Lauren Bacall- Page 2

[JoanBennett]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 10:20am

I've seen Betty.
I've worked with Betty.

Seeing her is great.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 2:13pm

^^^JoanBennett says it all.

I loved Betty on stage in APPLAUSE and WONDERFUL TOWN.

I didn't bother to see WOMAN OF THE YEAR because I had worked with her by then and, well, that colored my impression of her. Too bad.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 2:54pm

June 1985: I was busy doing my University entrance exams and so missing this became one of the biggest theatrical regrets of my life.



(Palace Theatre, Manchester)

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 3:13pm

Oh wow! Bacall as Princess? And directed by Harold Pinter?? It might have been a mess, but I would have killed to have seen it. Screw your exams Scripps!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 3:24pm

I saw Waiting in the Wings and agree with henrik. Lauren was...not good. It was as if she were in a completely different show and thrown in at the last minute with no preparation. She turned what could have been a charming comedy into a quicksand experience. Luckily, the entire rest of the cast balanced out Bacall's performance and made the evening bearable.

After Eight - It was not simply "upstaging". Bacall completely lacked charisma and made NO connection with anyone in the cast (or with me as an audience member). She simply didn't command the stage the way Harris did in that production. It wasn't just that scene. It was EVERY scene. Bacall was constantly going up on lines and the entire cast was having to perform emergency rescue operations throughout the show. The ease and grace at which Harris (as well as most of the cast) dealt with it as if nothing untoward was happening was sheer brilliance. I felt like the audience should have been refunded Bacall's entrance applause.

Updated On: 5/4/12 at 03:24 PM

[once a month]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 3:41pm

Loved her in Woman of the Year! The Grass is Always Greener with Marilyn Cooper remains one of the funniest numbers I've ever seen. Bacall looked stunning in her opening number- she looked as if gold was oozing from every pore. in fact, I bought the gold foil window card for Woman of the Year and still enjoy seeing it framed.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 3:48pm

In my first visit to NYC I saw Bacall in "Woman of the Year". She was magical and very much a star. It was thrilling.

I also saw "Evita", "Barnum" and "Pirate's of Penzance" that weekend. Talk about a magical time in NYC!

[bobs3]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 4:30pm

I saw her at the Palace in WOMAN OF THE YEAR. Not a great singer, she nonetheless carried the show by the sheer force of her personality and stage presence. (There were rumors at the time that she was dating her leading man and they formed a cabal against the show's director. Supposedly, at her insistence, Mike Nichols was brought in during previews to do some uncredited show doctoring.)

[Auggie27]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 4:44pm

I have a soft spot for WOMEN OF THE YEAR (I still enjoy the overture). It was written for her, and I thought she was better in it,and it was a stronger show (Kander and Ebb songs weren't bad at all) than APPLAUSE, a minority opinion on this board and elsewhere. I love the clips PalJoey posted, however, which live in infamy, and remember the night the TV version of APPLAUSE was on CBS very distinctly. I have a good friend who was in the show with both Bacall and Anne Baxter, and liked them both. Bacall threw her a wedding shower. She said she was tough, not always in the best mood, but she didn't have any horror stories about Bacall.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 4:54pm

The Tony's are always live, but I'd swear on "One of the Boys" the orchestra is playing along with her taped vocals. PalJoey? Can anyone else verify? It's all too precise, too eerily like the OBC, by the way. And she's not even winded (and she was heavily smoking then) after the upstage business -- some of it dancing. I was startled to revisit the number's staging, and see how little she did. Less dancing than "But Alive!" I recall that when Debbie Reynolds came in, they redid the number for her. She tapped, she "Good Morning-ed" her way aall through it.

Updated On: 5/4/12 at 04:54 PM

[sanfrankid1]

Posted: 5/4/12 at 11:41pm

I saw her in Cactus Flower in NY,London in Applause and Sweet Bird of Youth and it was very exciting.

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 5/5/12 at 9:34am

Never saw her but thought it might be interesting to note my Mom went to the same HS as her. I remember my Mom showing us the HS picture of her, name was Betty Bacall.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/5/12 at 2:21pm

Auggie - I wouldn't be surprised. The Tonys are always taped live, but there was a period the numbers were lip-synced to recordings.

[jayinchelsea]

Posted: 5/5/12 at 2:51pm

The offstage stories don't really matter: seeing her onstage in CACTUS FLOWER, APPLAUSE and even WOMAN OF THE YEAR was thrilling. She was every inch the star and made the most of every moment.

