“Dying together’s even more personal than living together.” Connie in LIFEBOAT
Tallulah Bankhead was born in Alabama in 1902 to a powerful Democratic family. Tallulah’s father was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1936-1940 and she was the niece and granddaughter of Senators. Tallulah’s mother died of blood poisoning three weeks after she was born.
Tallulah won a movie-magazine beauty contest at the age of 15 and convinced her family to let her move To New Yotk. Tallulah quickly won bit parts in New York and her first role was a non-speaking role in “The Squab Farm”. During this time, Tallulah also became a peripheral member of the Algonquin Round Table earning a reputation as a hard-partying girl-about-town and began to use cocaine and marijuana.
Tallulah Bankhead made her debut on the London stage in 1923 where she appeared in over a dozen plays over the next eight years, the most famous of which was The Dancers. In 1924, Tallulah’s fame as an actress was cemented when she starred in Sidney Howard’s”They Knew What They Wanted” which won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize. In 1931, Tallulah returned to the United States to be Paramount Pictures‘ “next Marlene Dietrich“, but her first few films failed to make an impression. Tallulah’s first film was George Cukor’s “Tarnished Lady” in 1931 and although Cukor and Bankhead became close friends, she found filming boring and lacked the patience for it although she found the opportunity to make $50,000 per film too good to pass up. Over the next few years, Tallulah continued to appear in films over the next few years although they were mostly mediocre. After failing to pass a screen test for “Gone With the Wind”, Tallulah proved unable to capture Hollywood and returned to her most-loved acting medium, the stage.
Despite returning to Broadway, Tallulah’s career continued to be unmemorable until she portrayed the cold and calculating Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman’s”The Little Foxes” in 1939 with Patricia Collinge which won her the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Performance. Tallulah began to be more successful and received the same award following her 1942 performance in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” opposite Fredric March and Florence Eldridge. In 1944, Alfred Hitchcock castTallulah as the cynical journalist, Constance Porter, in “Lifeboat” which was widely acknowledged as her best performance on film and won her the New York Film Critics Circle Award. After World War II, Tallulah appeared in a revival of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” which she remained with for almost two years, both on tour and on Broadway. The play made Tallulah a fortune and meant that from then on she could command 10% of the gross and was billed larger than any other actor in the cast although she uusally granted equal billing to Estelle Winwood, a frequent co-star, and one of her closest friends.
Although Tallulah Bankhead’s career slowed in the mid-1950’s, she still remained in the public eye. By now, Tallulah was a heavy drinker and consumer of sleeping pills (she was a life-long sufferer of insomnia) but she continued to perform on Broadway during the 1950’s and 1960’s and even appeared in the occasional film. Tallulah received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in “Midge Purvis” in 1961. Tallulah appeared on stage for the last time in 1963 in “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” which received good notices although it was clear that her career as a great American actress was coming to an end. Tallulah was a big hit with her appearance as herself on “The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show” in 1957 which was originally slated for Bette Davis who had to pull out due to injury and in the 1967 television show, “Batman” which turned out to be her final screen appearance.
Offscreen, Tallulah had a very colorful life and was known for her love of parties, outlandish stunts and sexual exploits. Bankhead was known to be bisexual and was rumored to have been romantically linked with many famous actresses including Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich although these relationships were never confirmed. Tallulah was married once to actor John Emery although the couple later divorced. Tallulah had no children although had numerous abortions during the 1920’s. Tallulah was godmother to the two children of her lifelong friend, actress Eugenia Rawls and was known for her kindness to animals and children.
Like her family, Tallulah was a Democrat but she broke wit most Southerners by campaigning for Harry Truman’s reelection in 1948. Tallulah died in a hospital in 1968 from double pneumonia and influenza and her last words were allegedly “codeine” and “bourbon”.
