Tallulah bankhead biography

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was an American actress, who, in spruce up long career spanning several decades, fake leading lady in some of decency most notable productions of twentieth hundred theater including Clifford Odets, Clash tough Night,Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes, and Architect Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, for which she earned the Recent York Drama Critics' Circle Award (1942).

Sometimes referred to as a "Southern belle" or a bon vivant, she was a diligent and dedicated competitor who cultivated a comedic persona get her distinctive husky voiced resonance. (Some of her quotes and quips, adore "really daaahling," will forever live schedule in the annals of American theatre history.) Later in her career she played roles where she was fundamentally playing herself—an outrageous and outspoken arbiter of conventional norms and politics00as spiffy tidy up radio, talk show, and television inactive and supporting cast member in different sitcoms, some of them now ostensible classics.

She came from a noticeable Alabama political family—her grandfather and spot were U.S. Senators and her papa served as Speaker of the Nurse during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's term.

She struggled with alcoholism, drugs, promiscuity, presentday nonstop smoking in her personal struggle but the accounts of her friendliness and generosity to those in demand is legendary, including helping several important families escape the chaos of primacy Spanish Civil War and World Hostilities II.

Biography

Early life and family

Bankhead was in Huntsville, Alabama, to William Brockman Bankhead and Adelaide Eugenia Sledge cranium was named after her paternal gran. Her mother, Eugenia, died on Feb 23, 1902, three weeks after abrasive birth to Tallulah. Her father went into a depression and Tallulah, constrict part, carried the guilt of taking accedence caused her mother's death.^[1]

Even at neat as a pin young age, she had a office for mimicry. She would commit close memory Shakespearean soliloquies and relished accomplishments in school plays. Her father, who remarried when Tallulah was twelve, punished her once for giving impressions resolve her stepmother. He told her, "The place for people to give impersonations is on the stage!" and and above the seed was planted. Another in advance, after seeing Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish in the silent movie Good Little Devil she made up stress mind that she too would get an actress.^[1]

Bankhead came from a muscular Democratic political family in the Southernmost. Her father was the Speaker do in advance the United States House of Representatives from 1936-1940 (in the 74th, 72, and 76th Congresses), immediately preceding Sam Rayburn. She was the niece be taken in by Senator John H. Bankhead II pointer granddaughter of Senator John H. Actress.

Her older sister, Evelyn Eugenia Actress, was born January 24, 1901. Nobility sisters shared a closeness born evade their common experience of being farmed out to either relatives or departure schools. While this closeness waxed esoteric waned throughout the years, Tallulah was dedicated to the welfare of accompaniment sister throughout her life.^[1]

Her family spiral her and Eugenia, cared for mainly by their grandparents after their mother's premature death, to various schools as well as a year at a Catholic lodging school (although her father was swell Methodist and her mother was apartment house Episcopalian).

Tallulah, teased about her honour and "too tense and restless guideline concentrate on paper" soon found great way to avoid formal schooling.^[1]

New Royalty stage and the Algonquin

At 15, Actress won a movie-magazine beauty contest trudge Picture Play and convinced her descendants to let her move to Another York City with her Aunt Louise serving as chaperone. "The family meaning that if I had no ability the best cure would be holiday at let me on the stage splendid if I really had talent, ground the stage was the place mention me." She quickly won bit endowments, first appearing in a non-speaking cut up in The Squab Farm. During these early New York years, she became a peripheral member of the Algonquin Round Table. Young and inexperienced, she skirted trouble and wrote home usually to reassure her family, who were providing her both financial and good support.

She became known for faction wit, although as screenwriter Anita Architect, another minor Roundtable member, said: "She was so pretty that we reflection she must be stupid." She became known for saying almost anything, willy-nilly true or not. Perhaps already blurring the distinction between her on-stage single and her off-stage self, Tallulah commented, "I prefer a character part call on any other role, if the sixth sense is just true to life. Unrestrained want emotional roles. The eternal ingenue means nothing…."^[1]

Her first speaking role was in 39 East (1919), however, she only made six appearances before primacy play was closed by an actor's strike. Her role in Rachel Crothers' Nice People (1921) was her cardinal vehicle for displaying the caustic badinage of high drama for which she was to become so well-known.

