YOU CAN'T TAKE BETTY OUT OF BACALL

So, tonight's the Oscars? Who cares. Coincidentally, here's a review in today's Chicago Sun-Times of one Oscar non-winner's latest memoir. Not exactly heavyweight reviewing, but it pays for a few groceries. "Lauren Bacall, still salty at 80" begins:

When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.

But Bacall, who is one of a kind, always made the most of what she had, as this memoir proves for the second time. The first time was more than a quarter century ago, when By Myself was originally published to much praise, including a National Book Award.

That memoir ended with the early 1980s, half a dozen years after her return to New York from abroad and a decade after her divorce from her second husband, Jason Robards Jr. She had married Robards after the death of her first husband, Humphrey Bogart, and a post-Bogie love affair with Frank Sinatra, who'd asked her to marry him but suddenly "chickened out" (her term) when his proposal made the gossip columns. Not that we're keeping score, but let's face it -- Bacall certainly has -- her serial love life is one of the most fascinating aspects of her career

Go read the rest. It's reprinted here.