Lauren Bacall, a Hollywood siren with the throaty voice and good looks, was an 18-year-old model in New York when she appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar magazine and got noticed by socialite Nancy “Slim” Hawks, who showed the magazine cover to her producer husband, Howard Hawks.
The producer took her under his wing
and, The New York Times noted, “Bacall shot to fame in 1944 with her first movie, Howard Hawks’s adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel ‘To Have and Have Not,’ playing opposite Humphrey Bogart, who became her lover on the set and later her husband.” But Bacall did not get every role that came along. There are roles she missed that other actresses made famous.
As writer
Cynthia Littleton noted in Variety magazine, “Bacall made headlines as much for the roles she refused as for those she took,” during her six-year tenure at Warner Bros., that included six suspensions. In 1950, she switched camps and took a deal with 20th Century Fox.
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“Stallion Road”
One suspension at Warner Bros. came in 1946 when she and Bogart were suspended after refusing roles in the melodrama “Stallion Road.” “They set sail on the yacht Santana, which they bought from Dick Powell, to wait out the suspension,” Littleton wrote in Variety. “Variety dubbed the standoff ‘Mutiny on the Santana.’” Ronald Reagan and Alexis Smith starred in it instead.
“Blowing Wild”
Bacall was offered the lead in 1953’s “Blowing Wild,” author
Eila Mell said in the book, “Casting Might-Have-Beens: A Film by Film Directory.” But she turned it down, and it went to Barbara Stanwyck.
“Cactus Flower”
After playing the role of Stephanie in 1965 on Broadway, Bacall was thought to be a shoe-in for the part in the 1969 movie. But Columbia Pictures chose Ingrid Bergman as the star. As
Margarita Landazuri wrote in Turner Movie Classics, “When the film rights were sold to producer Mike Frankovich, Bacall was confident she’d get the role unless Frankovich wanted someone younger (the character was in her mid-thirties; Bacall was a decade older). Instead, Frankovich offered the part to Ingrid Bergman, who was 54. Bacall was furious, and was very vocal about her disappointment, saying of Bergman, ‘I hate that woman!’”
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