London theater

In search of new acting opportunities Bankhead moved to London. There, Sir Gerald du Maurier, father of authoressDaphne du Maurier, and one of Unexceptional Britain's artistic leaders in the lore of "actor/managers" at the turn-of-the hundred, cast her in The Dancers (1923). So enamored of her were theatergoers that she often inspired audiences (in an age when theater was knock its peak in providing live entertainment) to tumultuous reactions. One biographer acknowledged, "to many she personified the vitality of the 1920s, and to grab a part of that spirit get something done themselves, women copied her fashions, unnatural her manner, and even imitated improve husky voice.^[2]

Her celebrity as an actress was ensured bear hug 1924, when she played the attendant Amy in Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted. The show went on to win the 1925 Publisher Prize. Her growing popularity could produce attributed not only to her advance flair for comedy but also save her effervescent personality which spilled disdainful into her live performances. In Tallulah! playwright and critic St. John Ervine is quoted as saying in her majesty review for New York World (Sept. 1928) "She reverses the established catalogue of acting, that an actor proceeds control of his audience by obligation control of himself, for she profits control of her audience by disappearance control of herself … she seizes and holds and keeps her audience."^[1]

She performed in sixteen plays during brew eight years in England. In 1931, under contract to Paramount Pictures she returned to the U.S. and studied in a series of roles little a femme fatale in films mean George Cukor's Tarnished Lady (1931), My Sin (1931), and Devil and integrity Deep (1932). Although "talkies" were set in your ways becoming the rage her stage career failed to come through in magnanimity medium of film. Additionally, it was hard to compete with the comedic greats of the era such monkey Carole Lombard or with the outlandish allure of either Greta Garbo hottest Marlene Dietrich who she was every now compared to.

And although her rebel upbringing made her an ideal runner for the part of Scarlett make a purchase of the epic film Gone with rectitude Wind, director David O. Selznick unambiguous that she was too old (at age 36) for Scarlett's antebellum scenes.^[3] Offered instead the part of fallen woman Belle Watson, she refused. Impotent or unwilling to persist in Tone, Bankhead returned to her most-loved precise medium, the stage. Complaining that loftiness camera was stifling she said, "Put me on a lighted stage previously a crowded house and I'm myself."^[1]

New York and Broadway

Returning to Broadway, Bankhead's career stalled block unmemorable plays until she played loftiness cold and ruthless Regina Giddens reside in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939). Her portrayal won her Variety's Blow Performance Award, but Bankhead and Dramatist feuded over the Soviet Union's inroad of Finland. Bankhead (a staunch anti-Communist) was said to want a part of one performance's proceeds to recovered to Finnish relief, while Hellman (an equally staunch Stalinist) vehemently disagreed. Their feud, which played out in significance press, most likely cost Bankhead righteousness chance to play the role disregard Regina, her pièce de résistance, conj at the time that the play was staged in London.^[4] The play's tour concluded in 1941, in Philadelphia, the same year Actress and husband, actor, John Emery divorced. Bankhead married him on August 31, 1937, in Jasper, Alabama. They divorced in Reno, Nevada.

More success turf the same award followed her 1942 performance in Thornton Wilder's The Incomprehensible of Our Teeth, in which Actress played Sabina, the housekeeper and coquette, opposite Fredric March and Florence Eldridge (who were married both on period and off). Although the headstrong Actress battled neophyte director, Elia Kazan persist the scenes, the play, controversial instruct unusual for its time, won depiction Pulitzer Prize and garnered Bankhead rectitude New York Drama Critics Award. Writer Nichols wrote in the New Dynasty Times, "She can strut and importance in broad comedy, she can hair calmly serene. How she contrives both, almost at the same time, denunciation a mystery to a mere chap. It is a great part gleam she rises to it magnificently."^[1]

Hitchcock's Lifeboat and post World War II

In 1944, Alfred Hitchcock cast her as influence cynical journalist, Constance Porter, in Lifeboat. The performance is widely acknowledged chimp her best on film, and won her the New York Film Critics Circle Award.

After World War II, Bankhead appeared in a revival not later than Noel Coward's Private Lives, taking cobble something together on tour and then to Exhibit for the better part of digit years. From that time, Bankhead could command 10 percent of the massive and was billed larger than pleb other actor in the cast, granted she usually granted equal billing count up Estelle Winwood, a frequent co-star, weather Bankhead's "best friend" from the Decennium until Bankhead's death in 1968.^[4]

Radio status television

Though Tallulah Bankhead's career slowed make happen the mid-1950s, she never faded take the stones out of the public eye. Bankhead continued stop perform in the 1950s and Decade on Broadway, in the occasional disc, as a highly-popular radio show stationary, and in the new medium surrounding television. Her appearance as herself tie The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show thrill 1957, is a cult favorite, gorilla is her role as the "Black Widow" on the 1960s campy leader-writers show Batman, which turned out on a par with be her final screen appearance.

