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Tallulah Bankhead: New York
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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 turned out to be her final screen appearance.
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Tallulah Bankhead: as skilled with an off-the-cuff one-liner as a line of Shakespeare, actress Tallulah Bankhead--brash, beautiful, brazen--knew how to hold the world's attention. Here, an exclusive first look from a new biography.(A 21st-Century Look At The Original Wild Woman)(Biography)
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In "Tallulah," first published in 1952 and a New York Times bestseller for twenty-six weeks, Bankhead's literary voice is as lively and forthright as her public persona. She details her childhood and adolescence, discusses her dedication to the theater, and presents amusing anecdotes about her life in Hollywood, New York, and London. Along with a searing defense of her lifestyle and rambunctious habits, she provides a fiercely opinionated, wildly funny account of American stage at a time when the movies were beginning to cast theater into eclipse. This is not only a memoir of an independent woman but ... an insider look at American entertainment during a golden age. The manic, bravura style is pure Tallulah. She writes, "If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner."
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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.
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In late 1951, Bankhead fired her personal secretary, Evyleen Cronin, for stealing money from her. In a public trial over the incident, Cronin's lawyers alleged that Cronin's job included "paying for marijuana, cigarettes, cocaine, booze and sex." Cronin ... testified that Bankhead taught her to roll marijuana cigarettes. Because of this, Bankhead may have been the inspiration for the Alexandra de Lago character in Tennessee Williams's "Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)," whose young male companion (played by Paul Newman) tries to blackmail her over her use of hashish. She is also said to be the inspiration for Cruella de Vil in Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmations. In a reversal, she was the real-life inspiration for Bette Davis's role in "All About Eve," and Davis may have been model for the young interloper (the two despised each other).
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While in Hollywood, Bankhead continued her regime of drink and drugs. She began to explore her lesbian feelings and her name was linked with several leading actresses and writers of the time, even the great Marlene Dietrich. The one woman who did manage to steal her heart was Greta Garbo. Bankhead was captivated by her beauty and she took on the role of one of her own Gallery Girls, adoring Greta’s work and rushing to see every new film and read every new interview. She was desperate to meet her and pulled in all the contacts she could to try and arrange it. Garbo was notoriously reclusive and it proved difficult to get an audience with her.
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