Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall was only 18 when she made her movie debut in 1944's "To Have and Have Not," introducing audiences to the cool, sultry, smoky-voiced persona that would help turn seduction into an art form. Hollywood had never seen anything like her; the air of mystery she exhibited on screen made the great Garbo look positively giddy, while the cultured sex appeal she effortlessly conveyed made critics try to think up new and better adjectives. And the sparks that flew when she was paired with Humphrey Bogart, now that's the stuff of cinema legend.

BETTY COMDEN, 89 Broadway lyrics writer Betty Comden, whose more than 60-year collaboration with Adolph Green produced the classic New York stage musical On the Town, as well as Singin' in the Rain, died of heart failure Thursday in New York City. On Broadway, Miss Comden and Mr. Green worked most successfully with composers Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne and Cy Coleman. The duo wrote lyrics and often the books for more than a dozen shows, many of them built around such stars as Rosalind Russell, Judy Holliday, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett and Lauren Bacall.

Fiction: "Beach Music," by Pat Conroy; "What I Lived For," by Joyce Carol Oates; "Closing Time," by Joseph Heller; "None to Accompany Me," by Nadine Gordimer; "Tales of the Mayfair Witches," by Anne Rice; "The Informers," by Bret Easton Ellis; "Fatheralong," by John Edgar Wideman; "A Son of the Circus," by John Irving.Nonfiction: "Rainbow People of God," by Desmond Tutu; "The Ransom of the Russian Art," by John McPhee; "All the Trouble in the World," by P. J. O'Rourke; "Saturday Night Live: The First Twenty Years," by John Head; "The Delany Sisters' Recipes for Living," by Sarah and A. Elizabeth Delany; "Baseball: An Illustrated History," by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns.

I see no point in living if I can't be beautiful!" declares dashing, vain young wizard Howl (Christian Bale), bereft that his hair has turned from blond to a hideous orange. "You think you've got it bad?" asks his endearingly lumpy housekeeper, Sophie (Jean Simmons). "I've never once been beautiful in my entire life." Actually, Sophie was prettier than she knew before the jealous Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall) mistook her for one of Howl's many fleeting crushes and transformed her from a young maiden (Emily Mortimer)

"Play it Again," by Stephen Humphrey Bogart. 339 pages. New York: Forge Books. $19.95This is straight up. A good read.Of course, it's not at all straight up. Stephen Humphrey Bogart is the son of Lauren Bacall and what's-a-nice-girl-like-you-doing-in-a-place-like-this Bogart. He spins a darn good private eye yarn. This book is reminiscent of the great Raymond Chandler genre tales, though with a slower hand. The story's got the necessaries, including a hard-boiled dame. It even has a pretty decent falling-in-love plot.

BETTY COMDEN, 89 Broadway lyrics writer Betty Comden, whose more than 60-year collaboration with Adolph Green produced the classic New York stage musical On the Town, as well as Singin' in the Rain, died of heart failure Thursday in New York City. On Broadway, Miss Comden and Mr. Green worked most successfully with composers Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne and Cy Coleman. The duo wrote lyrics and often the books for more than a dozen shows, many of them built around such stars as Rosalind Russell, Judy Holliday, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett and Lauren Bacall.

Fashion promotions get weirder and weirder. For instance, Lauren Bacall, associated forever with the famous line about putting one's lips together and blowing, is to be in Paris for the ready-to-wear shows next month to appear on behalf of Collagen Biomedical, a manufacturer of collagen, the stuff men and women use to enhance their lips and reduce wrinkles.At the Ritz on Oct. 21, the company is to introduce its new spring fashion look, "The Paris Lip," which was developed by a French plastic surgeon and is supposed to be popular among models.

The producers of ''All I want For Christmas'' apparently wanted to do their version of ''The Miracle on 34th Street,'' but they don't quite make it.This is primarily because the two lead characters, a brother and sister who want to see their divorced parents reunited, are more obnoxious than they are likable.Natalie Wood was likable, even adorable, as the little girl who wanted a home of her own in ''Miracle on 34th Street.''The 7-year-old girl in ''All I want for Christmas'' is almost nasty.

We're moving into a season of screen goddess glamour clothes this spring. This winter, however, movies and fashion, which have been longtime bedfellows, are bundled in innocent nighties. Lanz of Salzburg, long associated with girlish and demure sleepwear, has created a "Little Women" collection inspired by the revival of the Louisa May Alcott classic starring Winona Ryder."Little Women" has been good for Lanz. In 1949, the company created a nostalgic dress line inspired by the film, which starred Elizabeth Taylor.

