hollywood star,
but you've never thought of yourself,
it seems to me, as a Hollywood person. Is that right?
I would say in a way that's right
because, number one, I was brought up in New York.
I am not from the Bronx as some people have said.
I lived in Brooklyn until I was five years old and then, when I was five,
moved to Manhattan and stayed there until I went to California.
So I only spent 15 years living in California.
And although I had my success in California,
I suppose because the success really was not lasting,
at the pitch that it was when I arrived with the first movie,
as you know, the first of anything is extraordinary,
there's never anything that quite equals it.
As a result of that, and the second movie that was released was so bad
and I was so bad in it that I then had to spend years after that
just clawing my way back up, I think because of that,
I think that had something to do with
my not feeling so much a part of the town. And the scene.
Although I had many, many friends there, and still have.
But I think the fact that I left it
when I was still young, a young woman,
I think that probably, too, had something to do with it.
I feel very much that I belong to a lot of places.
You acted not just on the stage but in live television.
Taking risks that other movie stars daren't take, why did you do that?
I guess I'm a little crazy.
I think also I did it because
I think it's one thing to sit in the living room
and say you can do this and you can do that. "Oh, I can do it..."
But, finally, I think you have to find out whether you can.
And I think I did it because I just blindly jumped in with both feet
and just decided that I had to see if I could do it.
I also... One of the things I did live was Petrified Forest,
in which I played a character that was kind of an ingenue.
I was never given an opportunity to pay a part like that in film.
So I wanted to do that.
It gave me an opportunity to work with Henry Fonda, who I adored.
And Bogie, of course, was in it as well, which was another plus.
And the second live thing I did was Blithe Spirit with Noel Coward
who directed it as well as starred in it.
Now, one does not pass up the opportunity to work with Noel Coward.
So, I said, "OK, I'll do it.
"Heaven help me. You've got to have the guts to do it,"
I kept saying to myself. "You cannot fall on your face."
Funnily enough, David Selznick said, "I think you're making a big mistake.
"If you go wrong, you'll go wrong in front of millions of people."
I said, "Well, I want to find out. I want to see if I can do it."
What's the biggest single difference
between movie acting and stage acting?
The single biggest difference is that stage acting is live
and movie acting is not.
You never get a chance to do it again on stage.
You have to present an entire performance to an audience.
And they respond to it at that moment.
So you get an immediate exchange with an audience.
In film, you do it for the camera...
..and...of course, the other actors you are working with,
but you don't get to see the finished product
until months and months later. So you get no immediate response.
When you play the lead role in a long run,
for example, in the musical Applause for nearly two years,
how do you keep up
giving a fresh performance night after night after night?
You said you didn't get to do it again,
but you get to do it over and over and over again.
Yes, but I mean, you don't get to retake a scene.
In the case of Applause, it was more than two years.
I played it in New York for a year and a half
and we were on tour before that for over two months
and rehearsed for six weeks before then.
So that was almost a two-year period.
- How do you keep it fresh? - Excuse me?
How do you keep it fresh?
That is the discipline of the theatre.
You have to keep it fresh.
You have to go out there
and play it as though you have never done it before.
Because the audience has never seen it before.
They are entitled to a fresh performance.
And so you keep that in mind always.
And that is your discipline.
You go out there and this is the first time.
And the audiences don't react in the same way, anyway.
When you get different responses, it affects you.
Is the applause you get at the end of a show -
you write about the curtain call
that was choreographed for you at the end of Applause -
is that the oxygen that keeps you going?
That isn't what keeps you going, but it's the most exciting moment.
God knows, I mean, in Applause, that curtain call was unlike...
The lift that I got from that
was unlike anything I have ever experienced, it was extraordinary.
You say that the actor's life, in one, perhaps both of the books,
is one of rejection.
But isn't it, in fact, one of being loved anyway if it works?
Well, you're talking about audiences.
I'm talking about producers and directors.
It is a life of rejection as far as one is always auditioning.
Actors...
Actors are continually trying to prove themselves because they...
Directors and producers do not believe that you can do anything
that is different from what you have done until after you have done it.
And so it's really, it's a claw.
They say, "Well, she can't do that, she can only do this."
