By Myself and Then Some

by Lauren Bacall

  Bogie’s sister Pat was coming out of the hospital and at last I would meet her. With my imagination I assumed that anyone who had had a breakdown would look peculiar. Despite assurances to the contrary, I was apprehensive. Pat was coming to the Garden of Allah to spend the day with us. Arrangements were always made by her doctor for her to live with an ex-nurse and friend of Pat’s whom he knew. That way she felt secure, and any sign of deterioration would be recognized and dealt with before harm could be done. Frances Bogart Rose, known as Pat, was a tall, strongly built woman – easy to visualize on a horse – who bore a strong resemblance to her brother. She was very shy, totally sweet, and totally normal in her behavior. My fears were unfounded – I couldn’t have been more wrong. Bogie was tender and gentle with her and she adored him. She was so happy that he was happy at last and that she had a sister.

  I spent most of my time watching and listening – not completely at ease. But she was quiet and gentle – and, with all her size, somewhat delicate and obviously vulnerable. Bogie kept her informed about her daughter Patricia, when he knew something. Patricia was about my age – she and Pat corresponded, and Pat lived for the day she might see her. She dealt with her anguish in extraordinary fashion. The hurdle between us was jumped easily and she always spent a good deal of time with us when she was out of hospital, but she never lived with us. Bogie did not believe in in-laws living with husband and wife, and he didn’t believe in anyone dropping in, relatives, even mothers, included. His rule was absolute: Call before and wait for an invitation. His home was sacred, and privacy to be respected.

  There was the house to get ready and look forward to. Bogie’s cook, May Smith, who’d worked for him on Horn Avenue, wanted to stay with him. Aurelio Salazar, his gardener, felt the same, and a Jamaican butler named Fred Clark, who was more British than Peter Sellers doing the Lord Chancellor. What a group to inherit – but I jumped in with both feet. I never knew how to deal with servants as such, never felt I was better than they – but I did feel they should do what they were paid to do, just as I did. In that I was demanding and, I suppose, a pain in the ass more than once.

  So we moved into our honeymoon house in King’s Road. To me it was heaven. May was a great cook and helped teach me menus. A tall woman who always wore a pink camellia over her left ear and a large smile, she’d raised two sons – one was a musician, one worked for the police department. She was independent – never complained, gossiped, criticized – she was like a second mother to me and I adored her. She really loved Bogie, knew his culinary tastes, which were limited, and only wanted to please. Her pride and personal dignity were tremendous – you had to respect her. Fred insisted on calling us M’Lord and M’Lady with a half-smile on his face. He was star-struck – bright, sunny, sometimes fresh, but would never remain a butler; just vamping till ready to make his move. But he was fun – he’d pick up Bogie’s secretary, Kathy Sloan, every morning on Sunset and drive her to the house to deal with the mail, phone, anything Bogie might want. Kathy was a nice woman, worked hard, was devoted to Bogie. Her one peculiarity: she never walked into the kitchen – insisted on having her lunch on a tray.

  Life fell into a semblance of routine. We finished our respective films and Bogie planned his big moment – showing me Catalina. I was filled with anticipation – I so wanted to adore it all. A beautiful summer weekend and off we went. Food was bought – I was going to cook a great dinner. I asked May how to cook string beans – twenty minutes in boiling water, I was told. I couldn’t wait. I loved playing house, alone – just the two of us at sea in the moonlight, surrounded by silence – so romantic. We left Newport – the trip would take about two hours. Bogie showed me how to steer the boat. I fixed lunch down below, which was fine for the first five minutes – then, with the ocean swells and the motion of the boat, my stomach was visited with just a touch of queasiness. Please, God, don’t let me be sick. I brought the lunch topside and I was all right – on small cruisers the stove is often in a corner of the main cabin near the door leading to the deck, so some air is always traveling through. I ate – my first mistake. Waves of nausea began to overtake me. I was tense, afraid Bogie would notice – and that made it worse. Finally I just sat in the open air in the stern, gas fumes floating past my nose, turning greener and greener, with Bogie at the wheel showing me glorious Catalina. I couldn’t be too enthusiastic – afraid to move or say much for fear of throwing up – so I sat with a sickly smile on my face till we got in the lee of the island and the ground swells stopped. Finally the nausea passed. Poor Bogie – this meant so much to him, and, like all things that one builds too high in one’s mind, it was a letdown. We moored in Cherry Cove – pretty, well protected, very calm. It had a small beach. Pat and Zelma brought their boat over – there were a couple of sailboats moored – I handled the boathook while Bogie handled the boat. There was much boating terminology to learn. (That was the year I learned everything at once: how to be a wife, run a house, sail a boat, cook, and not trust Jack Warner.) As soon as we moored, Bogie would have his first drink, that was custom. So we sat in the sun with the boat very gently moving – I wished it would stay still – and Bogie telling me that once I got used to it, once I had my sea legs, I’d feel terrific. I hoped he was right. He was Navy-trained – hurricanes didn’t bother him.

