Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1934
Birth name:	Tallulah Brockman Bankhead
Date of birth:	January 31 1902(1902-01-31)
Date of death:	December 12 1968 (aged 66)
Death location:	New York City, New York
Spouse:	John Emery (1937-1941)

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was an American actress, who, in a long career spanning several decades, played leading lady in some of the most notable productions of 20th century theater including Clifford Odets, Clash by Night, Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes and Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, for which she earned the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award (1942). Sometimes referred to as a "Southern belle" or a bon vivant she was a diligent actress who cultivated a comedic persona with her distinctive husky voiced resonance. (Some of her quotes and quips, "really daaahling" will forever live on in the anals of American theater.) Later in her career she best played at being herself - an outrageous and outspoken critic of conventional norms and politics - as a radio, talk show and television host and supporting cast member.

She came from a prominent Alabama political family - her grandfather and uncle were U.S. Senators, her father served as Speaker of the House during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's term. She, herself was a lifelong champion of those in need including unemployed actors, foster children, and animals.

Biography

Early life and family

Bankhead was born in Huntsville, Alabama to William Brockman Bankhead and Adelaide Eugenia Sledge and was named after her paternal grandmother. Mother Eugenia died on February 23, 1902 of blood poisoning three weeks after giving birth to Tallulah. Tallulah has been described as "an extremely homely child," overweight and with a deep, husky voice resulting from chronic bronchitis.

Bankhead came from a powerful Democratic political family in the South in general and Alabama in particular. Her father was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1936-1940 (in the 74th, 75th, and 76th Congresses), immediately preceding Sam Rayburn. She was the niece of Senator John H. Bankhead II and granddaughter of Senator John H. Bankhead. Bankhead herself was a Democrat, albeit one of a more liberal stripe than the rest of her family.

Her older sister Evelyn Eugenia Bankhead was born January 24, 1901 and was known as "Sister." "Sister" died on May 11, 1979. She was married seven times, the first three to Morton McMichael Hoyt (April 4, 1899 - ?), brother of romance novelist Nancy Hoyt and poet Elinor Wylie.

Her family sent her to various schools in an attempt to keep her out of trouble, which included a year at a Catholic convent school (although her father was a Methodist and her mother, who died at her birth, was an Episcopalian).

New York stage and silent films

At 15, Bankhead won a movie-magazine beauty contest and convinced her family to let her move to New York. She quickly won bit parts, first appearing in a non-speaking role in The Squab Farm. During these early New York years, she became a peripheral member of the Algonquin Round Table and known as a hard-partying girl-about-town. During this time she experimented with cocaine and marijuana, but did not consume alcohol to any great degree. She became known for her wit, although as screenwriter Anita Loos, another minor Roundtable member, said: "She was so pretty that we thought she must be stupid." She became known for saying almost anything, whether true or not. ==London - 1920s- a 'femme fatale In 1923, she made her debut on the London stage, where she was to appear in over a dozen plays in the next eight years, most famously, The Dancers. Her fame as an actress was ensured in 1924 when she played the waitress Amy in Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted. The show won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize. She was famous not only as an actress but also for her many affairs, infectious personality and witticisms like "

Welsh artist Augustus John with Bankhead and her portrait (1929)

failure in Hollywood

She returned to the US in 1931 to be Paramount Pictures' "next Marlene Dietrich," but Hollywood success eluded her in her first four films of the 30s. Critics agree that her acting was flat, that she was unable to dominate the camera, and that she was generally outclassed by Dietrich, Carole Lombard, and others.

Bankhead's first film was Tarnished Lady (1931), directed by George Cukor, and Cukor and Bankhead became fast friends. Bankhead behaved herself on the set and filming went smoothly, but she found film-making to be very boring and didn't have the patience for it.

I WANT A MAN! ... Six months is a long, long while. I WANT A MAN!"^{[citation needed]}

Back to Broadway

In 1932, she expressed some interest in spirituality, but did not outwardly pursue it, except for a time when she met with the Indian mystic, Meher Baba.

In 1933, Bankhead nearly died following a five-hour emergency hysterectomy for an advanced case of gonorrhea, which she claimed she contracted either from George Raft or Gary Cooper. Only 70 pounds when she left the hospital, she stoically said to her doctor, "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!"

In 1934, after recuperating in Alabama, she returned to England. After only a short stay, she was called back to New York to play in Dark Victory.

Nevertheless, David O. Selznick called her the "first choice among established stars" to play Scarlett O'Hara. However, moviegoers answering a poll thought otherwise.

