Lauren Bacall - By Myself and Then Some

Though her life ended tragically, as a victim of some of the people around her, she herself was a decent, generous woman. She did some good things with her fortune. Her downfall was her desperate need for love, thereby trusting all the wrong people. As an actress playing her, I not only learned more about her – the light and dark sides – but it made me wish I had known her then. Perhaps I might even have been able to help her.

The locations included many weeks in Montreal, two weeks in the glory of Hawaii and time in Los Angeles. I got to work with Richard Chamberlain again whom I had scarcely seen since his days as Dr Kildare when I guested on one of his shows. And I worked for the first time with John Erman, a class A+ director and my new friend. We had a great time – the series was well received. It was such a good story, such an interesting and sad, sometimes freaky life. In the end she was used and abused.

T hat summer an old producer friend, Alexander Cohen, sent me a script for the theatre, a little known play by Noel Coward, now to be produced in celebration of his one-hundredth birthday. The play had been put on once, years ago in England, but never got anywhere. I was not sure it was something I wanted to do. Noel was a much-adored good friend and I was very sentimental about him. Alex was a great salesman – relentless – giving me all the whys and wherefores, telling me how great it would be for me and I for it. He prevailed. He had chosen the director, Michael Langham, a man I didn’t know. Alex could sell you anything, convince you of anything. He had Rosemary Harris for the other leading role, which was very fine with me as I’d admired her for years. So come fall, into rehearsal we went.

I was still uncertain, no apparent reason except that my last appearance on stage (though it was Chichester) had been the disappointment of The Visit in 1995. It had been such a contrast to the special experience for me – such a happy one, and such a hard act to follow – of Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth some years earlier. In the case of Waiting in the Wings , I knew no one. I weighed the pros and cons – the pros far outweighed the cons – they included the cast. Everyone in the play was of the theatre, all first rate actors. It was an ensemble piece, which is a form that has always attracted me. The major con was that the director was completely unknown to me. My approach to all my work, be it movies, theatre or television, has always been to work in tandem with the director. I have never entered a rehearsal room with a ‘star’ attitude. Actually, rehearsal time has always been my favorite time. Feeling your way in a play, getting to know your fellow actors, loving the work and having fun. Unhappily my problem in this instance was the director – the last person I would like to have difficulty with. He had some kind of preconception of me – something to do with stardom – my name being recognized – all sorts of ideas that I could never figure out. So from the beginning there was unspoken friction. He expected everyone to do everything his way. He was a very experienced director with many years spent in the British theatre and repertory in the U.S. He was not really interested in the opinion of actors.

Often when I have started work in a movie, or anything for that matter, some people have the preconceived notion that I am formidable, difficult and opinionated. I am opinionated, I confess – the other questionable attributes come I think from the lower register of my voice and from rumor – people’s idea of my life with Humphrey Bogart, thereby making me tough. From my own self-analysis, which I seldom indulge in, I am what I am. I mostly aim to please. I am insecure. I love to be part of a group of actors I am working with. I cannot work under tension, certainly will not fight unless backed against a wall. Even then, it is not why I became an actress in the first place. It is not supposed to be a competitive atmosphere or profession. Despite the difficulty with the director and the fact that I was slaughtered personally and professionally by the New York Times critic, the play had a successful run and I had a lovely time with my fellow thesps and count many of them – Barney Hughes and Helen Stenborg, Dana Ivey, Trish Connolly, Simon Jones – as my friends. We really did have and do have ongoing relationships that I value very highly. I wish my friend Noel Coward had been around. He would have added spice and put up with no nonsense from anyone.

Then, too, I had to sing a song (‘I’m Old Fashioned’ by Harold Arlen) in a scene in the second act where we (all women except for Barney Hughes and Simon Jones) were celebrating being alive. Anyway, I had to sing it more or less alone with my only guiding light being Trish Connolly at the piano (lovely, funny, one of the perks of the challenge). She had to learn the song in my key and play it on the slightly tinny piano on the set. Had it not been for John Kander, who came to the theatre several times to coach me and to give Trish my key which was somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space, I could never have gotten through it. Not being a singer, I, of course, needed a full orchestra behind me, which I couldn’t have. Talk about living dangerously. Every performance was an adventure. Trish would try to give me the first note, I would try to hear it and then hit it, and, as if that wasn’t enough, then I had to sing the song. All the while, everyone on stage knew what was going on – all of us hoping I’d get through it and not entirely embarrass myself or break up laughing. That’s what I love about the theatre – we own our own space on stage – we know what to expect and we hope for perfection. We were not about to have either the expected or perfection in this musical interval but we did have fun. Through all this the audience sits wrapped up in the play (we hope) and the characters (please God), and we do so want to please them. I choose to think that we succeeded, at least most of the time. It’s the little things that stand out, the little things that make being an actor such a wonder – when it works.

And the play was so worth doing. It was Noel Coward, for heaven’s sake, and though not so well known, nor the most successful of his plays, it was still his idea – his writing – which is not only good enough for me but better than many a play. Anything of his is worth doing – being a part of. And Noel was very much a part of the Anglophile in me. As was John Gielgud – they were all connected – all the other actors who became friends.

S uddenly it was the millennium . And just as suddenly that millennium brought with it the start of a series of losses that made England a sadder place for me – the first being John Gielgud. John and I met in London before Bogie’s and my African trip. We had several mutual friends so we met on each London visit and I saw him in every one of his theatre roles. After Bogie died, I came to London before leaving for India to film Flame Over India . After two months there, we returned to London for final scenes at Pinewood Studio. It was then that I began to see more of John, and our paths also crossed when he came to New York. I was in awe of him and his great talent and recalled to him my childhood experience of seeing him on Broadway in Hamlet and how I was so mesmerized by his performance, so affected that I kept walking into doors and pillars on leaving the theatre. That performance I believe left no doubt in my mind that I was determined to become an actress in the theatre. You must understand that John Gielgud’s theatre history is unparalleled. If I am correct, he actually gave Alec Guinness his first break in the theatre when Alec was seventeen or eighteen years old. Gielgud’s aunt was Ellen Terry, considered to be the great actress of her time. So theatre was the most natural venture for him – in his blood – where he belonged.