Lauren Bacall

[Will42]

I only know her as a film icon, so I was wondering if anyone here saw her on stage and care to share their experience?

[chatter]

I saw her two times in Applause and Woman of the Year. She was magnificant. Trancendent. Tall and handsome, assured and totally magical. I feel like I was given a gift. She is a true Star!

[Will42]

Thank you! I like her a lot. She's a wonderful actress with great and unique presence.
Unfortunately, Ms. Bacall is not enjoying great health those days, but I do hope she can recover as fully as possible.

[Gothampc]

Broadway legend has it that Ethel Merman went to see Lauren in Applause. Lauren came out and performed her first number. From the middle of the orchestra section, Merman could be heard saying "Pick a note Betty".

[AC126748]

That story, like many involving The Merm, is apocryphal at best.

[Gothampc]

That story, like many involving The Merm, is apocryphal at best.

No, I heard it from my mother's manicurist's butcher's wife's uncle who worked backstage.

[SNAFU]

"We didn't discuss you at all Hon!"

[alterego]

Then there was the story of when she was appearing in SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH in Melbourne about 20 years ago. She had a car drive her the 200 yards from her hotel to the theatre, along the way she managed to fire her driver not once but twice, for no particular reason.

[noradesmond]

I saw her in APPLAUSE and she was marvelous. Not the best singer, for sure. But I'll give her credit for this: she sounded exactly the same live as she does on the OBC.

[Dollypop]

Saw her in CACTUS FLOWER, APPLAUSE, WOMAN OF THE YEAR and WONDERFUL TOWN (at the Westbury Music Fair). She had a marvelous stage presence and a certain sense of musicality. I would never say she had a good singing voice, though.

[chatter]

this is the type of crap that is all gossip. What if they we saying this about you? Would you report it?

[Dollypop]

To whom are you directing that comment?

[mattywhits]

and what the heck does it mean?

[MamasDoin'Fine]

My first ever Broadway show was to see 'Applause', it was Ms Bacall's final matinee of her run.
I remember it like it was yesterday, just as I remember my first West End musical, Ginger Rogers in 'Mame' at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane!

Some memories time just cant erode.

[Mamie]

I remember watching her after she made her entrance in "Waiting in the Wings". She sat on a sofa in the center of the stage, delivering a monologue with all the other ladies in the cast watching her and hanging onto every word. In the meantime, Rosemary Harris sat in a rocking chair all the way over on stage left, working on a needlepoint. She just sat there, moving that needle, and stealing the entire scene from Bacall! You couldn't take your eyes off of her. It was a fabulous example of the difference between a screen and a theatre professional.

[backwoodsbarbie]

Lauren Bacall me, anything goes

[Gypsy9]

I watched a movie starring Lauren Bacall, Gregory Peck, and the great Dolores Gray on TCM earlier this week. It was called DESIGNING WOMAN, which I had never even heard of. It also featured choreographer Jack Cole dancing some of his own choreography. The dances were pretty silly. Bacall and Gray stood out as real pros. Very enjoyable.

[Will42]

Vincente Minnelli's Designing Woman is one of the most successful films not only in Lauren Bacall's, but Gregory Peck's career as well.
Humphrey Bogart was already terminally ill at the time of the shooting and the film was released 4 mounts after his death.

[PalJoey]

It's hard to communicate exactly what was so exciting about the way Bacall performed in Applause and Woman of the Year. Her foghorn voice is even hared to explain than Merman's. (At least Merman was a musician.)

But Bacall had glamor, and a flawless sense of comic timing. The bleating of her voice defined character. Or at least it did in those two shows.

"But Alive" from Applause with Harvey Evans and Penny Fuller and a bunch of 1973 chorus boys.

http://youtu.be/a_3gxHeivR0


And here is "The Grass Is Always Greener" from Woman of the Year, with Marilyn Cooper:

http://youtu.be/mQpE15e4Zbo

[PalJoey]

And then of course there were those TV commercials that featured Lauren Bacall as the glamorous star of a glamorous Broadway musical, selling not only High Point coffee but also the idea of Lauren Bacall AS a glamorous star of a glamorous Broadway musical.

http://youtu.be/UUi2dXXVsd8

It was meta.

[PalJoey]

She's one of the girls who's one of the boys.

http://youtu.be/DIuHHALjpVA

Wait for it--that note at the end. It will change your life.

[henrikegerman]

The only time I saw her on stage was in Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings in which she had the daunting task of playing opposite Rosemary Harris; and in which she was equally outclassed by a brilliant Helen Stenborg In a tiny role, Stenborg was so wonderful she got a featured tony nod, losing the award to Blair Brown for Copenhagen, which was clearly a leading performance (Copenhagen is an extremely difficult thee character play in which all three stars were continuously on stage and Brown was the only woman!), so Brown's competing with Stenborg will go down as one of the most ludicrous category thefts in Tony history - but I digress.

Where was I? Where was I? Oh, Bacall. It was opening night. Sadly, it will go down in my memory as one of the most ill-prepared and aimless performances I have ever seen on Broadway. It was very sad to see a Broadway legend give such a blazingly weak performance. Bacall, who on paper was very well cast for the role, seemed completely lost. She also seemed to know that she wasn't good and couldn't wait for the show to be over. It was depressing.

[After Eight]

I thought she was very good in Waiting in the Wings. Very thoughtul, very much in keeping with the character. Her scene with her son was honest and moving, and she was touching in it. But in her latest autobiography, she expressed unhappiness with the director of the show, so, obviously, it was not a great experience for her.

I concur with all the other posters who thought she was terrific in Cactus Flower, Applause, and Woman of the Year.

[henrikegerman]

Maybe she grew into the role. The night I saw her was grueling; it made me feel bad for her. Or, of course, maybe we just had different opinions of her performance, which is cool too.

[After Eight]

"I remember watching her after she made her entrance in "Waiting in the Wings". She sat on a sofa in the center of the stage, delivering a monologue with all the other ladies in the cast watching her and hanging onto every word. In the meantime, Rosemary Harris sat in a rocking chair all the way over on stage left, working on a needlepoint. She just sat there, moving that needle, and stealing the entire scene from Bacall! You couldn't take your eyes off of her. It was a fabulous example of the difference between a screen and a theatre professional."

This is unfair to Bacall.

It's called upstaging. In this case, presumably, scripted by the author.

If you are going to have one character on a sofa, seated before the remainder of the onstage cast save one, and that one is isolated on the other side of the stage, sewing, then your attention is deliberately going to be focused on the other character, and it doesn't matter who's playing the part. Bacall and Harris could have exchanged roles in that scene, and one would have paid attention to the odd-woman-out.

And Bacall wasn't just a screen actress. She was a stage and screen actress.

[JoanBennett]

I've seen Betty.
I've worked with Betty.

Seeing her is great.