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Tallulah Bankhead
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Tallulah Bankhead was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 31, 1902. President Harry S. Truman once claimed that her 1952 autobiography was the best book he had read since coming to the White House. She was the first white woman to appear on the cover of Ebony magazine. An incident in her life was the inspiration for the movie All About Eve (1950).
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The Wham from Alabam’,” as Tallulah Bankhead was called, is one of entertainment’s most colorful personalities. She is now known mainly for her wild antics: she was said to have smoked over one hundred cigarettes and consumed two bottles of bourbon a day, and had over five hundred love affairs. Marlene Dietrich called her “the most immoral woman who ever lived,” and Bankhead herself wrote, “Apostates have hinted that I’m the ill-begotten daughter of Medusa and the Marquis de Sade.”
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As soon as she could, Bankhead would escape the watchful gaze of her aunt to sneak off and join in any Broadway shindig she could find. She became known as the ‘must have’ person at any party. When she hit 18, her long suffering aunt decided she had had enough of trying to control her spirited niece and she joined the Red Cross and set off for a posting in Paris. Bankhead hit the ground running and moved in with Bijou Martin, a fellow actress and one of the biggest social hosts on the whole of Broadway. The parties at their apartment were never ending and illegal drugs featured highly in the festivities.
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In "Tallulah" (at the Curran Theatre through Feb. 11), declarations of Bankhead's affections for women are aired openly. "How could I rule out a whole sex?" she asks provocatively, before going on to recount her adolescent female loves in convent school. But typical of all things Tallulah, these comments raise more questions. Was her bisexuality confined to her youth? Besides an oblique obsession with Greta Garbo, "Tallulah" mainly addresses her male romantic interests.
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"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it." Tallulah Bankhead's famous boast was grounded in reality. The uninhibited actress was known as much for her cocaine jags, hysterical tirades, and torrid affairs as she was for her distinguished performances onstage. Though raised in a dignified Alabama political family, Bankhead became a tabloid darling during the 1930s, rarely concealing her three-day parties or bisexual escapades. Cultural journalist Joel Lobenthal spent 25 years researching this breakthrough biography, conducting scores of exclusive interviews and utilizing previously untapped files from Scotland Yard and the FBI. The results are both sensational and surprisingly poignant.
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When frantic, Tallulah always looked at the photograph of her mother for comfort. Now she looked and found it missing. "Quick," she told her maid, Rose Riley, "go back to the hotel and tell Eddie to bring mother's picture." But Tallulah's secretary, Edie Smith, had already left for the theatre. It was raining hard. There wasn't enough time for a messenger to get through the theatre traffic and bring the picture back.
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Tallulah Bankhead