Lauren Bacall — actress with roots in the Russian Empire
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx on 16 September 1924, the only child of William Perske (1889-1982), who sold medical instruments, and Natalie Weinstein-Bacal (1901-1969), a secretary. Both her parents were Jewish. Her connection to the Russian Empire runs through her father's parents.
William Perske was born in New Jersey to parents who had come from Valozhyn, then a predominantly Jewish town and a significant centre of Jewish life in the Russian Empire, now in Belarus. Her mother had emigrated from Iași, in Romania, through Ellis Island. Through the Perski line Bacall was related to Shimon Peres, born Szymon Perski, later prime minister and president of Israel: Wikipedia calls them second cousins through their shared great-grandparents Yehuda and Elke Perski; they were often described as first cousins, a claim Peres himself said came from her rather than him. They first met in New York in the early 1950s.
Her parents divorced when she was about six, and she did not see her father again. She took the second half of her mother's surname, Bacal, and later added a second L. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, worked as a theatre usher and a fashion model, and made her Broadway debut in 1942 in Johnny 2 X 4. A cover photograph in Harper's Bazaar caught the attention of the director Howard Hawks's wife, and Hawks signed her to a personal contract and renamed her Lauren.
At nineteen she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in Hawks's To Have and Have Not (1944), and the pair went on to make The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). Her later films included How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Shootist (1976), and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) brought her a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination. As her film work slowed in the 1960s she returned to Broadway, winning Tony Awards for the musicals Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981).
She received Kennedy Center Honors in 1997 and an honorary Academy Award in 2009. She died in Manhattan on 12 August 2014, aged eighty-nine.
Tracing the roots — Valozhyn (Belarus)
Born Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx on 16 September 1924; the family soon moved to Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. Her father, William Perske, was born in New Jersey to Jewish parents from Valozhyn (Russian Empire, now Belarus). Her mother, Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, emigrated from Iași, Romania, through Ellis Island.
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Valozhyn (Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."