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Raised in Brooklyn, Bacall’s legend more than just acting and Bogart

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By Hillel Italie – Associated Press – published 8/14/14 in Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Lauren Bacall

This 1965 file photo shows actress Lauren Bacall at her home in New York. Bacall, a Brooklyn native, the sultry-voiced actress and Humphrey Bogart’s partner off and on the screen, died Tuesday. She was 89. AP Photo, File

Lauren Bacall had one of those incredible lives.

The wife and co-star of Humphrey Bogart. A Tony Award-winning actress. A National Book Award-winning author. A giant of fashion. A friend of the Kennedys. One of the last survivors of Hollywood’s studio age.

A star almost from the moment she appeared on screen to the day she died, Tuesday, at age 89, at a New York City hospital.

According to her memoir, “Lauren Bacall By Myself,” Bacall was born in the Bronx in 1924 and raised in Brooklyn by her mother and two uncles after being deserted by her father. She is on the celebrity walk at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden as a famous native Brooklynite.

“Stardom isn’t a career,” Bacall once observed, “it’s an accident.”

What a lucky accident it turned out to be.

Her career was one of great achievement and some frustration. The actress received a Golden Globe and an honorary Oscar and appeared in scores of film and TV productions. But not until 1996 did she receive an Academy Award nomination — as supporting actress for her role as Barbra Streisand’s mother in “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” Although a sentimental favorite, she was beaten by Juliette Binoche for her performance in “The English Patient.”

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