As for her spectacular debut, "As great a break as it was, it was also a curse. The reviews I got, nobody gets. I was the new Garbo, the new Dietrich." "'The Mirror Has Two Faces criticizes the Hollywood definition of feminine beauty. There are even photos of you from the glamour days in your character's apartment, and in a key moment, you wistfully recall how great it was to be beautiful. As someone who was a manufactured sex symbol yourself, what are your views on that?' "'To begin with, I never thought I was beautiful. Sorry, guys. I wish I thought I was divine. Listen, I would've been a much happier person had I been able to look in the mirror and say, 'Gee, you are great! Love your looks!' Oh, come on.'" "'You were called The Look. You were the one who said, "Put your lips together and blow." You projected a seductive image women everywhere tried to copy.'" "' Well, I'll go along with that. But beautiful, no. In movies, when somebody new comes along, plays a part and it happens to click, there is a tremendous exaggeration about what you are, what you have, what this sudden new person is. In my case, I was announced as the Second Coming. I was this combination of Garbo and Dietrich and Bette Davis and Mae West all rolled into one--and that was just in one movie. Now, you know damn well there was no way I was any of that. Then came the second movie, Confidential Agent. It was a disaster, and I was a disaster, and they said, 'Oh, we made a terrible mistake.'" "'Stop it! Who could live up to that? I was a gigantic name before I'd done anything. I was on every magazine cover after I'd made one picture. That's hard to handle. Believing your own publicity is a terrible danger. If I hadn't been brought up right by a very solid mother and been married to such a sane human being, I could have gone off the deep end very easily. My values were very straight and I was not in doubt about them."
When she was asked about the myriad of stories and rumors about how she & Bogart met regarding a 'game of cat & mouse', "That�s your fantasy. I think we just hit it off. We had the same sense of humor. He was a very witty man, a very intelligent man. We just had fun, and the fun developed into other things. It always remained fun. Life without laughter is not life to me. You must be able to laugh always and under the direst conditions. Laughter. You�ve just got to find a way to dig it up, because without humour, I just don�t know whether I could bear it. He was surprising... which was the great thing about him. I expected before I knew him that he would be one of those �deez, dem and doze� guys. He turned out to be a well-educated, highly intelligent, very funny, very sensitive, sentimental man. I never could predict what his behaviour would be, which of course is something I find wildly appealing. You don�t want to predict anything about anybody you�re with all the time. He was very protective of me and taught me a lot. He was so much older than I and he was so attractive. I didn�t realise at the time how many women were after him. They thought he was a sexpot, which in a way, he was. But he was my sexpot. Not anybody else�s. He was an extraordinary man, an unusual man. He died much too young. He had lived pretty hard. He grew up in the twenties and those were the days of bathtub gin, so he drank a lot; he smoked a lot and he lived a lot. And he paid for that unfortunately. He was the love of my life...I have to say...he was. And though I have been in love once or twice since then � nothing�s ever the same. I�m not the same. We met each other at the perfect time for both of us. It was the greatest thing on earth that could have happened to me at such a young age, my god! This safe, great place to be. I felt very safe with him and yet he really could not stand to be taken for granted, oh no." When Bacall was further quizzed on whether there are any present-day couples like 'Bogey and Bacall', she responded with, �Tom and Jerry... I don�t know. All I know is that it seems that it will never go away. No matter what you do or what you say. I say, �Listen, that was a long time ago.� But there�s something about the combination that�s really connected with people and I�m flattered. There�s nothing you can do to change it. In a way I find it a bit difficult because after all, I was married to Jason and we do have a fabulous son, and I don�t want that to be lost. So I sometimes find it a little awkward. That is the tremendous influence that film has on people. Of course, no other medium has that.You transfer your own feelings onto that film and that film lasts � and I�m into film preservation in a large way � but it lasts as long as the film itself lasts, and people connect with it. I get a lot of fan mail from kids saying, �Oh yeah, Bogey and Bacall. We just loved you in those movies together�. So it�s not to be ignored: that�s what movies can do."
"And life becomes something else. You know Hemingway and TS Eliot, the Oliviers and Judy Garland, Katherine Hepburn and Orson Welles, but you never again find a partner like that movie star. And for the rest of your life, you live the insolent, ironic way you and he evolved." I read that from a BBC interview. Lauren Bacall, with or without 'Bogie'...from sultry silver screen siren to Grand Dame of Stage & Screen...they'll never be another Lady like Ms. Lauren Bacall. I can't but help to think, like my handle, that Bacall was Searching for Key Largo...that legendary supposedly unattainable 'it'...and Bacall found it with Bogart. Like her, I found my own Key Largo, my own 'bogie man'...my greatest strength...and my greatest weakness...and I lost him, too. Life goes on; Love goes on forever.
Still, like her, there are more than enough days where I repeat several things Bacall has been quoted on: "They're guys who want to screw around all the time, which interests me not at all. God knows we've done that, been there, and we don't want to do that any more." "Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with and I'll be happy." "A woman isn't complete without a man. But where do you find a man - a real man - these days?" "I am not a has-been. I am a will be." "Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life." BUT "I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that." "I'm not the public." "Imagination is the highest kite that one can fly."
