Lauren Bacall, a big screen icon who burst onto the scene in 1944’s To Have and Have Not opposite Humphrey Bogart and is still making movies 65 years later, was presented with an honorary Academy Award in Hollywood on Saturday night.

Miss Bacall, 85, received the Oscar 12 years after her shocking loss in the best supporting actress category when she was considered an absolute shoo-in to win the best supporting actress award for The Mirror Has Two Faces.

The actress was one of four people feted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the inaugural Governors Awards event held at the Grand Ballroom above the Kodak Theatre.

For the first time, the honorary Oscars were presented at their own separate ceremony instead of being squeezed in with the competitive awards in March. Others honored Saturday were B-movie king Roger Corman, cinematographer Gordon Willis and producer John Calley was honored with the Irving J. Thalberg Memorial Award.

Kirk Douglas, Miss Bacall’s friend since she was a teenager and her co-star in Young Man With a Horn, took part in the presentation and confessed that he once tried to seduce her — “without success.”

Douglas noted the actress’s tough image and said: “She’s a pussycat and she has a heart of gold,”

Anjelica Huston presented the award and said Miss Bacall “defines what it means to be a great actress and also a huge movie star” and praised her “steadfastness, honesty and extraordinary beauty.”

Once she got to the podium, Miss Bacall spoke of her late husband, “my great love” Humphrey Bogart with whom she made four films: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage and Key Largo. The couple were preparing to make a fifth film together when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in 1957. They had been married just 13 years.

“He gave me a life and he changed my life,” she said of her late husband.

Their two children, Leslie Bogart and Stephen Humphrey Bogart, accompanied their mother to the ceremony (see photo below). Her third child is actor Sam Robards. whose father is the late Jason Robards Jr.

“This is quite an event,” said the legendary actress. “I’ve been very lucky in my life. I feel very emotional and grateful.”

Miss Bacall paid tribute to some of her other leading men including Gregory Peck with, whom she starred one of her best films Designing Woman, and Henry Fonda with whom she appeared in Sex and the Single Girl. Her other well-known films include How to Marry a Millionaire with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, Written on the Wind opposite Rock Hudson,  Blood Alley and The Shootist opposite John Wayne, Harper opposite Paul Newman, and the all-star Murder on the Orient Express.

She re-teamed with Peck in the 1993 film The Portrait and headlined the 1981 movie The Fan which the actress considers one of her best performances. Miss Bacall has also had major success on Broadway starring in the comedy Cactus Flower for two years and winning Tony Awards for the smash musicals Applause and Woman of the Year.

More recent film roles include The Walker, These Foolish Things, Manderlay, Birth, and Dogville. But her juiciest role of all came in 1996 when Barbra Streisand cast Miss Bacall as her mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces. She won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild awards for her performance and was considered a shoo-in for the Oscar.

Miss Bacall later wrote in an update of her memoir: “We got through the rest of the program and headed for the great dinner — chocolate Oscars at every place. I felt very alone. No matter how you slice it, this was a ball for winners. Kevin Spacey was there. He came over and invited me on to the dance floor, thank heaven. It’s not a good thing to be a shoo-in.”

On Saturday, Miss Bacall said she did not expect to receive an Oscar but gratefully welcomed the honor. She quipped: “The thought when I get home that I’m going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting.”

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