The Lauren Bacall auction kicking off Tuesday at Bonhams in New York City will reveal a secret side of the well-known movie star – that of a serious collector.
The legendary beauty and widow of actor Humphrey Bogart passed away last August at age 89.
"Everyone knows Lauren Bacall the famous actress," Jon King, Bonhams' vice president, told
Vanity Fair. "But they don't know her as a serious collector."
At a young age, Bacall became one of Hollywood best known and most bankable stars, marrying Bogart and starring in such film classics as "To Have and Have Not" in 1944, "The Big Sleep" in 1946, "Key Largo" in 1948, "How to Marry a Millionaire" with Marilyn Monroe in 1953 and "The Shootist" with John Wayne,
according to the New York Observer.
The actress's three children are putting up the motherlode of her collections – from sofas, wooden tables, African masks, paintings, cases and many items she picked up from Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, Australia and most places in between, according to Vanity Fair. There are the personal items mixed in as well.
"Of course, there are Humphrey Bogart's games table and monogrammed Hartmann trunk," wrote Rachel Tashijan of Vanity Fair. "But then there are objects of more furtive origins, like a charming lithograph of three woodsy hats. Bacall kept it hanging over her coatrack, but it wasn't until King was doing the inventory that he discovered the artist's signature: Henry Fonda.
"After digging deeper, he found that Katharine Hepburn had given Fonda a fedora that her longtime lover, Spencer Tracy, considered his 'lucky hat' on the first day of filming 1981's 'On Golden Pond,' a gesture that so touched Fonda that he decided to paint it along with the two other hats he wore during filming and give lithographs to friends," said Tashijan.
The Observer wrote that prices at the auction, which will continue until Wednesday, would likely range from $100 to $60,000. Other items will include 20th century art, 18th century rustic furniture, a number of East Asian decorative pieces and Bacall's silver asparagus server.
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