Arts Backers Will ‘Experience The Look’

Suddenly her face is everywhere--in three new motion pictures, a Vanity Fair spread, the cover of Saturday Evening Post. There’s talk of an Academy Award nomination for her role in “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”

Lauren Bacall will talk about her life--now, and then--when she speaks at an upcoming luncheon benefit in Irvine for the Pacific Symphony.

“I don’t do these engagements that often,” Bacall, 72, says during a telephone interview from the Bel Air Hotel. “But I love the exchange with the audience. It’s not a lecture; it’s a conversation. If the audience is very responsive, then I’m better. If they’re not, I get very nervous.”

Mostly, she will discuss the things “I love to talk about,” she says, “women, working women, life in general.”

But she’s prepared to answer the tough questions. Even those about Humphrey Bogart, whom she married when she was 19 and he 44.

“I can’t think of any question I won’t answer--unless they get violently personal. Then I’ll say, ‘Excuse me, you’ve gone too far.’ ”

Themed “Experience The Look” (“The Look” is the glamour tag given Bacall by Warner Bros. in the ‘40s) the March 26 benefit at the Hyatt Regency hotel can accommodate 1,200 people.

Tickets for the event are $75 for general seating, $100 for preferred (near the podium). Underwriting Bacall’s $25,000 speaker fee is philanthropist Donna Crean of Santa Ana Heights.

Luncheon invitations feature a photograph of the young Bacall wearing a clingy sheath gown, her wavy mane brushing her shoulders.

“I never liked my looks,” Bacall confesses matter-of-factly. “Sex appeal? I didn’t know I had it. I really mean it.”

As for talk about her being nominated for an Academy Award, she says: “I would be thrilled with a nomination. I’ve never had one, but I have no expectations of winning anything.”

With several decades of show business behind her, Bacall’s feet are happily planted in the present. She is having one of her “best years ever,” she says. In addition to appearing in “Mirror,” Bacall has roles in “My Fellow Americans” and “Le Jour et La Nuit” (opening in March).

If she could change anything about her past, it would be “to say more to my mother and to Bogie about the way I felt about them,” she says.

“You kind of take your cues from other people. Mother was reserved, not terribly demonstrative. We were very close, but I thought I was a failure in many areas as a daughter.

“With Bogie, I wanted to say more to him when he was ill. But he pretended he had a cold, so you go along with it.”

Bogart died of lung cancer in 1957.

“I say to my children, ‘Tell people close to you how you feel. It’s important that they know.’ ”

*

It was Barbara Johnson of North Tustin--chairwoman of the orchestra’s “String of Pearls” gala May 17--who came up with the idea to feature Bacall.

“Lauren Bacall is an icon,” Johnson says, “but I had no idea she was going to be such big news when I saw her name a few months ago on a list of speakers provided by the William Morris Agency.

“I’d heard her on a television talk show, and she was so entertaining, had such a strong personality, that I knew she would be wonderful.”

Signing the actress for the guest appearance is a coup, says Louis Spisto, executive director of the symphony.

“To have her here while she is as current as ever--that’s fabulous. People want to see, hear and touch someone as incredibly glamorous as Lauren Bacall,” says Spisto. “She was very unusual for her time--had a very different style, almost a sultry, masculine look.

“She was a beautiful woman who allowed her strength to come through.”

Luncheons featuring a celebrity speaker can be fund-raising gold mines, says Johnson. “A celebrity attracts a big crowd, and a luncheon is less expensive to stage than a dinner.”

As chairwoman of the event, Margo Chamberlin of Newport Beach is coordinating the fiscal details--overseeing everything from Bacall’s contract to the cost of the invitations.

Chamberlin invited Crean--a longtime symphony supporter and a movie buff--to underwrite Bacall’s appearance. And it was Chamberlin who invited South Coast Plaza to underwrite the cost of the invitations.

“The bottom line of a fund-raiser is watching costs,” says Chamberlin, who has also chaired luncheons featuring speakers Ivana Trump and Dominick Dunne.

For the Bacall appearance, Chamberlin has created three levels of underwriting opportunities--$5,000, $2,500 and $1,000--to help defray costs. Underwriters get special perks, such as having their photograph taken with Bacall and sitting with her at the luncheon and at a private dinner that evening at the Center Club in Costa Mesa.

Ticket information: (714) 755-5788, Ext. 261.