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 birth, Bacall's family moved to Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway. She was educated with the financial support of her wealthy uncles at a private boarding school founded by philanthropist Eugene Heitler Lehman, named The Highland Manor Boarding School for Girls, in Tarrytown, New York, and at Julia Richman High School in Manhattan. Her parents divorced when she was five; she later took the Romanian form of her mother's last name, Bacall. She no longer saw her father and formed a very close bond with her mother, who remarried Lee Goldberg and came to live in California after Bacall became a movie star.