Whatever you make your hit in, they think that is your category.
That is your pigeonhole, that's where you belong.
Would you include Howard Hawks in that,
who decided what you could do before you had done it?
Well, Howard decided what he wanted me to do.
Howard decided what he wanted me to be.
And I was 18 years old when I arrived in LA, you know.
So, naturally, he couldn't do anything with me
because I didn't know anything.
And, er, he decided that he wanted me to be
this certain kind of personality and character.
This kind of insolent,
give-as-good-as-you-get kind of woman.
Although I was a child.
And he made me into that.
- He believed in you? - Yes. He did.
Where were you born?
I was actually born in a hospital on 103rd Street in New York.
And, as I said before, then lived in Brooklyn,
Brooklyn Heights, actually, which is just on a park.
No, not Brooklyn Heights, it was Lincoln Parkway, I believe.
Anyway, whatever it was, it was one of those places.
And then moved to Manhattan and then grew up in Manhattan.
Who were your parents?
My father was a man that I didn't know well.
He dealt in...
I think it was medical instruments.
He used to go round and sell, I believe, dental instruments.
I didn't have anything to do with him.
I saw him a few times between the ages of six and eight
and never saw him again.
My mother was an executive secretary,
and an extraordinary, wonderful woman, always supportive of me.
Although no-one in my family had ever dreamed of the theatre.
I was trained for the theatre, that's what I wanted to do.
Of course, my grandmother was horrified.
"Why don't you get a real job? Help your mother."
But my mother believed in me and she supported me
and she was extraordinary.
Was your father's defection an important loss? It must have been.
I imagine so. I don't remember affectionate times with him.
But I remember that he was my father after all.
And I am certain that I have been affected
by the fact that I felt that I never had a father
and that I felt that he didn't care about me.
He certainly did not demonstrate that he cared about me.
And I think when you are... scarred from childhood,
I think you carry that with you in some form or other.
I don't think consciously I have,
but I certainly think it has affected my thinking.
The obvious suggestion, perhaps too obvious,
is that you were looking for a father thereafter?
I can assure you, Mr Bogart was no father to me!
You were brought up by your mother,
and with your grandmother's help.
- And my uncle, very importantly. - Your Uncle Charlie.
It must have given you a great sense, nevertheless,
of how powerful women could be.
Yes. It did.
The strength of women, certainly.
And the ability to not only run a household, but also to work.
And, kind of, the aloneness of women.
It's interesting because my grandfather died very young,
at a very young age,
and my mother was without a husband at a very young age.
So these were all women on their own and so it was...
It was just kind of built-in, I guess. And I think that women...
I mean, it was proven to me that women could do almost anything.
Your mother sent you to boarding school. Were you happy there?
My mother sent me to boarding school with the aid of my uncles who...
I went...because she, first of all,
was working all the time
and felt that I would have a better education and be out of the city.
She came to visit me every Sunday
and wrote letters to me all during the week.
And...
I think I had a love-hate relationship with it,
certainly at the beginning, and then I rather enjoyed it.
Because I used to fantasise, of course, always.
I wanted to be an actress,
so everything was a play to me or something.
And then I used to have crushes on my teachers, you know,
because I missed having a sister.
I always thought I wanted a sister.
I would either have a best friend that would be kind of like a sister
or a young teacher who would be kind of like a sister.
They thought of you as a nice Jewish girl.
Who did?
Your family - your mother and your grandmother.
I was. I am.
Was the family very Jewish?
Well, my mother was not religious at all.
My grandmother was. The rest of the family were not.
My grandmother was almost orthodox, I would say.
She observed the Friday night burning of the candle
and she observed the not taking public transportation on a Saturday
and she read a lot.
She was fluent in eight languages, my grandmother.
She was quite an extraordinary woman. Quite amazing.
But my mother, it didn't mean anything to her,
it didn't mean anything to my uncles.
But what does "a nice Jewish girl" mean?
Do nice Jewish girls become actresses?
Some of them do!
When did you first want to be an actress?
I wanted to be an actress...
I think when I was very small, I wanted to be a dancer.
I started to study dancing
with a very well-known woman named Ruth St Denis
who had a school.
I took my first lesson when I was two years old.