  I prepared the string beans – put the water on to boil – and when it did, I turned the fire off and twenty minutes later announced dinner. What a fiasco. That remained a joke for years. Bogie did finally face the fact of my squeamishness, but went on believing that I’d improve with practice. Once I was there I always loved it – it was just the getting there I hated. Bogie taught me to keep my eye on the horizon – if you did that, the nausea would pass. Stare at an immovable object. God knows I tried, and it did get better after a time. I only wanted to be with him anyway, and I was determined to enjoy everything he enjoyed.

  November brought the release of Confidential Agent. It was a disaster. The critics said they’d made a mistake – I was not Garbo, Dietrich, Hepburn, Mae West all rolled into one, as they had thought. I was just terrible me and should be sent back where I came from. As brilliant, exciting, and glorious as I had been just a few months ago, that’s how amateurish, tedious, and just plain bad I was now. At the same time George Kaufman had directed a play in New York called The Next Half Hour and he was creamed by the critics. I ought to send him a wire, I told Bogie, saying we’d make a great pair. Bogie said, ‘Do it.’ Great not to lose one’s sense of humor about oneself. Thank God I had Bogie. Well, Moss Hart had been dead right – I fell from the top of that ladder with a resounding crash. And it was the last time Jack Warner made a choice for me.

  I wonder if critics realize how destructive they are. Imagine if I had not been a happy new bride – with that distraction and the support and guidance of my experienced husband. If I’d been alone, I could never have survived. Lucky for me I threw myself so violently, so single-mindedly, into the big things of life. If I hadn’t been so consumed by Bogie, the thrusting of me onto the national scene with such a vengeance would have been uncopable with. Not having really hit that higher-than-a-kite high, I didn’t have quite so heavy a crash. I realized early on how limited the critics’ knowledge of actors is, how they do not recognize where an actor’s contribution begins or ends. I remember that when The Big Sleep was released a year later they said: Ah, that’s more like the first Bacall we loved (they hate to be wrong) – she’s good in this one – we like her again – let’s not judge too quickly – we’ll see what happens. What they didn’t know, of course, was that The Big Sleep was made before Confidential Agent. At the time, I didn’t realize how much damage had been done, but after Confidential Agent it took me years to prove that I was capable of doing anything at all worthwhile. I would never reach the To Have and Have Not heights again – on film anyway – and it would take much clawing and scratching to pull myself even halfway back up that damn ladder.

  Just about that time I received a leng
thy letter from my father telling me the ‘Truth’ about my parents’ divorce. According to him, he had been the maligned and mistreated one – he had washed my diapers and bathed and fed me – he had given my mother everything – her family had turned on him – it was he who was responsible for what I was today. He signed the letter ‘your Father,’ then his full name. The letter was typed – dictated, no doubt. What was worrying him was that he had no answers if questions were posed to him about me. The letter upset Mother greatly. We sent it to Uncle Jack, who had all the files on my father. His history was unsavory and spoke for itself, as did his neglect of me and his sudden rebirth. It was always unsettling to me to hear from him, mainly because I had given him little thought in my growing-up years except for the fact of his rejection of me, which was my constant companion. To have him suddenly reappear full of negative opinions about my choices made waves on my smooth sea. I didn’t have curiosity about him then – I was resentful – I knew Mother and my family well enough to be absolutely certain they’d invented nothing. Their goodness and love stood tall and strong. Mother’s worry seemed to be that if I ever saw him, he’d make a scene, and now that I was famous he was capable of calling press conferences – doing anything to gain recognition. Maybe I inherited my sense of the dramatic from him.

  The letter was filed and ignored. My life was happy and full – my days of needing a father had passed – there was no ground upon which I could ever meet him now. Sad in a way, but when a man chooses to forget his child, he can expect the same behavior in return. It’s not deliberate, it just happens. The damage was done long before.

  One afternoon I was waiting for Bogie to come home from a day at the races with Mark Hellinger. The phone rang – it was Mother, distraught. She’d stopped at a market in Beverly Hills to pick up some food for dinner. Droopy and Puddle, his daughter, were with her. As they emerged from her car, the dogs were hit immediately by another car – your average hit-and-run driver. Droopy was dead and the puppy hurt. I burst into a flood of tears. Where was Bogie? I needed him! Finally – late – he called. He was crocked. ‘Hello, Baby, meet us at LaRue’s, Mark and I are there now.’ Wonderful! I cried into the phone about Droopy – it had little effect. I should have known that a day with Mark meant a day with Johnnie Walker. I was furious with Bogie, but after more tears pulled myself together and got to the restaurant. Mark was smiling and happy – happy that Bogie was loaded and happy to see me. I got no sympathy from anyone. It was a night to forget. We ended up in the home of some silent film star – up until dawn – Bogie drunker than I’d ever seen him and drunker than he’d ever be again. He didn’t know where he was, and only every now and then would he relate to me. I hated what that much liquor did to him – I still hadn’t learned to drink, still hadn’t learned how to deal with people who did, still was twenty years old. It all made me feel angry – and inadequate and uncertain. I was fiercely jealous of Bogie. He never gave me cause, but partly due to my insecurity, and partly due to the fact that I thought him so dazzling, I was certain every other woman did – and many did. I never showed it, but I felt it. That morning he was finally poured into the car and I drove him home. The vision of Droopy lying dead was still in my mind – I only wanted Bogie to fall asleep so I could call Mother. After getting him yet another drink and getting him downstairs – no easy trick – he did pass out. I felt only relief.

  Mother and I went to the Pet Cemetery in the Valley. A woman straight out of Charles Addams greeted us and asked if we would like to go to the Slumber Room to see our dog. All her talk was very solemn, at a whisper. There is often something funny at every sad occasion – in this case, she was it. We followed her into the Slumber Room, where dogs of all types were lying asleep in open coffins, one mutt in a box lined with tufted satin. Droopy lay with his head on one paw just as he’d slept in life. I reached out to touch him – he looked so alive I thought he might be – but I touched stone. I quickly pulled my hand back and we quickly left the room and made arrangements for his burial. So, sadly, ended that chapter of my life.

  Bogie was a Christmas baby, so I decided to give him a surprise party on Christmas Eve. He always did his Christmas shopping the day before and would come home at around six. We were supposedly going to Hellinger’s house for dinner. Our house had a Roman tub, about four by eight feet and five deep. I gathered Benchley, Butterworth, McCain, Nunnally, Hellinger, Delehanty, Sheekman, Pat O’Moore, Ray Massey – about twenty in all – and made them stand in the tub. They looked funny and silly, all with glasses in their hands, crushed together in a blue sunken tub – an unlikely sight. When Bogie came in I greeted him with a drink as usual. The tree was lit, the living room looked festive. It was very sentimental – our first Christmas as man and wife. Bogie wanted to go downstairs, but I said that something was wrong with the Roman tub – could he take a look at it first? I led him toward the door, opened it, turned on the light – all those ridiculous faces gathered in a bathtub shouting ‘Surprise!’ completely threw him off balance. It was the only surprise party he’d ever had – he couldn’t get over it. The evening was a success. I was a nervous hostess, but there was good food (all made by May), plenty to drink, and good friends. Bogie was like a kid – touched that I would go to all that trouble, touched that people cared enough about him to gather together. He’d never had occasion to test that before. It’s odd when I think of it. Here was a totally successful man of forty-six who’d never had a party in his own home, never had his house filled with friends, people who genuinely liked him. There were so many things for me to find out about Bogie – information uncovered at unexpected moments; just as I thought I had him figured, something new caught me unaware. Astounding – there were so many, many layers to this man that, as well as I knew him, I’m sure I never uncovered them all. I remember him handing me my Christmas present, saying, ‘I got tired of seeing all that tobacco in your bag.’ He was shy. The gift was a beautiful gold cigarette case with a ruby clasp and the inscription ‘For Mrs Me who never need whistle for Bogie.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he watched me open it, and when we looked at each other, trumpets sounded, rockets went off. We really loved – we had every hokey, sentimental, funny, profound feeling there was to have. I loved presents, and I gave Bogie many always – half-birthday, half-Christmas – he’d grown up being cheated of them. He never bought me more than two things – usually one of them was extravagant. I always bought him something relating to the boat – something for his gold watch chain – clothes. He didn’t want anything. He didn’t care for jewelry – he wore his wedding ring on one hand, his father’s ring on the other, a watch and key chain, very occasionally cufflinks, and that was that. But I loved to shop for him – I had never bought anything for a man before. And I had never had any money until now. Carolyn and I always spent several days Christmas shopping together. This year we bought our first ornaments for our first trees – she and Buddy had finally gotten married that September. Christmas still seemed funny without snow, but I’d overlook that.

