NEW YORK — Lauren Bacall had one of those incredible lives.

The wife and co-star of Humphrey Bogart. A Tony Award-winning actress. A National Book Award-winning author. A giant of fashion. A friend of the Kennedys. One of the last survivors of Hollywood’s studio age.

A star almost from the moment she appeared on screen to the day she died, Tuesday, at age 89, at a New York City hospital.

“Stardom isn’t a career,” Bacall once observed, “it’s an accident.”

What a lucky accident it turned out to be.