Quite Continental

In the month of February,
my mind has been turning to great love stories…

A true May-December romance, Lauren Bacall was only nineteen when she first met Humphrey Bogart. He was forty-five, and married.  He would soon divorce his third wife — a drinker who once stabbed Bogart — to marry the statuesque former model whose real name is Betty Joan Perske.

Bogart preferred to call Baccall “Baby.”

The pair was married for over ten years and had two childern.  They were separated by Bogart’s untimely death from cancer in 1957.  Bacall buried with her husband a small gold whistle, inscribed with a line from their first movie together: “If you want anything, just whistle.”

The couple on the set of The African Queen.

Further reading: “To Have and Have Not”
Matt Tyrnauer interviews Lauren Bacall for Vanity Fair