During the making of "To Have and Have Not", Bacall and Bogart fell in love and were married in 1945. The pair co-starred in three more films: "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947), "and Key Largo" (1948). She appeared on her own in such films as "Young Man with a Horn" (1950) and the immensely popular "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953) with Marilyn Monroe .

Bacall and Bogart hosted numerous parties at their Holmby Hills mansion in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She called the regulars the "Holmby Hills Rat Pack," a nickname which later became indelibly associated with several new revelers, including Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis, Jr.

In the mid 1950s, she spent much of her time devoted to raising their children Stephen and Leslie, and helping Bogart battle throat cancer, which eventually killed him on January 14, 1957. After Bogart's death, Bacall resumed making films, including "Designing Women" (1957) and "The Gift of Love" (1958). She moved back to New York City and married actor Jason Robards, Jr. in 1961. The couple had one son, Sam, and divorced in 1969. Bacall appeared in several Broadway plays before returning to film in "Shock Treatment" (1964) and "Sex and the Single Girl" (1964)

In 1970, she starred on Broadway in "Applause", a musical adaptation of the film "All About Eve", which won Bacall a Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Award. She co-starred with John Wayne in "The Shootist" (1976), which was Wayne's last film before he died in 1979. In the 1980s and 1990s she appeared in several films and on Broadway, including a Tony-award winning performance in "Woman of the Year" (1981).

She received a Best Actress Golden Globe Award and was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in Barbra Streisand's "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996), playing Streisand's self-absorbed mother, and in 1998, portrayed a well-known heiress in the television mini-series "Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke".