Credit: The Big Sleep
The iconic Lauren Bacall died weeks shy of her 90th birthday. She’d have turned 98 in 2022, and she’d have done so with grace and elegance. She was known for her staggering beauty and her talent as an actress, and despite her age, her death was a shocking blow to all who loved her.
She was twice married, once widowed, once divorced, mother of three, and she spent her life thankful for the many things that went well in her life. Shockingly enough, however, there are a few things in life she has to say that might just shock you.
Lauren Bacall Engaged in an Affair with a Married Man
The famous actress and model wed another famous actor in 1945. She married the handsome Humphrey Bogart. He died 12 years into his marriage and just two years shy of his own 60th birthday. When Lauren Bacall married Bogart in 1945, he was 45 to her 21. The age difference did not bother her in the least. They met at work, and their on-screen romance moved from the big screen to their real life. In her own memoir, she wrote the most beautiful passage, “No one has written a romance better than we lived it.” Tell us a better story of love.
Funnily enough, she did not like Humphrey Bogart much when she came to Hollywood. She liked Cary Grant. However, they were cast in a movie, and their love story began despite the fact that Humphrey Bogart was a married man and Lauren Bacall knew it. However, his marriage – his third at that point – was going poorly. He and his wife had a reputation for having terrible fights and arguments, and no one thought their marriage would last.
They were correct. He divorced his wife and married Lauren Bacall. Bogart’s wife was an alcoholic who he felt obligated to say with. He broke Lauren Bacall’s heart more than once during his marriage. But that all ended on May 10, 1945. He left his wife, and he divorced her. Eleven days later, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart got married. They were happily married until the day he died 12 years later.
Lauren Bacall Calls Her First Marriage Her Only Good One
Despite the fact that she ultimately gave up her career for her husband, she didn’t have any regrets about it. She knew what she wanted in life. She loved acting, but she loved her husband and their kids more. “If I’d had just my career, I would have missed out on Bogie, on children, on the very substance of life. Thank God I did put our marriage first, because it didn’t last too long,” she said following her beloved’s death. While she did remarry, she has always been honest about the fact that her only good marriage was her first. Her second husband was an alcoholic, and she left him because she could not handle it. Still, she never considered her story a tragic one. She considered herself lucky.
Credit: The Big Sleep
“I was so lucky when I was young. What happened to me then sometimes happens to people when they’re older. And sometimes never happens. So I feel lucky that I had it at all,” she said of being madly in love, being happy with someone who was just everything to her, and loving and losing.
She even went on to say in 2011 that her own obituary when her life came to a close would likely be full of her first husband’s name. It’s clear that even until she died almost 60 years after her husband that she was still madly in love with him. He was her one and only.
She Regrets Her Oscar Because of Her First Husband
Lauren Bacall was sheer talent, but she never won an Oscar. She was finally awarded an honorary Oscar in 2009, and she hates looking at it. Her love of her first husband was so pronounced in her acceptance speech – her entire career was ultimate with him – that she forgot to mention her second husband or the son they had together. She felt she did not honor her youngest child, and it killed her.
Credit: UGA Brown Media Archives/YouTube
“My three children were sitting out there, and I never talked about Jason, and never mentioned Sam, my youngest child. I had a lot I should have said about Jason, and Sam was sitting right there. I think that’s about as bad a thing as I’ve ever done. I just kind of went blank. And I knew it, and I tried to get back on, and I couldn’t, because they had all of the film cuts planned, and so they were right into the next thing. I think it scarred my son terribly, and there’s no excuse for that, especially in view that I so adore him,” she said in 2011. What a heartbreaking moment.