Her screen test for Gone with the Wind put her out of the running for good. Selznick decided that she was too old (at 34) for Scarlett's antebellum scenes. Unable to capture Hollywood, Bankhead returned to her most-loved acting medium, the stage.

The Little Foxes and other successess

Returning to Broadway, Bankhead's career stalled in unmemorable plays until she played the cold and ruthless Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939). Her portrayal won her the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Performance, but Bankhead and Hellman feuded over the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland. Bankhead (a staunch anti-Communist) was said to want a portion of one performance's proceeds to go to Finnish relief, while Hellman (an equally staunch Stalinist) objected strenuously, and the two women didn't speak for the next quarter of a century.

More success and the same award followed her 1942 performance in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, in which Bankhead played Sabina, the housekeeper and temptress, opposite Fredric March and Florence Eldridge (Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, and also husband and wife offstage). During the run of the play, some media accused Bankhead of a running feud with the play's director, Elia Kazan.

Hitchcock's Lifeboat and post World War II

In 1944, Alfred Hitchcock cast her as the cynical journalist, Constance Porter, in Lifeboat. The performance is widely acknowledged as her best on film, and won her the New York Film Critics Circle Award. Almost childlike in her immodesty, a beaming Tallulah accepted her trophy and exclaimed, "Dahlings, I was wonderful!"

After World War II, Bankhead appeared in a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives, taking it on tour and then to Broadway for the better part of two years. The play's run made Bankhead a fortune. From that time, Bankhead could command 10% of the gross and was billed larger than any other actor in the cast, although she usually granted equal billing to Estelle Winwood, a frequent co-star, and Bankhead's "best friend" from the 1920s until Bankhead's death in 1968.

Politics

Like her family, Bankhead was a Democrat, but broke with most Southerners by campaigning for Harry Truman's reelection in 1948. While viewing the Inauguration parade, she booed the South Carolina float which carried then-Governor Strom Thurmond, who had recently run against Truman on the Dixiecrat ticket, splitting the Democratic vote.

Late career - radio and television

Though Tallulah Bankhead's career slowed in the mid-1950s, she never faded from the public eye. Although she had become a heavy drinker and consumer of sleeping pills (she was a life-long insomniac), Bankhead continued to perform in the 1950s and 1960s on Broadway, in the occasional film, as a highly-popular radio show host, and in the new medium of television. Her appearance as herself on The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show in 1957 is a cult favorite, as is her role as the "Black Widow" on the 1960s campy television show Batman(which the aged Winwood appeared), which turned out to be her final screen appearance.

In 1950, in an effort to cut into the rating leads of The Jack Benny Program and The Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Show which had jumped from NBC radio to CBS radio the previous season, NBC spent millions over the two seasons of The Big Show starring "the glamorous, unpredictable" Tallulah Bankhead as its host, in which she acted not only as mistress of ceremonies but also performed monologues and songs, many of which can be heard on the album "Give My Regards To Broadway!" Despite Meredith Willson's Orchestra and Chorus and top guest stars from Broadway, Hollywood and radio—including Fred Allen, Fanny Brice, Groucho Marx, Ethel Merman, Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn, Jimmy Durante, Martin & Lewis, George Jessel, Judy Garland, Ethel Barrymore, Gloria Swanson, José Ferrer and Judy Holliday, The Big Show, which earned rave reviews, failed to do more than dent Jack Benny's and Edgar Bergen's ratings.

Bankhead, who proved a masterful comedienne and intriguing personality, however, was not blamed for the failure of The Big Show—television's growth was hurting all radio ratings at the time, so the next season NBC installed her as one of a half dozen rotating hosts of NBC's The All Star Revue on Saturday nights. Although critics, pros and the sophisticated set loved her, and Tallulah's monologues became classics, she was not among the hosts renewed for the following season.

Bankhead's most popular television appearance and the one that is still seen widely today was her December 3 1957 appearance on The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Hour. Bankhead played herself in the episode titled "The Celebrity Next Door." The part was originally slated for Bette Davis, but she had to bow out after cracking her vertebra.

