The ever glamorous Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall was awarded an honorary Oscar this weekend during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 2009 Governors Awards.  In keeping with her reputation as in independent outspoken woman, Bacall shooed away an escort who tried to help her to the podium during Saturday’s gala.  During her acceptance the actress held up her Oscar statue and said, “The thought when I get home that I’m going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting.”

At a time in Hollywood when women were routinely dismissed to the “wrinkle” closet by age 35, Bacall managed to carve out a career as a well respected actress for more than sixty years. Lauren Bacall’s career began in 1944 with To Have and Have Not and she continues both voice and film work at age 85.  During her early career Bacall turned down scripts she found uninteresting and quickly earned a reputation for being “difficult,” which in motion pictures in the 1940′s simply meant you refused to “do as you were told.”  She was well know for playing a “tough dame” opposite her future husband, Humprey Bogart, and for having an unusual figure for the times (tall, slim, and athletic.)  Bacall has written two autobiographies, Lauren Bacall By Myself, 1978, and Now, 1994.  In 2005, she re-published the first volume and updated it with an extra chapter.  She released it as By Myself and Then Some. 

Lauren Bacall once said,

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.

Congratulation Lauren Bacall!