RIP Lauren Bacall. How we saw her very best side.
Lauren Bacall has died. Now I might seem like an unlikely person to offer an obituary of one so famous, beautiful and gifted, and this blog might seem like an inappropriate place, but I am going to do it anyway. That's because I was lucky enough to meet and photograph her in Hollywood in the late nineties when I was working on a documentary about the late Jack Cardiff, Britain's first Technicolor cinematographer. My job was to arrange interviews with people who were relevant to Jack's illustrious career. Since Jack had been the cinematographer on Bogart's African Queen, and Lauren Bacall had been on set during the filming of it, we desperately wanted to talk to her. It was another life away. I'm not joking when I say I chased her for six months. I phoned her agent in New York almost every day for the entire time I was working on the project to find out whether she'd take part, when she might be available and where we could interview her. It wasn't e...