At age 15, Bacall attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a year, and then began auditioning for plays.  She supported herself by modeling and by ushering at Broadway shows.
Her first appearance on stage was a walk-on, in 1942; in 1943 Harper's Bazaar magazine hired her as a fashion model and used her regularly in photo spreads.  Bacall was featured on the March 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar, and it proved to be her ticket to a movie career: director Howard Hawks' wife Slim called his attention to the young beauty, and Hawks arranged for Betty to come to Hollywood.

After several screen tests, Hawks decided to cast the young unknown with Warner Brothers' biggest male star in a tough-and-tender story taken from an Ernest Hemingway book.  The title of the film was "To Have and Have Not."  The star of the picture?  Humphrey Bogart.  And the rest, as they say, is history....

continue with Bogie & Bacall