Lauren Bacall in "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996). Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in The Bronx, New York, the only child of Natalie ("née" Weinstein; 1901–1977), a secretary who later legally changed her surname to Bacal, and William Perske (1889–1982), who worked in sales. Both her parents were Jewish. According to Bacall, her mother emigrated from Iași, the Kingdom of Romania, through Ellis Island, and her father was born in New Jersey to parents who were born in Valozhyn, a significant center of Jewish life, in present-day Belarus, then in the Russian Empire. Soon after her
The Prince and Betty (film) The Prince and Betty (film) The Prince and Betty is a lost 1919 American silent comedy film directed by Robert Thornby. It features Boris Karloff in an uncredited role. It is based on the novel "The Prince and Betty" written by P. G. Wodehouse. As described in a film magazine, Benjamin Scobell (Taylor), possessed of the idea that he can make the Principality of Merve more famous than Monte Carlo, if properly advertised, employs the American John Maude (Desmond) to impersonate a prince and start a revolution. John, anxious to marry the wealthy Betty Keith (Thurman) but temporarily out of