I wanted to do all of that, clearly I had a need to express myself.
And then I realised that I would not succeed in that area.
And I then wanted to be an actress.
Where do you think the dream of being an actress came from,
or the desire to be an actress came from?
Well, I think part of it, probably, was my wanting to play other people.
Wanting to get outside of myself and be somebody else.
And then I had this enormous, enormous crush on Bette Davis,
who was my heroine.
I wanted to be just like her.
I used to cut school to see her movies.
And I...I think it just came from all of that
and I had this insane imagination.
I just always wanted to be transported.
I was a very good mimic and I just enjoyed it.
And the thought of it, I suppose, was a kind of identification.
It meant a kind of identity for me that I would have as an actress
that I did not have.
As a 15-year-old, were you confident about your physique?
Did you realise you were beautiful?
I never have thought I was beautiful, nor do I think so.
No, on reflection.
I think I looked a damn sight better then than I do now,
but I don't... No, I have never thought of myself as a beauty.
I was never known as a beauty.
Beauties were Garbo, she was beautiful.
But I don't count myself as being one of those.
How did you get to be on the cover of Harper's Bazaar then?
Well, that wasn't beauty, really.
That was Diana Vreeland.
I was 17 years old after all
and Diana Vreeland had decided that it was time
to have a model who looked natural.
She felt that I looked natural, which is why I worked for Harpers at all.
I was a rotten model, it was not my forte at all.
And so she put me on...
It came at the right time and she put me on the cover.
And that was the big break?
That and some of the inside photos.
I was lucky enough to be on a couple of pages with actresses.
Diana did a wonderful thing for me,
unbeknownst to me until I saw the magazine,
was that the other actresses were named as being actresses,
although they were not well-known actresses,
and she put my name in and I was an actress, she said.
So, I mean...
Howard Hawks saw the pictures and asked you to go to Hollywood.
What do you think he saw in them that made him invite you over?
If only you could ask him!
I think he saw possibilities.
Did you see possibilities when you set off across the continent?
Did you realise what it would lead to?
I had no idea.
I never thought of myself as a movie actress.
I always thought of myself as being on stage. Name in lights, theatre -
that was the only thing I really connected with in my head.
But when I got on that train, by myself,
going to California, what an adventure.
I felt like a real grown-up
and I was such a romantic, with such an imagination.
I would carry on conversations with myself and think,
"This is what it's going to be like."
I lived a fabulous fantasy life.
Was it like what you imagined or not?
Well, one thing that I remember very clearly
was the first time I ever met Howard Hawks.
A luncheon was arranged between him and my agent Charlie Feldman,
whom I had not known either,
who also ended up owning a piece of my contract.
Very hard to represent someone and own them at the same time.
And I remember they took me to lunch at the Brown Derby,
and this was before my screen test.
And I remember I was walking with someone, I forget who it was,
but ahead of me walked Howard and Charlie,
at the slowest pace you can imagine.
I thought, "If I have to stay out here..."
You know, in New York, you always walk with a purpose,
you are always going somewhere.
And this languid kind of...
I thought, "I can never make it here if I have to walk like that."
That was the first really very clear impression that I remember having.
And my total terror with Howard Hawks,
who was a man unlike anyone I had never met.
Extraordinary personality he had.
He was very forbidding, this very tall, distinguished looking man,
always wearing a checked hacking jacket, you know.
Very close-cropped hair. And he would always talk like this,
and he would talk and he would talk to you
and tell you about all kinds of things that had happened to him
with...that involved other women, actresses,
and how he would tell them how to do something
and they would say that they couldn't do it
and then he would show them how they could do it, and so he always won.
So I would hang on his every word and I was so terrified of him.
He took charge of your make-up and your hair and your costume.
Everything. He wanted...
For years, he had tried to find
an unknown that he could make into a star.
He had never been able to do it.
- Svengali. - Yes.
And he did finally succeed, I will say,
until, of course, Bogie,
unfortunately, stepped in there and spoiled his plans.
The voice, you took your voice with you to California, didn't you?
I took my voice with me where?
To California.
I did indeed, yes. It's not a manufactured voice.
One could hardly manufacture a voice.
