16 September: Lauren Bacall

This date in 1924 saw the birth of the actress Lauren Bacall. 10 things you might not know about her:

1. She was born in New York, the only child of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. They gave her the name Betty Joan Perske, but she changed it to Lauren Bacall when she got a screen contract. The Bacall part came from her mother's maiden name.
2. She initially wanted to be a dancer but changed her mind and chose acting. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.
3. At 18, she started modelling and in due course appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. The wife of film director Howard Hawks spotted her and persuaded Hawks to give her a screen test. He was impressed enough to give her the part of Marie Browning in To Have and Have Not, opposite Humphrey Bogart, when she was just 19.
4. During the shooting of the film, she and Bogart started a passionate affair, even though he was married to Mayo Methot at the time. Bacall admitted later, in her autobiography, that she lost her virginity to Bogart during the making of the film.
5. After Humphrey Bogart died in 1957, she had a brief relationship with Frank Sinatra. Allegedly, he proposed to her, but when she went public about their relationship without his consent, he dumped her.
6. She didn't agree with the public assessment of her as one of the world's most beautiful women. She believed her teeth were crooked, her Eyebrows too thick and her Feet too big. All the same, she refused to be persuaded by directors to change her looks.
7. She was the second star to have their details uploaded to the Internet Movie Database, after Fred Astaire and before Brigitte Bardot.
8. She was 72 before she was nominated for an Academy Award in 1996 for The Mirror Has Two Faces.
9. At Humphrey Bogart’s funeral, she put a whistle in his coffin in reference to her famous line to him in To Have and Have Not in 1944: “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”
10. From her apartment, she heard the shot that killed John Lennon, but at the time believed it was a car tyre exploding.

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