Lauren Bacall screen test for "To Have and Have Not". Hawks asked his secretary to find out more about her, but the secretary misunderstood and sent Bacall a ticket to come to Hollywood for the audition. After meeting Bacall in Hollywood, Hawks immediately signed her to a seven-year contract, with a weekly salary of $100, and personally began to manage her career. He changed her first name to Lauren, and she chose "Bacall" (a variant of her mother's maiden name) as her screen surname. Slim Hawks also took Bacall under her wing, dressing Bacall stylishly and guiding her in matters of elegance,
Lauren Bacall film scholars consider "Written on the Wind", directed by Douglas Sirk in 1956, to be a landmark work in the melodrama genre. Appearing with Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack, Bacall played a career woman whose life is unexpectedly turned around by a family of oil magnates. Bacall wrote in her autobiography that she did not think much of the role, but reviews were favorable. Wrote "Variety", "Bacall registers strongly as a sensible girl swept into the madness of the oil family". While struggling at home with Bogart's battle with esophageal cancer, Bacall starred with Gregory Peck in "Designing