Lauren Bacall’s Eclectic Treasures Auctioned Off

Lee Roy Reams, an actor who appeared with Lauren Bacall in the 1970 Broadway musical “Applause,” was on the phone Thursday, exulting at his winning bid, for $2,000, on two deer antlers mounted on a carved wooden head from the auction of her collection at Bonhams New York earlier in the week.

“I lusted after them and coveted them for many years,” said Mr. Reams, who played Duane, the hairstylist for Ms. Bacall’s character, and remembered a friendship that progressed from getting Nathan’s hot dogs with her in the limo ride home from the theater, to spaghetti casseroles in her dining room at the Dakota apartments, to Chinese food on her bed. “Now I have them.”

Mr. Reams’s purchase, along with that of three other lots (he tried for a dozen), was one of the more personal in the four sessions held over two days, the afternoon sessions stretching into night.

Bids flew in over the telephone and from cyberspace from 34 countries, as well as by raising a paddle bearing Ms. Bacall’s likeness in a subterranean room in the auction headquarters on Madison Avenue, warm with artificial light.

Source:The New York Times