Here’s Lauren Bacall, who died this week, aged 89, being interviewed by Larry King in 2005:
KING: “Wait a minute. Are you a liberal?”
BACALL: “I’m a liberal. The “L” word!”
KING: “Egads!”
BACALL: … I love it. Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind… I’m total, total, total liberal and proud of it. And I think it’s outrageous to say “The L word”. I mean, excuse me. They should be damn lucky that they were liberals here. Liberals gave more to the population of the United States than any other group.
(Hat-tip: Vote Clegg, Get Clegg Facebook group.)
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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12 Comments
Stephen, I’m as much an admirer of Bacall as the next person, but liberal means something very different in political terms in the USA than it does in Europe as I’m sure you know.
Right up there with Ava Gardner on anarcho-syndicalism.
@Ruth Bright
Olivia de Haviliand on Communitarianism is worth a read.
But yes, a great quote. I knew she and Bogard held progressive views but many of those at the time who shared them , Jame Cagney and Charlton Heston for two, moved over the line as the years went by. Anyone speaking with umph about Liberalism is always nice to see!
Of course, liberalism in the States is not quite the same thing as Liberalism in the UK; there is occasional convergence but important points of difference as well.
The most important difference, I would say, is that U.S. liberalism largely lacks a coherent ideological underpinning, but is more a set of political positions which have come together more or less by historical accident. In the United States, it’s easy to say what the liberal position on any given political issue is, but it’s much harder to say what philosophical principle makes that position the liberal one.
Whereas British Liberalism faces the opposite predicament; it’s easy to cite the unifying ideological principles of Liberalism, but much more difficult to turn them into a self-consistent set of practical positions. This creates a certain dissonance between stated Liberal goals and the means employed to bring them about. Sometimes it seems as if any policy can be claimed as a Liberal one; but if so, then Liberalism ends up not standing for much of anything.
And while you’re being amusing about the idea of glamorous film actresses having an idea in their heads, you might consider having a go at Hedy Lamarr. Ha, ha, let’s go read what she has to say about spread-spectrum technology!
Or you could put your stereotypes to one side and admit that a woman can be intelligent as well as beautiful.
There you go Ruth Bright, clearly quite clueless about feminism – so we blokes will have to educate you, I suppose..(!)..
Oh Lordy.
*running away from THIS comment thread*
Lauren Bacall’s life as a political activist is certainly worth talking about.
Bacall was inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, who she called, “the first woman in public life who made me aware [of] the tremendous influence a woman could have, the contributions a woman could make [in] making her world and the world – then the man’s world – a better place.” In the 40s she became a member of the Committee for the First Amendment, along with Bogart, Hepburn, Sinatra and others, supporting the Hollywood Ten (alleged communists under investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee). Before testifying, Bogart told the press that “It’s none of my business who’s a Communist and who isn’t.” Involvement damaged the careers of the CFA, who suffered considerable backlash. Bogart worked to distance himself from it, writing a letter to the press that said, “I detest communism just as any decent American does. I’m about as much in favor of communism as J. Edgar Hoover.” Bacall did not co-sign the letter.
Later on she campaigned for Adlai Stevenson, despite being warned away from politics by, to quote from her autobiography, “a very well known producer [who said], ‘If you’re smart, you’ll keep your mouth shut and take no sides.’ It was five years after the House Un-American Activities Committee investigation, but now, with the McCarthy fear, Hollywood seemed terrorized. I had never considered myself particularly brave, but I thought then, ‘What have we come to if I can’t voice my preference for Adlai Stevenson?'”
It was, she said, the first time she had made a strong decision that went against her husband. “I’d never gone off on my own so definitively on an issue so public.” She became “fierce – obsessed – [Stevenson] had to be elected.” Stevenson was, she said, “passionate about people and their needs, everything [Bacall] believed in.” Stevenson’s campaign was unsuccessful, but Bacall credited him for broadening her horizons, making her “more aware of human dignity and the plight of people everywhere.” She also campaigned for Robert Kennedy and, much later, she would attend fundraisers with the Clintons. To quote from the interview you quote above, she was “a total Democrat […] anti-Republican.”
Bacall (who was, incidentally a cousin of Shimon Peres) suffered prejudicial treatment in her youth and was fired from a job as a teenager after she naively told a colleague that she was Jewish: she wrote in her autobiography that she never really understood it and spent the first half of her life worrying about it. In 1982, Bacall reduced a then-14-year-old Anderson Cooper to tears at a dinner party when Cooper, weighing in on the subject of the Middle East, said “Something must be done to help the Palestinians. We need a Palestinian state.” Another guest at the event recalls that Bacall, who was “a big supporter of Israel, went nuts. She humiliated [Cooper]. Anderson was in tears.”
All this aside, consider one last quote from her autobiography: “So much in life seems to be compromise. Why can’t we be better than we are? Why can’t we enrich our lives with appreciation of the arts, with books? Why can’t all that be at least as important as making money, having a bigger house, a newer car? Why do we have to be submerged in commercialism? Why is tearing down a sign of progress instead of preserving?”
So yeah, that was Lauren Bacall, admirable, strong, passionate about politics, capable of utter viciousness and absolutely her own person. I’m sure she’d have something cutting to say about decontextualised soundbites. After all, this is Lauren Bacall, who told the Ocala Star-Banner on New Years’ Day 1975 that, “Everybody uses actors. They use us to promote every charity in the world. And then they tell us we have no rights… anything they write or say or use about us is okay. You’d think [family] would have some control in how [we] are exploited after [our] deaths. But no.”
Well I do declare – many apologies for attempting a bit of humour!
daft ha’p’orth
Thanks for taking the trouble to post that. Very interesting.
@Chris
Glad you found it so. Her books are good reads. I wrote it in part to explore for myself what @David-1, @g and this BBC article suggest – I wanted to know what her politics were. Seems they are more heartfelt than based in abstract philosophy and are not very similar to UK usage of the term today . Anyway, I think she’d be tickled to be remembered for her politics (she thought her obituaries would be ‘full of Bogart’). But she was also an ornery soul and being repurposed for the sake of a homonym would undoubtedly have resulted in sharp words 🙂
In case it wasnt clear – I was just joking.
Thanks daft haporth, interesting post.