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 Baskcomb Betty Baskcomb Betty Baskcomb was a British actress who appeared in a number of stage, film, television and radio roles. She was born in London in 1914 and made her stage debut as a stooge opposite her father, the comedian A.W. Baskcomb, in 1931. Her screen debut was in the 1934 film "The Man Who Knew Too Much". On the radio, she was a member of the BBC Drama Repertory Company from the 1940s through to the 1970s. In 1956 she appeared on stage in "Ring For Catty" at the Lyric Theatre in London. She was married to the actor