Portrait of Lauren Bacall

Birthday profile

Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall, American actress (died 2014)

Born
September 16, 1924
Died
August 12, 2014
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1924

About Lauren Bacall

Betty Joan Perske (September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014), known professionally as Lauren Bacall (), was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. She received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. Bacall began a career as a model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency before making her film debut at the age of nineteen in To Have and Have Not (1944) as the leading lady opposite Humphrey Bogart, whom she later married. She continued in the film noir genre with appearances alongside Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948) and she starred in the romantic comedies How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Designing Woman (1957). She portrayed the female lead in Written on the Wind (1956), which is considered one of Douglas Sirk's seminal films. She later acted in Harper (1966), Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and The Shootist (1976). Bacall found a career resurgence for her role in the romantic comedy The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), for which she earned the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for the Academy Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. During the final stage of her career, she gained newfound success with a younger audience for major supporting roles in the films Misery (1990), Dogville (2003), Birth (2004) and the English dubs of the animated films Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and Ernest & Celestine (2012). In theater, Bacall made her Broadway debut in Johnny 2x4 (1942). She went on to win two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her performances in Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). She also acted in the play Goodbye Charlie (1959), the farce Cactus Flower (1965) and Wonderful Town (1977). She made her West End debut in Applause (1970) followed by Sweet Bird of Youth (1985). He changed her first name to Lauren, and she chose Bacall, a variant of her mother's maiden name, as her screen surname. He had first met Bacall at a New York club called Tony's, where de Gunzburg suggested that Bacall visit his Harper's Bazaar office the next day. Wealthy uncles funded Bacall's education at the Highland Manor Boarding School for Girls in Tarrytown, New York, a private boarding school founded by philanthropist Eugene Heitler Lehman, and at Julia Richman High School in Manhattan.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Lauren Bacall was born

Lauren Bacall was born in 1924. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1924

  • #1 song"It Had to Be You" – Isham Jones
  • Top movieThe Thief of Bagdad (Douglas Fairbanks)
  • Best-selling bookSo Big – Edna Ferber

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France
  • Top headlineCalvin Coolidge elected president in a landslide
  • Technology milestoneIBM founded
  • Defining fadMah-jongg craze sweeps America
  • Notable inventionSpiral-bound notebook
  • World population1.95 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderCalvin Coolidge
  • Sports championWashington Senators (World Series)
  • U.S. population114.1M

1924 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Lauren Bacall's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19242026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$5,800$435,000
Average income$3,520$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population114.1M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.