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Lauren Bacall was an icon of stage and screen, but she had a particularly illustrious career in a smaller medium: television commercials. Yes, everyone was clamoring to get Lauren Bacall to promote their products with that smokey and sultry voice. And she did it well, particularly in the early ’80s when she starred in a series of commercials for the now-discontinued High Point coffee. A decaffeinated instant coffee brand, High Point doesn’t seem like the kind of product Lauren Bacall would buy for herself — surely she would go for something more classy than powder you mix into hot water? But Lauren Bacall could sell you anything, or at least make you feel like garbage for not wanting to buy it.

Now available to watch on YouTube, Lauren Bacall’s High Point coffee ads are quite a treat. They’re weird, a bit nonsensical, and hilarious, and it’s the way I like to remember the Hollywood legend: as a sassy woman selling instant coffee, delivering a subtextual ferocity that suggests, “It’s coffee, you stupid asshole.”

To be fair, there’s nothing particularly wild about this one. Sure, Lauren Bacall is just casually rehearsing a play on stage, pausing for a cup of coffee. Her sixth, apparently. But on and on she goes about how much she loves that damn coffee, its flavaaaah, its deep-brewed flavaaaaaah, all the while talking about decaffeinated instant coffee, of which, as we all know, coffee lovers can’t get enough.

But don’t worry: just like life for young gay boys who grow up to write blog posts about campy coffee commercials starring Hollywood icons, it gets better.

This might be my favorite one? It’s comfortably crazy. Again, Lauren Bacall is taking a break from rehearsing a play to drink some shitty no-name instant coffee, which she is desperate to sell to us. This time, she casually strolls to her dressing room; good thing it’s just two feet from the stage! Just like in real life. She’s a star, dammit; she doesn’t have time to, say, walk longer than ninety seconds from her dressing room door to whatever Broadway stage to deliver some monologue with a semblance of effort. Again, she tells us all about the flavaaah — “flavaaaaaah that’s full of life!” — and gives us an honest answer for the question, “Why the hell are you drinking decaffeinated coffee?” It’s simple: “Caffeine sometimes makes me tense!” You don’t say?

But here’s where the commercials get interesting.

Who doesn’t love curling up in bed with a rich cup of coffee? Well, me, and I think most people, but whatever; most people are decidedly not Lauren Bacall. “You think coffee and sleep don’t mix?” she asks. I would make a joke about sleeping pills (or maybe quaaludes, as this was the early ’80s), but I’m too astonished by the very scientific way Lauren Bacall proves to us that High Point has that deep-brewed flavaaah: by… putting an empty coffee cup over a full one? Also, the way she growl-moans before slurring, “It’s a coffee lover’s dreeeeeammmm,” literally gives me heart palpitations.

Oh, we’re not done here.

Lauren Bacall: writer. I love that idea! (Wikipedia informs me that she did, in fact, write three books. How many books have you written?) While some writers choose Adderall to kick-start their craft, Lauren Bacall chose decaffeinated coffee. “I can do without caffeine,” she says, with a sly grin and heavy eyelids. “So can youuuuuu.” Again, she throws some science in our faces, sort of:

You just can’t argue with that! (I imagine that if you tried, Lauren Bacall would throw a glass mug of hot coffee at you.)

And when you didn’t think it could get weirder, here is Lauren Bacall drinking coffee by tiny lamplight in the most natural of places: the backseat of a car.

So many more questions here. Who stocks the cabinets in Lauren Bacall’s Bentley? Do you think she gets hot when she drinks freshly brewed coffee while wearing that bear-skin rug? And where the hell is she coming from? Upstate? Connecticut? Do you think she’s running late to her own play? Probably. Do you think she carries a Tide pen with her in case she spills coffee on herself while being driven down I-95? No wonder she doesn’t want the extra caffeine. She’s tense enough!

As with everything Lauren Bacall did, these High Point commercials show a performer who won’t half-ass anything. An utmost professional, Lauren Bacall has sold me on this likely terrible coffee. In honor of the recently departed icon, I’d like to raise a glass cup in her honor and deliver a toast in Lauren Bacall’s trademark style : “Here’s some coffee. Fuck you.”

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