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From Publishers Weekly
Raised by her wise and loving immigrant mom and uncle, Lauren Bacall (b. 1924) knew, even in high school, that she wanted to be an actress. She took acting classes, modeled clothes, sold industry papers in the theater district, ushered at shows, danced at the USO—anything to get a break. Barely 18 when director Howard Hawks brought her to Hollywood for a screen test, she soon fell in love with Bogart, married and started a family. After Bogart's death a decade later, she rebounded with Sinatra, but tied the knot with Jason Robards before finding her way as a single woman, with friends and work as her passion. Bacall's intimates—from Katharine Hepburn to Adlai Stevenson—weren't the standard air-kissing, gossip-column regulars, but people who loved and respected each other for their work and their values. Sadly, like Bogart, they're also of a generation older than Bacall, so there's a lot of dying in these pages. Indeed, this sequel to 1978's By Myself is mostly a discussion of the deaths of some great friends: Roddy McDowall, John Gielgud, Gregory Peck and many more. Bacall does discuss the roles she's played as an older actress, but this work's real theme is the experience of surviving the death of so many wonderful friends. Readers looking for basic Hollywood romance and drama can stick to the first 400 pages; those seeking a more mature portrait can brave the final 100. Either way, Bacall's a class act. Color, b&w photos. (Mar. 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reading about the life of Lauren Bacall reminds us of a time when women were defined so narrowly by their roles in the lives of men that their second-class status was taken as a matter of course. The culture celebrated the color of their hair (always blonde) and the shape of their bodies (36"-24"-36"), subsumed their identities in those of their husbands (Mrs. Humphrey Bogart) and assumed, because men did, that once they had lost their virginal glow, they also lost what little prestige went along with it.

These thoughts are occasioned by this new edition of By Myself, the autobiography Bacall wrote in 1979, along with a brief summary of her life since that book was published, entitled "And Then Some." Bacall, now 80, was born in an era when to be beautiful and bright was a contradiction in terms, when women did not go it alone (or if they did, were social pariahs), did not consider themselves marketable over 40, and were willing to stay in any marriage, no matter how bad, for the economic benefit and whatever social respectability went with it.

Bacall was amazingly successful in overcoming these received handicaps. It was not enough for her to stand around waiting to be noticed and duly snapped up by the best available male. With all the strength of her youthful ambition, she went after an acting career. She did more than just sigh about it. She trained. She worked as an usher in theaters. She sold papers on the street. She wangled introductions to producers. She modeled for Vogue magazine. And of course she was slim, beautiful and most emphatically blonde.

While still a teenager, she was put under contract by Howard Hawks, groomed for stardom and then carefully placed in just the right part, one that would exploit both her precocious self-assurance and her vulnerability. By Myself is the right title, even if she did not exactly do it all alone.

She clearly had a devoted and loving family. But she had one serious handicap, through no fault of her own: an absent, feckless, emotionally distant father. Perhaps it was inevitable that, during the making of her first film, "To Have and Have Not," she should fall madly in love with her co-star. He was a famous older actor who was, as Jack Miles wrote, "Hollywood's beau ideal of American masculinity." Beau he may have been, but Humphrey Bogart was far from ideal. He was working on his third marriage, to Mayo Methot, a promising actress who was disintegrating into chronic, ugly, violent alcoholism and taking him along with her.

Only a teenager could delude herself into thinking that she will heal an older man's wounds and bring happiness into his life simply by being there. The miracle is that their marriage in 1945 did more for Bogart, by common agreement, than anyone had a right to hope, including her. It's difficult to get a feeling for how their relationship worked from Bacall's account here. From the biography Bogart by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax, one gets a clearer picture: "A friend described them as having 'a kind of Thin Man relationship. Very tart. Give and take. But done with a lot of warmth and humor. You got the feeling he adored her and she worshipped him.' "

As successful as their marriage was -- Bogart died of what one assumes to have been a cigarette-induced cancer in 1957 -- aspects of that relationship could not have been easy. Although "Bogie" moderated his drinking after he met "Betty" (her real name), he never gave it up, and there were still occasional wild and irrationally violent scenes. Like her father, he was sometimes emotionally out of reach. Both Bacall and Sperber and Lax refer to the period before their marriage when she would go to him and gleefully count off the remaining days and hours on her fingers. But only Bogart's biographers record his reservations, to Earl Wilson, the columnist: "That tigress, I have the feeling of a mouse that's going to be torn up by a rabbit."

Bacall, however, has begun to suspect that her single-minded drive may have had something to do with the disintegration of her decade-long second marriage, to Jason Robards Jr. -- by no coincidence another brilliant actor with a drinking problem who was even less dependable and more elusive than Bogart. She somehow realizes, as she tells the story, that she had been too anxious to dispel Bogart's ghost, too ready to find a new life, too eager to overlook the problems that were clear enough to her friends -- and besides, she was pregnant. (She had two children with Bogart: a son, Stephen, and a daughter, Leslie.) She hardly bothers to mention the fact that abortions were illegal in those days. And she cannot help, despite herself, being a child of her times, echoing the need "to belong" to someone, to subsume herself in the personalities and careers of her husbands even as she chafes against the nature of the role.

Bacall's autobiography should be read in conjunction with Sperber and Lax's book, published in 1977, because each sheds light on and illumines the other. From Bogart's biography, one has a better understanding of the mettle of a man who survived a hideous childhood and went on to become both a brilliant actor and a sensitive, aware and basically kind person. Bacall reveals herself as someone with the same kind of inner resilience and resourcefulness, even if the later pages of her book are shadowed by the loss of many people she has loved. And those who see her as a model of evolved womanhood, a questioning, self-realizing person who also understands the role she plays in the lives of her family and children, will find much to admire. She herself wrote, "The climb has been mostly upward, and I'm still climbing." What a treasure.

Reviewed by Meryle Secrest
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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All I had known of films was Bette Davis and Leslie Howard.