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
Betty Mahmoody with Mahmoody's ex-husband to create a documentary, "Without My Daughter", to counter the claims in Betty's book. On August 23, 2009, Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody died in Tehran, Iran, aged 70. The state news agency IRNA quoted his nephew, Majid Ghodsi, as reporting that he died in a hospital from kidney problems and other complications. Betty Mahmoody Betty Mahmoody (born June 9, 1945 in Alma, Michigan) is an American author and public speaker best known for her book, "Not Without My Daughter", which was subsequently made into a film of the same name. She is the President and co-founder of "One