Lauren Bacall - By Myself and Then Some

M other and Droopy and I settled in very nicely, happy in our apartment. We became instant Californians, except for the waiting around – I never could get used to that. I finally completed my driving lessons, took a slightly nervous test, but passed and applied for a license. All I needed now was a car.

I had to go to court with Howard to have my contract approved because I was a minor. There were a couple of photographers around and my first almost professional publicity photograph was printed in the California newspapers. I was launched. But none of it seemed quite real. It was a fairyland for the living and with all new people and movie make-believe. I don’t suppose I ever sat down and applied it to life as I had known life. Limited though my experience was, and God knows it was, New York was real and California was not. ’Twas ever thus.

In a used-car lot near Charlie’s office I found a 1940 gray Plymouth coupé for $900. I thought it was heavenly. The price certainly was. I told Charlie about it – he immediately lent me the money to pay for it. The office made all the arrangements and I was a car owner. Not bad for eighteen and a new kid in town. I had my license – now Mother had to learn. The car was freedom. No more depending on anyone to get any place. A relief.

There were many lunches and much time spent with Howard. He wanted me to drive into the hills, find some quiet spot, and read aloud. He felt it most important to keep the voice in a low register. Mine started off low, but what Howard didn’t like and explained to me was, ‘If you notice, Betty, when a woman gets excited or emotional she tends to raise her voice. Now, there is nothing more unattractive than screeching. I want you to train your voice in such a way that even if you have a scene like that your voice will remain low.’ I found a spot on Mulholland Drive and proceeded to read The Robe aloud, keeping my voice lower and louder than normal. If anyone had ever passed by, they would have found me a candidate for an asylum. Who sat on mountaintops in cars reading books aloud to the canyons? Who did? I did!

Howard wanted to have some good, special pictures taken of me. He knew a super photographer named John Engstead and set a day for us to do it. They would be taken at Howard’s house, which I had never seen. I might even meet his wife, ‘Slim,’ whom he spoke of so often and who had been the one who showed him my pictures in Harper’s Bazaar in the first place. I was given directions on how to get there and finally found it. My sense of direction has always been wanting – that is, north, south, east, and west direction, not life direction.

He lived in Bel-Air on Moraga Drive in the most beautiful house I had ever seen. It was a ranch-type house, all on one floor, with beamed ceilings, beautiful wood floors, antique country furniture – rich and comfortable and tasteful. The grounds were large. There were stables – both he and Slim rode. There was a pool. And I met Slim – a tall, thin, incredibly beautiful and unusual woman only seven or eight years my senior. She had great personal style. I was led back to her bedroom, which was gigantic – like a bed-sitting room; her dressing room had more shoes than I had ever seen – handbags on hooks – open shelves filled with sweaters – a room-size closet filled with clothes of all descriptions – an enormous bath. Howard’s bedroom, dressing room, and bath adjoined it. Did kings live any better than this? He and Slim had decided what I should wear – some things of hers, one or two of mine. One dress was silver lamé. John Engstead arrived with cameras, and my first portrait sitting began. The backgrounds were an enormous fireplace, a chair – all very simple. He was marvelously easy to work with – not unlike Dahl-Wolfe. I didn’t spend much time with Slim that day, but I liked her immediately, though I did feel shy with her. I thought both people and the house they lived in overwhelming. The portraits were the best I’d ever had, and still are.

After a few months Mother got restless and found a job around the corner from Reeves Drive that was pleasant and not too taxing. She was more efficient than anyone her bosses had ever known – they felt lucky, and they were. She learned to drive – badly. She got a license, but was what is known as a careful driver, hugging the curb at thirty miles per hour. She was always nervous behind the wheel, stemming from an accident she’d had when she was a girl when some chickens – some chickens? – somehow flew through a window of the car in which she was riding, causing glass to break and providing her with a lifelong scar on her arm. I wasn’t a hell of a lot better.

So the weeks went by – and the months – and I hounded Charlie every day – ‘What does Howard have in mind? When will I go to work? I’m going out of my mind not working.’ I was merciless. He tried to pacify me – ‘When Howard is ready, that’s when you’ll work.’ Charlie was going to co-produce a film with Howard made up of different stories concerning the war amalgamated into one. One episode concerned a young Russian girl who parachuted into a field and met a soldier – it was short, but they were thinking possibly I could play that. What a thought!

Meanwhile, Howard would have me come to Warner Bros., where I started to work with the music coach, Dudley Chambers. Howard thought I might sing. He took me onto a set where Lewis Milestone, the famous director, was making a film with Anne Baxter and Farley Granger. He introduced me to Milestone and we watched a scene being shot. And more stories were unfolding – what Howard had said to Katharine Hepburn on Bringing Up Baby – how he and Cary had thought of something marvelous to do in a scene – the dialogue between Howard and Rita Hayworth on Only Angels Have Wings. How he had given Hayworth her first break, but she hadn’t listened well enough, so he didn’t want to be bothered with her after that. She was damn good in it nonetheless.

Howard’s record spoke for itself. I learned much later that he had always wanted to find a girl from nowhere, mold her into his dream girl, and make her a star – his creation. He was about to begin. When I would ask Howard if he had anything specific in mind for me, he was noncommittal.

He said he thought he’d like to put me in a film with Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. I thought, ‘Cary Grant – terrific! Humphrey Bogart – yucch.’ Howard’s idea was always that a woman should play a scene with a masculine approach – insolent. Give as good as she got, no capitulation, no helplessness. Oh, he had something in mind, definitely, but it would be a long time before I knew what it was. A perfect example of Howard’s thinking was His Girl Friday , which was a remake of The Front Page , but changing the star reporter to a woman – Rosalind Russell. And it couldn’t have worked better.

The next six months were spent in reading aloud, studying singing, listening to Howard, meeting some people whose names had been mythical to me – and mostly heckling Charlie about work.

Jean Feldman was an old and close friend of Cole Porter. She told me that on Sunday nights (or was it Thursdays?) he always had a few soldiers who had no place to go – no home nearby – to dinner and always invited young actresses to dine and dance with them. We went one summer eve in 1943. Cole Porter lived in Brentwood, in an unpretentious but beautiful house on Rockingham Avenue. He was a fairly small, very neat, very elegant, well- and soft-spoken man who made me feel completely at home. His taste was impeccable – the food at his house was incredibly good, immaculately served. It was incredibly good fun and the soldiers were thrilled to be there. Drinks were always served early, and in summer out-of-doors – then food – then dancing. I became a regular – it was the continuation of my Monday nights at the Stage Door Canteen, only slightly more luxurious. I started off calling him Mr Porter, but he insisted on Cole. He walked with a cane – Jean told me of his ghastly accident with a horse, how he was constantly in pain and never complained, never mentioned it. There are all kinds of courage. I had marvelous times in that house.