Stage & Screen Legend Lauren Bacall to Receive Honorary Oscar

Hollywood and Broadway legend Lauren Bacall will receive an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She will accept the trophy at the first-ever Governors Awards ceremony in Hollywood on November 14, 2009.

Bacall, who turns 85 on September 16, made her movie debut in To Have and Have Not opposite future husband Humphrey Bogart in 1944. She went on to appear in countless classic films including The Big Sleep, Key Largo, How to Marry a Millionaire, Written on the Wind, Designing Woman, Sex and the Single Girl, Harper and Murder on the Orient Express, but was incredibly only honored with an Academy Award nomination once, for playing Barbra Streisand’s mother in 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces.

Although she made her Broadway debut as a teenager in the 1942 melodrama Johnny 2 x 4, Bacall came back to Broadway after her time in Hollywood as a star. She headlined Goodbye, Charlie in 1959, Cactus Flower in 1965, Applause in 1970, Woman of the Year in 1981 and the comedy Waiting in the Wings in 1999. She won two Tony Awards, for her musical turns in Applause and Woman of the Year.

Also honored with honorary Oscars at the ceremony will be famed B-movie producer Roger Corman (who made the film that the musical Little Shop of Horrors was based on) and cinematographer Gordon Willis. In addition, producer John Calley will receive the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial award.

A now, if you’ll humor us, a few of our favorite Bacall moments!

Singing “But Alive” at a gay bar as Margo Channing in the TV version of Applause:


Smoldering with Bogart in The Big Sleep:


Allowing Glenn Close into her apartment at the Dakota to meet her dog Sophie: