Lauren Bacall: Another Icon Is Gone

Lauren Bacall.

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

From the minute Lauren Bacall opened her 19-year-old mouth on the set of Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" in 1944, she was a star. She died at 89 yesterday and had never ventured even a centimeter from stardom.

She was what stardom was all about during her age, my age and your age: elegance, strength of character, regal bearing, that wonderfully husky whisky voice, the smartass response and the come hither look. That she was drop dead beautiful became but a footnote after a while because there was so much more to her, so many memorable moments--with and without husband Humphry Bogart.

She was in middle age when I came of age, but was still as much a lure as any of the young starlets in her beauty, but she had a lot more to offer.

Losing her and Robin Williams so close together, I think, stings because it brings up our own mortality clearly. They were both clear and present icons for my age and it is difficult to see them gone.