I did read aloud because Howard,
one of his things was he didn't want what happens to most women
when they get excited or angry, their voices go up two or three octaves.
He wanted mine to stay low.
He wanted me to constantly be aware of keeping my voice down.
- Which you could do. - Which I could do.
Had you seen Bogart act before you worked with him?
I had seen him in a couple of movies.
Actually, not long before I went over,
I saw him in Casablanca and he didn't thrill me at all.
Leslie Howard was the actor that thrilled me.
So, I mean, I was not too...
Howard it was who decided he was going to put me in a movie
with either Bogart or Cary Grant.
And I thought, "Ooh, Cary Grant, that's not bad."
Didn't happen. Never worked with Cary, which was infuriating.
What would have happened if it had been?
Ah, who knows? It would have been quite a different life, I imagine.
I imagine I would have stayed with Hawks.
What did you learn about acting from working with Bogart?
I learned to prepare.
I learned to think, before the scene started,
of what I had just been doing, what had just happened,
who I had been talking with, what the situation was that I was in.
I learned to do that, not to just, when directors said, "Action,"
to just start talking with an empty head.
Very important lessons to learn.
How soon did you know you were in love with him?
Oh, you're getting very personal, aren't you?
It's part of the story of your life.
Ah, yes.
I don't know. I don't think I knew really for...
If you've never been in love, how do you know?
I just knew that, suddenly, it just kind of evolved.
It was, of course, a great adventure, it was very dramatic
and we were meeting at two in the morning on street corners.
It was very romantic.
And then, I don't know, it just kind of happened.
It just seemed that he awakened in me, obviously,
something that had never been awakened before
and something that I really needed.
I needed someone to really care about me.
And I guess I needed a man to care about me.
And he was the most caring man that I have ever known.
It just happened that suddenly, I just had to be with him all the time.
And that turned out to be what it was.
You obviously shared a sense of humour
and a way of looking at the world.
Oh, very much. Very much so.
I mean, humour, you know, one cannot live without it.
I have a very, very good sense of humour.
And he had a very, very good sense of humour.
We had a lot of fun. We made each other laugh a lot.
And I mean, that's great... You can't have a better relationship than that.
Howard Hawks tried to discourage the relationship?
Oh, yes.
Oh, he kept saying to me, "He'll never marry you, don't..."
And I would cry, I was in tears most of the time.
And he would say to Bogie,
"Listen, you don't have to marry her,
"why don't you get a little hotel room?"
That was not Bogie's style at all. So it was....
Howard did everything he could to try to stop it, but it was unstoppable.
The character you played in To Have And Have Not,
this may sound a daft question, but the character is called Slim
and Slim was the name of Howard Hawks' wife
who was a good friend of yours. Was that a coincidence?
I don't know. I don't really know.
I think he probably did that intentionally
because Slim was a most wonderful looking
and terrific, terrific woman.
And she became a friend.
Of course, she was still married to the boss,
so I could just go so far and no further.
But I would imagine that was one of the reasons he named me Slim.
Jews were powerful people in Hollywood.
Oh, very.
Howard Hawks was pretty anti-Semitic, or resented this.
He seemed to be. Yes, he seemed to be.
He didn't want Jews in his house, except for Charlie Feldman.
Did he know you were Jewish?
Not at the beginning. And then finally, of course, he did know.
I was so scared. I was a coward, I must say about that,
I was just frightened. He would make remarks
and I would say to Charlie, "What is the matter with him?
"Why does he do that, why does he talk like that?"
And Charlie said, "Don't pay any attention to him, he's all right."
It was strange, you see, because Howard was paid by Jews,
he was given a platform by Jews,
by being able to make his movies...
..but he didn't want them in his house.
You married Bogart and started a family.
You gave him a family. Were you...?
That was obviously more important than your career at that time.
Yes, it was at that time. I, er...
I had agreed with him, I made a pact with him
that I would always put my marriage first, and I did.
I...I...I kept to that pact.
And I, um... He'd never had children
and I really wanted him to have children.
I don't know whether he wanted them or not,
but he was going to have them! I'd made up my mind.
Of course, he was afraid that
it would interfere with our relationship.
And of course, in a way, I suppose it does
because children do take over, don't they?
But he was very happy to have them finally.
