How Lauren Bacall auctioneer arranged sale with actress
Jon King of Bonhams met the Hollywood icon once every two weeks for five years. They talked about "Bogey", books, politics and her love of art
Henry Moore statues, paintings by Teddy Kennedy and Henry Fonda, and Jean Schlumberger jewellery owned by the late Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall will be sold in New York next week. Ahead of the sale Bonhams auctioneer Jon King talked in Hong Kong about getting to know the actress and how he arranged the auction with her personally.
More than 750 items will go under King's hammer in a two-day sale that starts on March 31.
King, vice-president and director of Bonhams in New York, knew Bacall for five years, and they met at her home every other week. The initial meeting was to “lighten her load”, King said, and led to her decision to auction the items up for sale next week. Bacall was very decisive, he said, and never cared much for money. She had a penchant for peppermints and pecans, he recalled.
Their business relationship gradually grew to include conversations not only about arts and literature, but politics. She would ask him to leave by 5.30pm so that she could watch the six o’clock evening news.
Known for her starring roles in movies including The Big Sleep, How to Marry a Millionaire, and The Mirror has Two Faces, and on Broadway in Applause and Woman of the Year, she died, aged, 89, in August 2014.
The actress met Humphrey Bogart on the set of To Have and Have Not in 1944 and despite their 25-year age difference they married in 1945. King says in their conversations she would refer to her late husband as “Bogey”, and auction items related to him include a trophy won in a yachting race, and also a statue of the actor.