By Myself and Then Some Read online

  Lauren

  Bacall

  For my children Stephen, Leslie, Sam and in memory of my mother

  First and always, to my children, and then to my grandchildren — Bogarts and Robards — next and future generations with abiding love for all

  Contents

  By Myself

  And Then Some

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  By Myself

  All I had known of films was Bette Davis and Leslie Howard. (I was in love with him – alas, was never to meet him.) She was my fifteen-year-old idea of perfection – fine actress, dramatic bravery, doomed tragedy, sardonic wit – all an actress should be, and when I cut school I would sit all day in a movie house sobbing through Dark Victory or Jezebel or The Old Maid, smoking in the balcony (I paid for a whole package, so I had to finish it). Forbidden at home, of course – getting sick on tobacco, and Sen-Sen to get the stench out of my mouth so as to go undetected by Mother and Uncle Charlie. One morning my uncle came in to kiss me goodbye before leaving for work and said, ‘Have you been smoking?’ Shaking, I replied, ‘Of course not.’ Whereupon he went into the next room to tell my mother he was certain I was smoking – whereupon they both faced me, trembling in my bed. ‘We know you have been, we can smell it on your breath.’ What had happened to Sen-Sen? – it had failed me for the first time. In a flood of tears I confessed – I had, but I would never do it again! ‘Please forgive me – I promise.’ Mother: ‘You’d better not, a girl your age – disgusting – what kind of a girl do you want to become – nice girls of fifteen don’t smoke!’ Oh God – would I survive this humiliation!

  Tail between the legs for days afterward – Charlie and Mother sniffing daily, trying to detect the evil weed. My first confrontation with the Sam Spade syndrome. Wouldn’t I ever grow up – be on my own, free to do what I wished? Wouldn’t I ever live alone? The purity of Jewish upbringing – the restrictions that one carries through life being a ‘nice Jewish girl’ – what a burden. But if you were – and I was – you had it drummed into your head from childhood by your mother, grandmother, uncles, that nice Jewish girls didn’t smoke – weren’t fast – nice Jewish girls had character. ‘Don’t chase a boy, ever – if he wants to see you, he’ll call; if not, forget him.’ But what were you to do if your head was filled with dreams of beauty, glamour, romance, accomplishment, and if you were stuck with being tall, ungainly (I didn’t know I was ‘colt-like’ until a critic said I was), with big feet, flat chested – too young to have finished high school at fifteen, too inexperienced, shy, frightened to know what to do with a boy when I did have a date? If my dream would only come true, then I would know how to behave, then things would fall into place – wouldn’t they?

  I wouldn’t always be a wallflower. Already there was one boy who had a fantastic crush on me. I went out with him because there was no one else, and I tried to make him part of my romantic dream. He’d kiss me goodnight. He was sweet to me, he was boring, but he did call – I’d better be nice to him. It was soon Christmas, then New Year’s, and I didn’t want to be alone New Year’s Eve – not when my friends had dates – so I went to a party with him on New Year’s Eve – just sixteen, sweet sixteen – and we danced to ‘Deep Purple’ while I pretended he was Leslie Howard. Pretending started early. What a fantasy world – so much better than the real one. We sat on a sofa in the darkened room, he had his arm around me – he kissed me, I guess – all the kids were doing the same thing – ‘Happy New Year!’ Why wasn’t he Leslie Howard just for that moment I looked at him? It wasn’t good enough, I thought, to have someone crazy about you if you felt nothing. No – it would not do. I couldn’t stand him, couldn’t bear to let him touch me. I should have known right then that it would always be the same – I had to be madly in love or utterly revolted. No happy mediums for me! So I started that year – 1941 – deciding not to see him again. I always made out a list of New Year’s resolutions and that was one of them. I didn’t keep the others, but I did keep that one. No compromises in life for me – I wouldn’t settle – I’d rather not go out, just live with my dreams.