Lucille Ball was a fan of Bankhead's and did a good impression of her. By the time the episode was filmed, however, both Ball and Arnaz were at their wit's end over Bankhead's behavior during rehearsal: she refused to listen to the director and she did not like to rehearse. It took her three hours to "wake up" once she arrived on the set and everyone thought she was drunk most of the time. Ball and Arnaz apparently didn't know about Tallulah's antipathy toward rehearsing or her incredible ability to memorize a script. The actual taping of the episode went off without a hitch, and Bankhead impressed everyone with her line readings and professionalism". Lucille Ball later said that she was conned by Bankhead who purposely made her think she would screw up to throw her off kilter. Desi Arnaz said that Bankhead walked all over him and Ball, and they hadn't known this was typical behavior for Tallulah.

Bankhead also appeared as Blanche DuBois in a revival of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (1956), but reviews were poor. She received a Tony Award nomination for her performance of a bizarre 50-year-old mother in Mary Chase's Midgie Purvis (1961). Her last theatrical appearance was in another Williams play, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963). Although she received good notices for her last performances, her career as one of the greats of the American stage was coming to an end.

Her last motion picture was a British horror film Fanatic (1965) co-starring Stefanie Powers, which was released in the U.S. as Die! Die! My Darling!.

Her last appearance on screen came in March 1967 as the villainous Black Widow in the Batman TV series.

According to author Brendan Gill, when Bankhead entered the hospital for an illness, an article was headed "Tallulah Hospitalized, Hospital Tallulahized." This headline was a testament to Bankhead's large, charismatic personality (which inspired much of the "personality" of the character Cruella De Vil in Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians).

Bankhead had no children, but was the godmother of Brook and Brockman Seawell, children of her lifelong friend and actress Eugenia Rawls and Rawls's husband, Donald Seawell. She was known for her kindness to animals and children.

An avid baseball fan, Bankhead was a fan of the New York Giants. She once said that, throughout history, there have only been two geniuses, "Willie Shakespeare and Willie Mays."

On May 14, 1968, Bankhead was a guest on The Tonight Show with Joe Garagiola as the guest host, along with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They were in New York to announce the formation of their new company Apple Records. Bankhead, reportedly a bit inebriated, told Lennon and McCartney that she would love to learn how to meditate, as they had in India with the Maharishi in February 1968. Around that time, fans were shocked to see Bankhead on the cover of The National Enquirer. The tabloid informed its readers that the actress was aware that she had only months to live. "There's nothing you, or I, or anybody can do about it," she was quoted.

Death

A long-time smoker Tallulah Bankhead died in St. Luke's Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia arising from influenza, complicated by emphysema, at the age of 66 on December 12, 1968, and is buried in Saint Paul's Churchyard, Chestertown, Maryland.

Legacy

A stage play by Matthew Lombardo, entitled "Looped," features Tallulah Bankhead (portrayed by Valerie Harper) as the protagonist in an episode late in her life in which she is called to a recording studio to "loop" a line of recorded dialogue that must be dubbed into a film shot previously. The session reportedly took eight hours to successfully record a single line of dialogue, and the playwright uses the situation to reveal the story of Ms. Bankhead's life. "Looped" premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse in California in June 2008 under the direction of Rob Ruggiero. Production Website

Filmography

Features:

• Who Loved Him Best? (1918)
• When Men Betray (1918)
• Thirty a Week (1918)
• The Trap (1919)
• His House in Order (1928)
• Tarnished Lady (1931)
• My Sin (1931)
• The Cheat (1931)
• Thunder Below (1932)
• Make Me a Star (1932) (Cameo)
• Devil and the Deep (1932)
• Faithless (1932)
• Stage Door Canteen (1943)
• Lifeboat (1944)
• A Royal Scandal (1945)
• Main Street to Broadway (1953)
• Die! Die! My Darling (1965)
• The Daydreamer (1966) (voice)

Short Subjects:

• Hollywood on Parade No. A-6 (1933)
• The Boy Who Wanted a Melephant (1959) (voice) (narrator)

