By Myself and Then Some (Lauren Bacall)
This is a late '70s autobiography, with another quarter of a century ("and then some") tacked on in 2005. Though the memoir covers pretty much all her projects in movies, theatre and tv, the lasting memory of this book will be of Bacall's recollections of her personal relationships with both husbands, a couple of high-profile boyfriends, and numerous friends. Given that, the title seems a little odd, but there can be little doubt that after her first husband Bogart, died in the 50s, and even before her second marriage to Jason Robards collapsed in the late 60s due to his alcoholism, she does seem to have felt that she was a solitary agent. The wry title to the second part reflects very accurately the rather depressing sequence of death after death amongst her dearest friends, a great many of whom she outlived in the early part of the 21st century.
The style of the two parts is somewhat different; I have a feeling that Bacall's exclamatory style was considerably more edited in the first work. However, there's every evidence throughout that we're getting her words, not those of any sort of ghost-writer; she was clearly an articulate and reasonably well-read woman.
The part of the memoir that I found most compelling, and not just because it involves a relationship that's mythic in Hollywood history, was her romance, marriage and eventual loss of Bogart. The detailed clarity of her recollections of the most important stages in that relationship - their wedding day, the babyhood of their son, and, most affectingly, Bogart's death -shows that this was likely the part of her story she still found most compelling herself. But we also get interesting cameos of people like Frank Sinatra (they dated after Bogie's death; he dumped her rather unceremoniously), or Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (by her account, entirely joined at the hip). Bacall has very little bitterness to vent, though she does seem to feel that her career was sub-optimal after the Bogie years, even though she had an amazing renaissance on the New York stage, for which she received masses of praise and two Tonies, and a strong presence in Britain as well. I strongly suspect there were plenty of ill-feelings, and plenty of secrets, which didn't make it past her own personal filters. She was, after all, of a more gracious generation - and we must also remember that even the first part of this memoir wasn't written until she was well into her 50s.
Recommended for anyone interested in golden age of Hollywood, or the Broadway scene in the 70s, especially when read in tandem with other memoirs/biographies of her contemporaries.
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