Let your imagination take flight, said Lauren Bacall

“Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.”
— Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall wrote these words for her memoir, which was published first as By Myself in 1978, and then revised and published in 2005 as By Myself and Then Some. The original version won a National Book Award, which speaks to how it resonated on publication.

Bacall certainly had an incredible life. The former Betty Joan Perske reinvented herself with a new name (she added an L to her mother’s surname) and an attitude that continued through the rest of her life.

She was was not yet 20 when Howard Hawks cast her with costar Humphrey Bogart, who became her husband and best-known costar over several films. Decades before Brangelina, etc., there was Bogey & Bacall. “He gave me a life, and changed my life,” she said decades later, when she accepted an honorary Oscar.

That 2009 speech (the video is below) showcases her character and her wit.

 “I certainly did not expect to receive it but I do welcome it, and the thought when I get home that I’m going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting, I can hardly stand it,” she said.

Here is the speech:

Lauren Bacall was an icon of an earlier generation, but she was effortlessly cool and her appeal has carried through the years.

I’m wondering if other Clash fans, for instance, are inclined to sing, “I thought I saw Lauren Bacall” from Car Jamming. From 1982, it’s a song inspired by what Joe Strummer saw and felt on the streets of Manhattan, taking a midtown traffic jam and finding a wider metaphor of feeling alienated or stalled. The appropriate moment of the song is cued up:

Lauren Bacall died in 2014, a month short of her 90th birthday.