  Each time I was in love – this was it. The hunger to belong. Imagination is the highest kite that can fly. When you have nothing but dreams, that’s all you think about, all that matters, all that takes you away from humdrummery – the fact that your mother was working too hard and didn’t have enough in her own life, that your grandmother, loving though she was, wanted you to get a decent job to help your mother, that you didn’t have enough money to do anything you wanted to do, even buy a lousy coat for $17.95. Dreams were better – that was where my hope lay – I’d hang on to them, never let go. They were my own.

  It wasn’t that I was deprived – we just had to live on a strict budget. No, it was that everything I fantasized about had nothing to do with everything I lived. Not a thing! Yet Mother gave me everything – everything she could – more. She was a decent, proud, honorable woman who despite her struggles never lost her sense of humor. She just wanted me to be perfect. She wanted me to have it all, but to know and to learn while the search was on; to realize that there were other things not to lose sight of. She wasn’t proud of having to count the pennies – not resentful – just very private about that and everything else to do with family. Some things are never told to anyone – one protects the family, all skeletons are left in the closet. She had the strongest family feeling of any of her brothers or sisters. She wanted everyone together. She felt that the family finally would never let each other down – outsiders might. She could accept the live-and-let-live theory from any and all but relations.

  She was not demonstrative, but I never doubted her love and her total dedication to me. We had happy times – my grandmother cooking, singing me German songs, reading constantly in French, German, Rumanian, Russian, and English. She and Mother spoke Rumanian or German when they didn’t want me to understand. Not too often, but family problems were to be kept from me. Nothing came easy – everything was worked for – but with it all there was laughter. Charlie and Mother led the field in that area. Charlie was rhyme-happy. At any important or semi-important occasion he would write a pertinent rhyme. Everyone in the family had humor. Everyone was educated, they all had professions: two lawyers, one executive secretary, one businessman, one housewife (self-employed). My father was Polish with I think some French. But what I learned, I learned from my mother’s side.

  Mother left Rumania by ship – aged somewhere between one and two – with her mother, father, older sister, baby brother. Her father had been in the wheat business, had been wiped out, and had turned over whatever silver and jewelry there was left to a sister for money enough to transport his family to the promised land – the new young world, America. They arrived on Ellis Island and gave their name – Weinstein-Bacal (meaning wineglass in German and Russian). The man must have written down just the first half of the name – too many people from too many countries, too many foreign names – so it was Max and Sophie Weinstein, daughters Renee and Natalie, son Albert. Grandfather Max borrowed enough money from United Hebrew Charities to go to a place in downtown New York, live in a ghastly apartment, set up a pushcart with all sorts of household goods for sale. ‘Never tell anyone about that, Betty.’ One family fact that Mother always hated – the pushcart. A whispered word. (I found it wonderful – dramatic.) Not like the wheat business. He wanted something better for his family – there were cousins who lived in a place called the Bronx that would be better. The family moved there, bought a candy store, found a small apartment. Grandpa Max did the best he could. Two more children – Charlie and Jack – were born in America. Grandma worked in the candy store, Renee, the eldest
, helped after school; Natalie – my mother – was still too young. Grandpa had suffered with a goiter for years and was given much medication for it – heart-weakening medication. One afternoon he went to a movie, came home, lay down for a while, and died. He was fifty-five.

  With the small insurance left by him, Grandma made improvements in the candy store and moved to a better apartment. Strong woman. All the children went to work at early ages, with Charlie and Jack going to night school at City College to get their law degrees. My mother worked as a secretary. She met my father, William Perske, who fell madly in love with her and showered her with attention. She was in her early twenties – nice girls were married by then, said Grandma. So, out of a combination of fear of not doing the right thing and fear of him, she consented. He was in medical supplies. After a while she became pregnant. As the nine months came to a close, Mother went to a movie one hot September evening, started to feel the anxious creature within her make her first moves to push her way out, left the movie house, and at about two o’clock in the morning at the Grand Concourse Sanitarium I was born.

