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
To Have and Have Not (film) independent director Howard Hawks tried to convince Ernest Hemingway to write him a script, but Hemingway was not interested in working in Hollywood. Hawks insisted he could make a film from his "worst story". Although Hawks had a high regard for Hemingway's works in general, he considered "To Have and Have Not" to be his worst book, a "bunch of junk", and told Hemingway so. Hemingway and Hawks worked on the screenplay during the remainder of the fishing trip. Hemingway and Hawks had discussed that the film was not going to resemble the novel, and would rather tell the story