Stage Work

• The Squab Farm (March 13 - April 1918) (Broadway)
• 39 East (March 31, 1919 - closing date unknown) (appeared in six performances as a replacement for Constance Binney until Actors' Equity Association strike shut the play down) (Broadway)
• Footloose (May 20 - June 1920) (Broadway)
• Nice People (March 2 - June 1921) (Broadway)
• Everyday (November 16, 1921 - January 1922) (Broadway)
• Sleeping Partners (June 11, 1922) (Baltimore)
• Good Gracious, Annabelle (June 20, 1922) (Baltimore)
• Danger (December 22, 1921 - February 1922) (stepped in as two-week replacement for an ill Kathlene MacDonnel) (Broadway)
• Her Temporary Husband (August 31 - November 1922) (replaced during tryouts in May 1922 before the show premiered on Broadway) (Stamford, Connecticut)
• The Exciters (September 22 - October 1922) (Broadway)
• The Dancers (February 15, 1923 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Conchita (March 19, 1924 - closing date unknown) (London)
• This Marriage (May 15, 1924 - closing date unknown) (London)
• The Creaking Chair (July 22, 1924 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Fallen Angels (April 21, 1925 - closing date unknown) (London)
• The Green Hat (September 2, 1925 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Scotch Mist (January 26, 1926 - closing date unknown) (London)
• They Knew What They Wanted (May 18, 1926 - closing date unknown) (London)
• The Gold Diggers (December 14, 1926 - closing date unknown) (London)
• The Garden of Eden (May 30, 1927 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Blackmail (February 28, 1928 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Mud and Treacle (May 9, 1928 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Her Cardboard Lover (August 21, 1928 - closing date unknown) (London and Scotland)
• He's Mine (October 29, 1929 - closing date unknown) (London)
• The Lady of the Camellias (March 5, 1930 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Let Us Be Gay (August 18, 1930 - closing date unknown) (London)
• Forsaking All Others (March 1 - June 1933) (Broadway)
• Dark Victory (November 7 - December 1934) (Broadway)
• Rain (Revival) (Februrary 12 - March 1935) (Broadway)
• Something Gay (April 29 - July 1935) (Broadway)
• Reflected Glory (September 21, 1936 - January 1937) (Broadway)
• Antony and Cleopatra (November 10 - November 14, 1937) (Broadway)
• The Circle (April 18 - June 1938) (Broadway)
• I Am Different (August 18, 1938 - closing date unknown) (opened in San Diego, California, closed during tryouts)
• The Little Foxes (February 15, 1939 - February 3, 1940) (Broadway)
• The Second Mrs Tanqueray (July 1, 1940) (Maplewood, New Jersey)
• Her Cardboard Lover (June 30, 1941) (Westport, Connecticut)
• Clash by Night (December 27, 1941 - February 7, 1942) (Broadway)
• The Skin of Our Teeth (November 18, 1942 - September 25, 1943) (replaced after 229 performances by Miriam Hopkins) (Broadway)
• Private Lives (June 19, 1944) (Stamford, Connecticut)
• Foolish Notion (March 13 - June 9, 1945) (Broadway)
• The Eagle Has Two Heads (March 19 - April 12, 1947) (Broadway)
• Private Lives (Revival) (October 4, 1948 - May 7, 1949) (Broadway)
• Dear Charles (September 15, 1954 - January 29, 1955) (Broadway)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (Revival) (February 15, 1956 - closing date unknown) (New York City Center)
• Ziegfeld Follies (April 16, 1956 - closing date unknown) (opened in Boston, closed during tryouts, retitled Welcome Darlings for a one-night-only show in Westport, Connecticut)
• Eugenia (January 30 - February 9, 1957) (Broadway)
• House on the Rocks (June 1958) (tour)
• Crazy October (October 8, 1958 - closing date unknown) (opened in New Haven, Connecticut, closed in San Francisco during tryouts)
• Craig's Wife (June 30, 1960) (Nyack, New York)
• Midgie Purvis (February 1 - February 18, 1961) (Broadway)
• Here Today (June 1962) (tour)
• The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (January 1 - January 4, 1964) (Broadway)
• Glad Tidings (June 1964) (tour)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Lobenthal, Joel (2004). Tallulah!: The Life and Times of a Leading Lady. Regan Books. ISBN 0-06-039435-8. 
• "Tallulah Bankhead." Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1988. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008.
• "Tallulah Times Three: What becomes a legend most A sudden rash of stage tributes to her fivinely dissolute carrer" The Arts/Theatr Review Zoglin, Richard.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Tallulah Bankhead

• Tallulah Bankhead. The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Tallulah Bankhead. Find A Grave. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• John Emery. The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Home Page. Tallulah Bankhead - A Passionate Life. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Gottlieb, Robert.The New Yorker. May 16, 2005. "Dah-ling: The strange case of Tallulah Bankhead". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Verbal Turpitude. Aug. 22, 1932. Time Magazine. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• The Religious Affiliation of Tallulah Bankhead. Adherents.com. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Gay Great - Tallulah Bankhead. Fyne Times. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Tallulah the Lonely. Robert Temple. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Photographs and literature. Virtual History. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• Caught With My Facts Down

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