  From the start, Mother knew the marriage was a mistake – they didn’t get along, her heart never leapt with excitement at the thought, sight, or touch of him. In truth, she didn’t really like him, she was afraid of him, he was insanely jealous, so no more children – she’d do the best she could with what she had. She always did the best she could. She was determined that she would give her daughter all she had never had in the way of opportunity. Her brothers always backed her, helped her. She had strength of character. She would make it somehow – if only to make certain her daughter did. So she sacrificed her personal life. But I was not to be deprived. And I wasn’t.

  Since she worked, she used to send me to a warm, jolly cousin of Renee’s husband Bill who had a home in Chichester, New York. There was a swimming hole – she had two daughters there my age – and it got me into the country air. One summer day when I was six years old my mother came to visit. I shall never forget her kneeling beside me with her arms around me, tears rolling down her face, as she told me that she had left my father. There would be a divorce – I would live with her, but of course I would see him regularly. The tears were for me – never for herself. It is one of the few clear pictures I have of my early childhood.

  She never tried to turn me against my father. She was too busy going about the business of making a living, paying the rent, feeding and clothing me. But she never thought or behaved like a martyr – not her scene at all. She took me to visit my cousins in Brooklyn, my cousins in Connecticut. I spent a lot of time with Jack’s beautiful Russian wife, Vera, and their babies. The family must remain close, stay together. ‘Your family never lets you down – remember that. When all else is lost, you can always depend on the family.’

  She lost track of my father – he stopped his Sunday visits when I was eight. Of course I loved him – I guess I loved him, I was a little girl. I looked forward to those visits. He was my father. He gave me a watch once – not a very good watch. I wore it for a while, then gave it to Mother for safekeeping. The next time I saw him, he asked me where the watch was. ‘I gave it to Mother to keep for me.’ ‘Get it,’ he said. I did – he took it – end of watch.

  When they were divorced, my mother decided to take the second half of her name for her use and mine. Her brother Jack had done the same. So when I was eight, she became Natalie Bacal and I was Betty Bacal.

  Mother had her own dreams. She had several beaux – I can remember her getting dressed up for an evening out. But that was not the heart of her life. She had women friends – they’d play bridge once a week – close friends, bright women, all hard workers, and at least two of them with unfulfilled lives. They had mothers to support – there were no men in their lives, they never expected there would be. Mother did – only she would never settle. No compromise in love a second time. He would be her knight in shining armor or there would be no one. But she didn’t talk about it – she felt it.

  She always taught me character. That was the most important thing in life. There was right and wrong. You did not lie – you did not steal – you did not cheat. You worked for a living and you worked hard. Accomplishment. Being the best you could be was something to be proud of. You learned the value of a dollar – money was not to be squandered, it was too hard to come by, and you never knew when you might need it. Save for a rainy day (a lesson still unlearned). She had great humor – it was always possible for her to see the funny side. I guess that’s how she got through the tough times.

  She had curiosity and enthusiasm for anything new. And she stood behind me all the way. If I wanted to be a dancer, an actress – that was what I would be if there was anything she could do about it. She would help me, encourage me, while the rest of the family thought she was mad. Who had ever heard of an actress in the family? Grandma was horrified at the thought – a nice Jewish girl, why didn’t I make an honest living doing something she could understand? Why was my mother doing without to send me to dancing schools, dramatic schools? No good would come of it.

  Mother would have none of it. I was her daughter. I was special. I had talent. Her eyes shone when she looked at me. She always made me feel that I could do anything once I made up my mind. She started me in dancing school when I was three. Yet she was not pushy – anything but a stage mother. How could she be a stage mother? – she wouldn’t have known where to begin. She did take me to John Robert Powers’ modeling agency when I was twelve to see if he could use me. I was so beautiful in her eyes, how could he refuse? She took me to a photographer he recommended to have pictures taken to send out to various agencies. She didn’t see that I was tall for my age, underdeveloped for my age, and had feet much too big for the rest of me. Through her belief in me and her abounding love for me, she convinced me that I could conquer the world – any part of it or all of it. Whatever I wanted.

