Why do my OBiT posts always seem to come in twos?

Lauren Bacall, brilliant actor, stunning model, and flagrant rule breaker, was an awesome woman who lived her life on her own terms. At the age of 25, she met her husband, the then-married Humphrey Bogart, who was twice her age, on the set of To Have and Have Not. Within a few months, he divorced his wife and married the thoroughly-dishy Bacall. (Can you blame him?) Though they were ostracized by many for what was seen as their sordid beginnings, they were nonetheless happily married until his death in 1957. Four years later, years which included a serious relationship with Frank Sinatra among others, she married Jason Robards, Jr. That lasted only a few years. After the breakup, Lauren Bacall then returned to Broadway and reinvented herself as a single woman, something that was not encouraged in those days.

She played the first movie lesbian I ever saw in “Young Man With a Horn.” In the pivotal scene, her estranged husband, played by Kirk Douglas, calls her a “sick girl.” That really stuck with me. I suspect that between that scene and the confession scene in “The Children’s Hour,” I managed to scare myself back into the closet until I was 28. But I don’t hold a grudge.

I had great respect for her, and I’m glad the world will remember her as she was; ballsy and beautiful and thoroughly herself.