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 Big Sleep The Big Sleep The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles. The story is noted for its complexity, with characters double-crossing one another and secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; it refers to a rumination about "sleeping the big sleep" in the final pages of the book. In 1999, the book was voted 96th of "Le Monde"s "100 Books of the