Happy Birthday, Lauren Bacall

The Author found Lauren Bacall’s autobiography (the 1978 edition, By Myself, not the 1994’s Now) in a London charity shop a couple of years back. The Author was tentative to read Bacall’s autobiography, as learning more about an artist you admire is a venture oft doomed to disappointment (looking at you, Hitchcock). The Author has long admired Lauren Bacall and was relieved to find that her esteem for this Golden Age actress has only increased with the reading of her autobiography.

And let’s not forget her wonderful voice (perhaps an acquired taste), which makes her a distinctive singer, as evidenced in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep.

Well then, happy birthday, Lauren Bacall! Or, if we may call you by your birth name, Betty Joan Perske.

An image from Lauren Bacall’s autobiography, ‘By Myself’.

An earlier reminiscence on this topic: Book Cover Monday: Lauren Bacall – By Myself