( CNN ) -- Lauren Bacall , who died Tuesday at the age of 89 , always said , not altogether happily , that she would be defined by her relationship with her husband , the great actor Humphrey Bogart . She was not entirely wrong . It is hard to think of Bacall without thinking of Bogart . When she first arrived on screen in 1944 in `` To Have and Have Not , '' at the ripe old age of 19 , the thing that captivated audiences was not her beauty -- there were lots of pretty girls on screen -- so much as her preternatural steeliness . Here was a woman who could stand up to Bogart purring line by purring line , menacing look by menacing look , sneer by sneer , which may be why he wound up falling in love with her in real life . She was not a shrinking violet . She was a Venus flytrap . But if Bacall was unflappable , she was different from her steely predecessors , the so-called tough `` broads '' of the 1930s like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford . They were victims of the Depression , victims of male dominance , victims of bad breaks , victims of life in general . Those things made them feral , which is not an adjective anyone would ever have used on the self-contained , self-possessed Bacall . They were at war with life , hoping to find some good man with whom they might be able to make a truce . Bacall did n't seem to be at war with anyone , and she certainly did n't seem to think she needed a man to fulfill her . In fact , she was pretty much unpossessable . She did things on her terms . If you think of Davis and Crawford as curs , Bacall was a cat . She arose at a time when World War II was ending and film noir was beginning , and she was the perfect noir woman . Noir was a style of film , dark and edgy , but it was also an attitude of post-war ennui and cynicism . Her memorable quotes . In noir , you trusted people at your peril . Bacall embodied that attitude perfectly in films like `` The Big Sleep , '' `` Dark Passage '' and `` Key Largo , '' all of which co-starred Bogart . There was something slippery and unknowable about her , some sort of concealment , which fit the whole noir ambiance . And it was n't coincidental that the perfect noir woman was also the perfect complement and foil for the great existential hero of the movies , Bogart . She was the great existential romantic partner . That attitude of hers seemed to arise from a personal grievance that Bacall developed growing up in New York as Betty Joan Perske , a Jew who was remade into a cinematic gentile by the anti-Semitic director Howard Hawks . As Bacall tells it in her first memoir , `` By Myself , '' Hawks was a Pygmalion who discovered her and then taught her how to move , how to talk ( that deep , sultry husk of a voice ) and how to act . But the umbrage she felt toward Hawks in making her deny herself may have been the razor 's edge she brought to her performances . She was always forced to be in camouflage -- a hidden Jew . She even raised her children as Episcopalians , Bogart 's religion , because she feared what might happen to them as Jews . For noir , the edge certainly worked . Hollywood recalls screen legend Lauren Bacall . But the persona outlasted its time . Well before Bogart died of cancer in 1957 , Bacall 's career had begun to slide , in part because noir had begun to slide , relegated to B movies . She was able to reinvent herself in romantic comedies like `` How to Marry a Millionaire , '' where she turned her sultriness into a kind of brisk efficiency , a no-nonsense woman for the 1950s , that contrasted with co-star Marilyn Monroe 's flouncy availability , but the glory days were pretty much over . In retrospect , she had n't been so much a star as she was a flare . Her late great triumphs were on stage -- in `` Applause , '' a musical adaptation of `` All About Eve , '' and `` Woman of the Year , '' a musical adaptation of the 1942 film of the same name , both of which earned her Tonys . Still , the fact that she was reprising roles originally played by Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn respectively was a sign that Bacall 's own feline charm had not endured . In the end , she was a glamorous figure from another , darker era . . . and the wife of Humphrey Bogart .
Lauren Bacall , a Hollywood icon , died on Tuesday at the age of 89 . Neal Gabler : She would be defined by her marriage to the great actor Humphrey Bogart . He says self-possessed Bacall was the perfect noir woman , she had the right attitude . Gabler : Despite the razor 's edge she brought to screen , her persona outlasted its time .