  Bogie hated New Year’s Eve – that was the one night he refused to get drunk, just because everyone else did. Ornery. Our circle of friends was enlarging. Bogie had taken me into Ira Gershwin’s home – his wife, Lee (for Leonore), and Bogie had lived next door to each other in New York and had kind of grown up together. I was very much in awe of and at the Gershwin house. Milling around would be Oscar Levant, Harold Arlen, Arthur Kober, Harry Kurnitz, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Groucho Marx, Harry Ruby, Arthur Schwartz – the list was endless. They were friends, all bright, musical, and creative, mostly funny – that house was the warmest, most welcoming and sought after in Hollywood, and it played a large role in my California life and after. George Kaufman and Moss Hart were there when in town, Harold Arlen would play and sing, Ira would sing. The more often I went, the more time I’d spend beside the piano. I knew all the lyrics and my spirit was part of their music. And I finally met the mythical John Huston. He’d been best man when Jules Buck married my frien
d Joyce, so I’d met him briefly then, but that was before I was Mrs Bogart and I don’t count that meeting. Huston was another original. Aside from his extraordinary talent, he’s always been a personal mesmerizer. About six foot five, very thin, a man of soft voice and careful speech who seemed to travel loosely through life. He adored Bogie and vice versa – he was very funny, but devilish and socially undependable. I discovered this gradually. I was accepted immediately by him because I loved his friend. He didn’t like women much on their own.

  The next few years were the happiest of my life – I was really on a cloud. My life revolved entirely around Bogie. Though I worked a little, there was no doubt what took priority. We both changed as our lives together grew closer – we were so close that there was never a notion in anyone’s mind that anything or anyone could come between us. Our commitment was a life commitment.

  Bogie and I made our third movie together – Dark Passage – and went to San Francisco for a month of location shooting. My first time in that beautiful city. We lived at the Mark Hopkins Hotel and spent many evenings at the Top of the Mark looking over the entire city and the Golden Gate Bridge. We generally lived a quiet, private newlywed life there. Toward the end of shooting, back in the studio, I became aware of Bogie’s nerves – if the phone rang, he’d tense up, didn’t want to answer it, didn’t want to speak to any except the closest. He’d noticed a bare spot on his cheek where his beard was not growing. The one spot increased to several – then he’d wake in the morning and find clumps of hair on the pillow. That alarmed him. It’s one thing to be bald with a rim of hair, an actor could always wear a hairpiece, but without the rim it would have to be a full wig. The more hair fell out, the more nervous he got, and the more nervous he got, the more hair fell out. In the last scene in Dark Passage he wore a complete wig. He panicked – his livelihood hung in the balance. A visit to the doctor was in order. He never went to doctors. The verdict was that he had a disease known as alopecia areata – in layman’s terms, hair falls out as a result of vitamin deficiencies. He was plain worn out – the years of mistreating himself in bars and an unsteady diet had added up to this. It would grow back, but he’d need B-12 shots twice a week – scalp treatments – more food – in general, more care. That was a relief to us both. His next film was going to be The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with John Huston and he’d have had to wear a wig for that anyway.