My office pool says "The English Patient," Tom Cruise, Frances McDormand, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lauren Bacall and Anthony Minghella. On with the show."The Barbara Walters Special" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Lauren Bacall, Woody Harrelson and Harrison Ford discuss what sorts of trees they'd like to be in Ms. Walters' annual pre-Oscar chatfest. (Personally, I'd love to hear the regal Bacall handle that question). ABC."The Jeff Foxworthy Show" (8 p.m.-8: 30 p.m. and 8: 30 p.m.-9 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11)

The Big Bounce takes much of its deadpan plot, characters and dialogue from an Elmore Leonard novel about love and friendship among scam artists and thieves, then transfers it all from a Michigan resort to the North Shore of Oahu, where big waves, surfers and bathing beauties can be used as visual palate-cleansers. Hawaii is not a bad place to be this time of year, but the tension between a genial drifter (Owen Wilson) and a beach-bunny femme fatale (Sara Foster), who coerces him to help her rip off his ex-employer and her sometime sex partner and keeper (Gary Sinise)

Peter Stone, 73, who became one of Broadway's premier writers of books for musicals, winning three Tony Awards - for 1776, Woman of the Year and Titanic - died of pulmonary fibrosis Saturday in New York. Mr. Stone, who also won an Oscar and an Emmy for his work and served as the longtime president of the Dramatists Guild, launched his career with a teleplay for Studio One in 1956. He won his Emmy in 1962 for an episode of the dramatic TV series The Defenders. His first screenplay, Charade, a 1963 romantic thriller, became a box-office hit starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Lauren Bacall was only 18 when she made her movie debut in 1944's "To Have and Have Not," introducing audiences to the cool, sultry, smoky-voiced persona that would help turn seduction into an art form. Hollywood had never seen anything like her; the air of mystery she exhibited on screen made the great Garbo look positively giddy, while the cultured sex appeal she effortlessly conveyed made critics try to think up new and better adjectives. And the sparks that flew when she was paired with Humphrey Bogart, now that's the stuff of cinema legend.

Ivan DeBlois Combe ,88, the developer of Clearasil, the acne cream that helped millions of baby boomers get through the awkward teen-age years, died Tuesday in Greenwich, Conn., after a stroke. Bob McFadden, 76, a retired singer and television commercial voice-over actor best known as the parrot's voice for Whisk commercials in the 1970s, died Jan. 7 in Delray Beach, Fla., of Lou Gehrig's disease. He exclaimed "Ring around the collar!" and "Pretty shirt!" as the parrot's voice in commercials for the laundry detergent in the 1970s and 1980s.

Like Roxie Hart, the character she plays in the musical "Chicago," Belle Calaway knows what it's like to watch somebody else grab the limelight.For Roxie, who murders her boyfriend in Kander and Ebb's vaudeville-style musical, the competition comes from more notorious, headline-stealing criminals. Calaway's case is more benign.The 50-year-old actress has spent most of her professional career as an understudy, or, as she puts it, as the "understudy to the stars."Those stars have included Lauren Bacall (in "Woman of the Year," 1982)

"The Phantom Lady" (1944) isn't one of the better-known films by director Robert Siodmak, who is more famous for such film noir classics as "The Killers" and "Criss Cross," both of which starred Burt Lancaster. But "The Phantom Lady," which stars Franchot Tone, Ella Raines and Alan Curtis as three people involved in a murder mystery, shimmers with velvety black and white photography (by Woody Bredell), evocative sexual subtext and glamour that characterizes the best of the genre."The Phantom Lady" will play alongside "Gilda" for a terrific double-feature at the Orpheum in Fells Point, Monday through July 19.It's the first time Orpheum owner George Figgs has brought "The Phantom Lady" to the venerable revival house.

An hourlong retrospective on great screen kisses?That's what cable's TNT channel is offering tonight at 8 p.m. and again at 11.If it seems to you that TV has been feeding a lot lately on the carcass of its own past -- with clip-shows, such as NBC's "Sunday Best," specials celebrating 100 or 200 epsiodes of on-going shows, and reunions of shows that are no more -- you are right.But this is another level of video-and-vulture. This is Ted Turner, the owner of TNT, rummaging through his Hollywood film library for scenes involving kisses, getting Lauren Bacall to host and selling it as a "celebration" of love for Valentine's.

Ivan DeBlois Combe ,88, the developer of Clearasil, the acne cream that helped millions of baby boomers get through the awkward teen-age years, died Tuesday in Greenwich, Conn., after a stroke. Bob McFadden, 76, a retired singer and television commercial voice-over actor best known as the parrot's voice for Whisk commercials in the 1970s, died Jan. 7 in Delray Beach, Fla., of Lou Gehrig's disease. He exclaimed "Ring around the collar!" and "Pretty shirt!" as the parrot's voice in commercials for the laundry detergent in the 1970s and 1980s.

BETHESDA -- You could cut the excitement with a butter knife."Ladies and gentlemen the president of the United States," Tommy "The Matchmaker" Curtis announced breathlessly at the Yacht Club of Bethesda. All heads pivoted. All hearts double-clutched at this over-30, we-love-Barry-Manilow nightclub where everyone is somebody -- famous.TV cameras from inside the Beltway and way outside (Japan, Germany) focused on President Clinton as he lumbered to the dance floor, as "California Girls" was piped in. On his arms and back, eight Monica Lewinskys -- a gaggle of frisky interns with their berets and bedroom eyes fixed on the chief executive.

He was recently rated the No. 1 star in Hollywood history. He's probably had more books written about him than any other American movie star. He made snarls and lisps seem downright sexy.He's even been immortalized on a postage stamp.Which helps explains why tomorrow, Humphrey Bogart takes up a two-month stay at the Charles Theatre.Beginning with a showing of "The Petrified Forest" tomorrow and Monday, the Charles will be screening Bogart films every Saturday morning and Monday evening through Oct. 27. For fans, the 11-film festival offers a rare chance to see Bogie on the big screen, to see a larger-than-life character in the sort of larger-than-life setting he belongs.