With the world still reeling in disbelief at the sudden death of Robin Williams, news of the passing of Lauren Bacall got pushed way down the page. I barely noticed it last night before I shut off my computer. This morning, there isn’t even a mention on my home page. Of course, there are plenty of links to gossip about trash celebrities, a good number of whom I’ve never even heard of, save in that capacity. I think it’s time to finally change my home page.

Bacall died yesterday, one month shy of her 90th birthday. Of course, her love affair with Humphrey Bogart is legendary. It’s easy to see in “To Have and Have Not,” her film debut, exactly what Bogie saw in her. At only 19, she was sultry and magnetic. Bogart was 44 and unhappily married. He tried to tough it out, but it couldn’t be helped. For once in his life, he wound up playing the sap. Fortunately Bacall was more femme than fatale, and the two lived happily ever after – or at least until 1957, when Bogart finally succumbed to cancer.

Bacall, born Betty Joan Perske, enjoyed a long and enviable career. Only this year, she provided one of the voices for the English language release of the French-Belgian animated film, “Ernest & Celestine.”

It’s always sobering for me to realize, having seen all those television commercials for “Woman of the Year” back in 1981, that this siren of the Golden Age of Hollywood was still in her 50s. Bacall would receive her second Tony Award for her performance. Earlier, she had been honored with a Tony for “Applause,” in 1970.

In 1997, Bacall was nominated for an Academy Award for her work opposite Barbra Streisand in “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” She received an honorary Oscar in 2009.

Following her star-making turn in “To Have and Have Not,” Bacall would go on to appear with Bogart in three more films – “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Dark Passage”(1947) , and “Key Largo” (1948) – and Max Steiner was there most of the way. (Franz Waxman scored “Dark Passage.”) Here’ s Steiner’s haunting love music for “The Big Sleep”:

“You know how to whistle, don’t you…?”

“Why don’t you shave, and we’ll try it again.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhW9l-N77U0

So long, Slim.