But I felt my career was...
My career meant everything to me, and yet Bogie meant more
and I felt I had to live up to our agreement
and I certainly am not sorry I did.
He taught you a lot. What's the most important thing he taught you?
Well...
I think that he taught me that no matter what happens in life,
you make up your mind how you are going to live
and what road you're going to take in your life.
And then you must not allow other people to pull you off that trail,
to bring you down to their way of life
just because they need company.
You must never lose sight of what your life is.
That was very important. Because in a place like Hollywood,
where there is a lot of temptation
and a lot of different kinds of people,
there are people who don't want you to walk the straight and narrow.
They want you to come over to their side.
They want you to stay up to three in the morning and be irresponsible,
you know. And you mustn't lose sight of...
Because they, their lives were what they were,
which had nothing to do with yours
and you must not allow them to take over yours.
You've got on with your life
in a remarkably productive way since you lost him. Did you...
And you married again, you married Jason Robards,
Did you nearly marry Frank Sinatra?
I suppose I nearly would have, which would have been a horrible mistake.
It would never have worked for either of us. Um...
I got on with my life because I had two small children
and because that's another thing I was taught by Bogart -
you've got to get on with your life.
If you lose someone, you cannot mourn them for too long
because then you are only indulging yourself,
you are not helping the person who has gone or anyone else around you.
And, um, I've lived many more years without him than I did with him,
certainly, and I, er...I feel that I've accomplished quite a bit.
I certainly have had a whole career in the theatre
that I never would have had and I have written two books
and I have another wonderful child, a son that I love a lot.
Do you keep close to your children?
I try to, yes. I travel an awful lot, but I am close to them.
I am close to each of them in different ways.
You're a grandmother, do you enjoy being a grandmother?
I enjoy it when I see them, but I don't see them very often
because I'm always travelling, it seems.
I'm on the road, I'm in the air. I don't know where I am half the time.
Because I work a lot. So I'm not...
I am not your stereotypical grandmother
by any stretch of the imagination.
I think they think I'm some kind of freak, you know.
I'm not sure they know really what I am.
You're always in the air, you're still working,
what is it that drives you on?
I think I still want to prove something, I suppose.
I still want to show that I can do it
and I can do more than people think I can.
And I want to use myself.
I look forward to work.
I'm curious about working with other people,
I'm interested in working with others.
I love talent, and I love to work with new talent.
And I'm just interested in doing that and continuing that.
I don't want to stop. I don't understand people who retire,
I've never been able to figure that out.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
Is there any sort of divide
between the Lauren Bacall whom we see and think we know and the real you?
Well, I don't know what you really think, you know.
I think that people that don't know me
probably think that I'm very much like the parts that I have played.
Although I do believe that since I have written my books,
I think that women, and men as well, feel that they know me much better.
And have much more of a sense of the kind of woman I am.
And I have, er... I still get a lot of letters
from people who have identified very closely
with my experiences in life, and that is very gratifying for me.
So I am what I am.
I'm pretty much upfront, I don't lie.
I never lie, so...
what you see is what you get.
What are you going to do next?
Work!
Next? Well, first of all, I have not stopped for almost two years now
and I really need to stop and kind of collect myself.
Particularly if I am going to go ahead
and be in this play in Chichester
at the end of this summer, which I hope will work out.
I really must clear my head, get myself in shape,
stay off airplanes for at least a month or two
in order to prepare for work again.
Unless of course something comes along before then,
in which case I will have to do it.
Do you have fears?
What do you most fear?
I think ill health I fear more than anything.
I've been around it, I've seen it in various forms
and I don't look forward to it.
How would you like us to remember you when the time,
let's hope decades away, comes?
Let's hope decades away. Um...
I think just as a woman who...
..who dealt with her life in a very positive, healthy fashion.
And who was productive.
If you had to pass on one word of advice...
Oh, never give advice.
..to your children or your grandchildren
or to anybody who asked you,
what would you say was the most important thing to remember
on the way through life?
Well, I think the most important trait to have,
which can guide you through your life, is to have character.
I think it's tremendously important.
That means being honest and honourable
and loyal to your friends and family. And...
And being responsible for your behaviour,
I think that that's important.
Basic stuff.