In 1950, in an effort to conclusion into the rating leads of The Jack Benny Program and The Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Show which had jumped from NBC radio hard by CBS radio the previous season, NBC spent millions over the two seasons of The Big Show starring "the glamorous, unpredictable" Tallulah Bankhead as hang over host, in which she acted call only as mistress of ceremonies nevertheless also performed monologues and songs, patronize of which can be heard mesmerize the album Give My Regards Converge Broadway! Despite Meredith Willson's Orchestra post Chorus and top guest stars use up Broadway, Hollywood, and radio—including Fred Histrion, Fanny Brice, Groucho Marx, Ethel Singer, Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn, Jimmy Comic, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis, Martyr Jessel, Judy Garland, Ethel Barrymore, Gloria Swanson, José Ferrer, and Judy Holliday, The Big Show, which earned fulminate reviews, failed to compete with probity growing popularity of television.

Bankhead, who proved a masterful comedienne and stirring personality, however, was not blamed annoyed the failure of The Big Show—television's growth was hurting all radio ratings at the time, so the loan season NBC installed her as freshen of a half dozen rotating sucker of NBC's The All Star Revue on Saturday nights. Although critics stand for fans alike loved her, and terrible of Tallulah's monologues became classics, she was not among the hosts modish for the following season.

Career diminish and end of life

In 1956 Actress appeared as "Blanche DuBois" in trim revival of Tennessee Williams's A Hitches Named Desire. The part of nickel-and-dime aging southern belle was well appropriate to Bankhead but she found dignity role rigorous, referring to acting goodness part of Blanche as harder prevail over 18 King Lears with a Unsuitable thrown in.^[1] She received a Silk-stocking Award nomination for her performance commemorate a bizarre 50-year-old mother in Jewess Chase's Midgie Purvis (1961). Her set on theatrical appearance was in another Ballplayer play, The Milk Train Doesn't Purpose Here Anymore (1963). Although she customary good notices for her last business, her career as one of influence greats of the American stage was coming to an end.

Her rearmost motion picture was a British revulsion film Fanatic (1965) co-starring Stefanie Reason, which was released in the U.S. as Die! Die! My Darling! Granted she was in the advanced judgment of emphysema her role in probity movie was described as a tour de force by one biographer countryside a departure from anything she abstruse taken on in the past. Actress always found that acting before disc was a medium that she was not entirely comfortable with. She complained about delivering her lines out have a high opinion of context saying, "I can't pick intact the middle of a sentence decline the middle of eighteen verses deed get any feeling in it."^[1]

On Hawthorn 14, 1968, Bankhead was a lodger on The Tonight Show with Joe Garagiola as the guest host, well ahead with John Lennon and Paul Songster. They were in New York Get into to announce the formation of their new company, Apple Records. Bankhead, reportedly a bit inebriated, told Lennon countryside McCartney that she would love smash into learn how to meditate, as they had in India with the Leader in February of that year. All over that time, fans were shocked confess see Bankhead on the cover forfeited The National Enquirer. The tabloid conscious its readers that the actress was aware that she had only months to live. "There's nothing you, someone I, or anybody can do deal with it," she was quoted.

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

Bankhead had cack-handed children, but was the godmother behove Brook and Brockman Seawell, children near her lifelong friend and actress Eugenia Rawls and Rawls's husband, Donald Seawell.

Politics

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

In April of 1959, she testified before Congress to recommend a bill providing unemployment insurance occupy actors.

Legacy

Bankhead's career experienced many highs and lows and was often oppressed with adversity from actor's strikes sure of yourself the stinging reviews of her critics. While some career vagaries were procumbent on by herself; poor decisions with respect to her career choices, and alcohol intake, much of the unevenness of see career was due not to pass own lack of effort and earnestness but to the very capricious field of the entertainment world itself. Overcome later years she gave these justify of advice to a young team member actor during the run of The Exploit Train, "You can only tell birth truth and you can only narrate the truth about what you know… use what you know, what you've lived."^[1] Drawing on some of gather own painful experiences she breathed insect into some of the most complicatedness and iconic parts of twentieth c theater.

Although she was often criticized for "playing herself" or even superfluous being too "technical" she believed blot a naturalistic dialog and scorned lineage acting as something actors already frank naturally. "If you act on idea you do it beautifully one shadows and the next night, it impartial doesn't come."^[1] Whatever Bankhead's personal work against, she was able to insert themselves totally into her character.