  In the worst of times I never heard her complain. Whatever resentment she might have felt – whatever sadness for what she didn’t have – she kept it all inside. She was basically a shy woman. But she was a realist – she accepted her own fate in life while I was growing up. But nothing on earth could make her accept that fate for me. She put the bit in my teeth and I ran with it. There was many a clash. I was selfish – spoiled by her – I wanted what I wanted. And when she thought I was wrong – boy, did she tell me! There were no doubts. ‘You’ve gone too far, my girl. Pull up. Remember who you are – what you owe yourself.’ I respected her and I loved her. If she but held my hand, I felt safe.

  My childhood is a confusion. I spent the first five years living in Brooklyn on Ocean Parkway. My baby record reveals nothing except that my mother was too busy caring for me to keep it in any detail. I was exceptional to no one but her.

  I recall having recurring nightmares at one period in early childhood when I would awake in tears in the middle of the night: having heard footsteps down the hall, I would open my eyes and see a white towel flailing in the air. It all stemmed from arguments between my parents. I remember my father punishing me once with a strap on my rear – hitting my mother – he was a man who invented jealousies. I remember being threatened with a cat-o’-nine-tails, but do not recall his using it. In all fairness, how does a child of three or four or five know what goes on between a man and a woman? I make no judgments. But I also have no recollections of any great display of affection for me, not much in the hugging-and-kissing department, no memories of cozy reading of bedtime stories. I don’t say it never happened – I only say it’s not remembered. When Mother came to tell me she was leaving my father, I don’t remember reacting in any way at all. I can only assume that my attachment was always to her, not to him.

  Mother and I moved to Manhattan after the divorce, and I recall little of any special home between the ages of six and ten. My last recollection of my father was when he came to collect me one Sunday He took me to his parents, who are shadows in my mind. I recall coming home at the end of the day with
him – and watching him as his car took him out of my life forever. My Uncle Jack tried to find my father so that he might contribute to my support, but was totally unsuccessful. He had flown the coop. Rejection Number One!

  Mother started to work and hired a maid to come in so I wouldn’t be alone when I returned from school. The girl she hired turned out to be slightly mad – she locked me in a closet one afternoon. That experience convinced Mother that the solution was for me to go to boarding school. There I would be safe from crazy maids – I’d be with girls my own age, not too far from home. Ideal. But it was expensive. Uncle Jack offered to lend her the money. So it was decided I would attend the Highland Manor school for girls in Tarrytown, New York. It was an hour or so by train from New York. The campus was beautiful – we lived in houses – I shared a room with a girl named Gloria who became my best friend. She too studied dancing. Each year a show was put on where all who could performed. We each danced, had our moment.

  Mother used to visit every Sunday, take me out to lunch to a pretty local restaurant where I would unfailingly have my favorite ice-cream sundae: chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup, marshmallow sauce, and chocolate sprinkles. I couldn’t wait for those visits. After all, I was only eight years old – pretty young for boarding school. There were all ages, all types, and I was always interested in what the older girls were doing. They had boyfriends, while all I did was go to classes, dream of being a dancer and actress, and miss my mother. For some reason I skipped a grade – had a good scholastic year somewhere in the middle and was able to graduate from grade school at the age of eleven.

  Highland Manor also had a summer camp. Named Highland Nature, it was situated on Lake Sebago near Portland, Maine. We went there by overnight train. How I loved lying in my berth, watching the lights flicker in all the small towns as we passed en route. It seemed so romantic and adventurous. There has always been mystery to me about trains moving through towns and villages – through the night. What happens behind those lighted windows – what kind of lives are being lived?