What I will remember most is being in London in the early 70s when she was doing APPLAUSE. It was a weekday matinee into the run and the theatre was filled with ladies from the provinces by the busload. And I thought, oh this is going to be painful, and she will do a walk-through and I'll be sorry I came. Boy was I wrong! She was amazing, giving a full-out performance and dazzling everyone in the theatre.

She will go down in theatre history as one of the biggest and most important stars, and deservedly so. Anyone out there see GOODBYE CHARLIE? I bet even that was fun.

[random person 112]

Posted: 5/5/12 at 3:09pm

^Just to add to that, she always talks about dreaming about being on broadway when she was a little, so i imagine she truly loved being on stage.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 5/5/12 at 3:13pm

I have a good friend who was in the show with both Bacall and Anne Baxter, and liked them both. Bacall threw her a wedding shower. She said she was tough, not always in the best mood, but she didn't have any horror stories about Bacall.

The problem was if you had to deal with her (or God forbid, say no to her) during one of the bad moods. But I will add that the actors in the WONDERFUL TOWN company seemed to like her. It was not one of the shows where everyone obviously hated the star (and we hosted some of those). She was tough on the crew and staff, but I think it's to her credit if she treated her fellow actors well.

***

yankeefan7, to my knowledge, Bacall's last name was originally Perske. But according to Wiki, at least, she took her mother's name of Bacall when her parents divorced, so that's how she got to be Betty Bacall by high school.

To my knowledge, she continued to use Betty personally throughout her life. I know that's what I called her and I wouldn't have unless she instructed me to do so. We weren't personal friends; we just worked together for a week.

Despite her glamorous image, I've never heard anyone accuse her of being pretentious. The image is part of her "act". (I mean that in a good way.)

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 5/5/12 at 3:47pm

Gaveston2 - did not know that the name "Bacall" was her Mom's name, thanks for info. If my memory was right, she also said in HS that she wanted to be a actress. My Mom passed away four years ago and there is still some stuff we have not sorted thru yet, this reminds me to have my brother look for it.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 5/5/12 at 5:10pm

yankeefan, I believe Bacall starred in her first movie within two years of high school graduation. So I assume she was pretty dedicated to acting.

***

On a previous page, paljoey wrote:

"It's hard to communicate exactly what was so exciting about the way Bacall performed in Applause and Woman of the Year...."

And he's right. But I think at least part of it was that Bacall was simultaneously glamorous and exuberant, which made her very charismatic. (And I saw her from the last row of the balcony in the Palace, so all I could really see was the shock of platinum hair on the top of her head. And she was still electric!)

More importantly, perhaps, she allowed both shows to be written so she could mock herself and her image (I don't know WOTY, but that's the essence of the APPLAUSE story), and the self-deprecation was utterly charming.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/16/12 at 9:01am

Happy eighty-eighth birthday, Betty Bacall.

Updated On: 9/16/12 at 09:01 AM

[Will42]

Posted: 9/16/12 at 9:17am

Happy Birthday to a true legend and a wonderful actress!

[Will42]

Posted: 9/16/12 at 10:57am

Lauren Bacall sings I'm Still Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy__TcbyaIo

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 9/16/12 at 11:04am

There's a 2 hour David Frost interview with Bacall from 2000 that aired on A&E that's pretty wonderful. (She talks about her career extensively, and tells the story about Bette Davis coming backstage after seeing Applause and saying, "Nobody else could do this but you, and you know I mean that.") I haven't seen it on tv since then.

[bobs3]

Posted: 9/16/12 at 1:30pm

The birthday cake photo reminded me of a story I heard years ago about her marriage to Jason Robarbs. She threw him a surprise birthday party at her Dakota apartment. He didn't show up for the party (he had been at a bar). When he finally came home all of the guests had left and he was drunk, she picked up a bottle of vodka threw it onto the birthday cake and yelled "Enjoy your f***ing cake!" The marriage ended shortly thereafter.

[jayinchelsea]

Posted: 9/16/12 at 3:42pm

I've been watching her since CACTUS FLOWER (she was brilliant). She was every inch a star and a musical comedy performer in APPLAUSE, and several years after doing it on Broadway, I was in London with an afternoon to kill, so I bought a ticket for a matinee of APPLAUSE, kind of dreading watching a "walk-through" of a show she had done a thousand times, and now for a bus-tour group from the provinces. Quite a surprise, when she dazzled even the most cynical observer with a knockout performance.

No, WOMAN OF THE YEAR was not a good show, and not her best moment. And WAITING IN THE WINGS was neither an interesting play nor a very good production, but I don't blame Bacall for that.

She is a living legend, and deserves all the kudos that she receives. Don't care about working with her, only that she delivers to her audience. Period.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 9/16/12 at 3:47pm

The woman is a c u n t, enough said!