Sally Quinn had an interesting way to honor Lauren Bacall, the actress who passed away yesterday at the age of 89.
Quinn, a D.C. socialite and Washington Post writer who is married to the paper’s former top editor Ben Bradlee, took to Twitter to write that she almost lost her husband to Bacall. And, she added, Bacall was so “spectacular” that it would have been an “acceptable” choice for Bradlee.
So so sad about the death of Betty Bacall. I almost lost Ben to her, the only acceptable person. As he would say,she was a spectacular dame
— Sally Quinn (@sallyquinndc) August 13, 2014
(Bacall was born named Betty Joan Perske, hence the Betty.)
So did Bradlee have an affair with Bacall? A 2009 item from Women’s Wear Daily suggests it’s possible.
REMEMBERING THAT TIME: Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn performed a lively round onstage, he all self-deprecation and joviality, and she full of practiced graciousness and boldface anecdotes. One recollection that amused and even shocked the crowd: Quinn’s tale of being in the Hamptons with Paris Review founder George Plimpton, “back when Ben and I first got together” and losing her now-husband in the dunes to Lauren Bacall for an hour. Her only solution, Quinn said, was to befriend Bacall and make her feel incredibly guilty for apparently cuckolding her. The ploy worked, according to Quinn, and they’re friends to this day.
Bacall starred in such films as To Have and Have Not and The Mirror Has Two Faces, and was married to Humphrey Bogart and later to Jason Robards. Robards played Bradlee in All the President’s Men, the 1976 film about the Post‘s Watergate investigation.
In a 2010 Vanity Fair profile of Quinn, Quinn and Bradlee were described as the “Bogart and Bacall of Washington.”
Contacted by email, Quinn says she plans to write about the episode herself. City Desk looks forward to reading.
