Extra fine signed photograph of Bacall

Lauren Bacall, born Betty Joan Perske, 1924–2014.  American actress.  8” x 10” glossy black-and-white photograph inscribed and signed, For Steve / Best regards / Lauren Bacall.

Originally a model, Bacall became a leading lady when she appeared opposite Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not in 1944.  The on-set chemistry was immediate, and Bogie and Bacall became romantically involved during the filming and were married in 1945.  Bacall’s part in the film was originally much smaller, but it was expanded several times during the filming until it became the lead part that it was in the final version of the film.  To Have and Have Not made Bacall an instant star.

Because of her success in To Have and Have Not, Bacall’s studio, Warner Brothers, undertook an extensive marketing campaign to promote her.  On February 10, 1945, as new Vice President Harry S. Truman played the piano for servicemen at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Bacall’s press agent urged her to climb atop the upright piano with Truman at the keyboard.  Truman was visibly embarrassed, but the press celebrated as photos of Bacall atop the piano appeared in newspapers across the country.  “I was just a kid,” Bacall later told Truman biographer David McCullough. “My press agent made me do it.”

Bacall subsequently appeared in a number of major films with Bogart, including The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948).  Her other films included Bright Leaf (1950), opposite Gary Cooper; the acclaimed How to Marry A Millionaire (1953), in which she starred with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable; Designing Woman (1957), opposite Gregory Peck; Sex and the Single Girl (1964), with Henry Fonda, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood; Murder on the Orient Express (1974), with Ingrid Bergman and Sean Connery; and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), for which she won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.  In 1981, Bacall won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Woman of the Year, and she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1993.

Bacall wrote three books:  Lauren Bacall by Myself (1978); Now (1994); and By Myself and Then Some (2005).

This photograph is absolutely pristine.  Bacall has inscribed and signed it in silver pen.

Unframed.  Please ask us about custom framing this piece.