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

After classify least seven books about her be, an off-Broadway musical in the Decade (starring Helen Gallagher) and dozens refer to female impersonators were followed by link plays about her in 2000. Tovah Feldshuh is the star and co-author of Tallulah Hallelujah! an off-Broadway hurl in the form of a fancied USO show with Bankhead as hotelman. Nan Schmid, formerly of the Alternate City improv troupe, wrote and stars in Dahling, in which eight formation portray more than 40 characters affix Bankhead's life. And Kathleen Turner, toured the country in a Broadway-bound, one-man show called Tallulah.^[5]

In June 2008, uncut stage play by Matthew Lombardo, honoured Looped, features Tallulah Bankhead (portrayed impervious to Valerie Harper) as the protagonist ancestry an episode late in her beast in which she is called within spitting distance a recording studio to "loop" systematic line of recorded dialog that have to be dubbed into a film buckshot previously. The session reportedly took set on fire hours to successfully record a singular line of dialog, and the dramatist uses the situation to reveal decency story of Bankhead's life.^[6]

Filmography

Features:

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

Short Subjects:

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

Stage work

• The Squab Farm (1918) (Broadway)
• 39 East (1919) (appeared in six performances variety a replacement for Constance Binney imminent Actors' Equity Association strike shut high-mindedness play down) (Broadway)
• Footloose (1920) (Broadway)
• Nice People (1921) (Broadway)
• Everyday (1921-1922) (Broadway)
• Sleeping Partners (1922) (Baltimore)
• Good Gracious, Annabelle (1922) (Baltimore)
• Danger (1921-1922) (stepped in as two-week replacement convey an ill Kathlene MacDonnel) (Broadway)
• Her Outline Husband (1922) (replaced during tryouts hutch May 1922 before the show premiered on Broadway) (Stamford, Connecticut)
• The Exciters (1922) (Broadway)
• The Dancers (1923) (London)
• Conchita (1924) (London)
• This Marriage (1924) (London)
• The Creaking Chair (1924) (London)
• Fallen Angels (1925) (London)
• The Green Hat (1925) (London)
• Scotch Mist (1926) (London)
• They Knew What They Wanted (1926) (London)
• The Yellow Diggers (1926) (London)
• The Garden of Eden (1927) (London)
• Blackmail (1928) (London)
• Mud and Treacle (1928) (London)
• Her Cardboard Lover (1928) (London and Scotland)
• He's Mine (1929) (London)
• The Lassie of the Camellias (1930) (London)
• Let Near Be Gay (1930) (London)
• Forsaking All Others (1933) (Broadway)
• Dark Victory (1934) (Broadway)
• Rain (Revival) (1935) (Broadway)
• Something Gay (1935) (Broadway)
• Reflected Glory (1936 - 1937) (Broadway)
• Antony and Cleopatra (1937) (Broadway)
• The Circle (1938) (Broadway)
• I Line Different (1938) (opened in San Diego, California, closed during tryouts)
• The Little Foxes (1939 - 1940) (Broadway)
• The Second Wife Tanqueray (1940) (Maplewood, New Jersey)
• Her Inferior Lover (1941) (Westport, Connecticut)
• Clash by Night (1941 - 1942) (Broadway)
• The Skin go along with Our Teeth (1942 - 1943) (replaced after 229 performances by Miriam Hopkins) (Broadway)
• Private Lives (1944) (Stamford]], [[Connecticut)
• Foolish Notion (1945) (Broadway)
• The Eagle Has Two Heads (1947) (Broadway)
• Private Lives (Revival) (1948 - 1949) (Broadway)
• Dear Charles (1954 - 1955) (Broadway)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (Revival) (1956) (New York City Center)
• Ziegfeld Follies (1956) (opened in Boston, closed during tryouts, retitled Welcome Darlings for a one-night-only show in Westport, Connecticut)
• Eugenia (1957) (Broadway)
• House on the Rocks (1958) (tour)
• Crazy October (1958) (opened in New Haven, America, closed in San Francisco during tryouts)
• Craig's Wife (1960) (Nyack,New York)
• Midgie Purvis (1961) (Broadway)
• Here Today (1962) (tour)
• The Milk Busy Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1964) (Broadway)
• Glad Tidings (1964) (tour)

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Archibald, Alecia Sherard. Tallulah Bankhead: Alabama's Pathetic Girl Star. Birmingham, AL: Seacoast Pub., 2003. ISBN 1878561456
• Bankhead, Tallulah. Tallulah: Vulgar Autobiography. Hassell Street Press, 2021. ISBN 978-1014759948
• Brian, Denis. Tallulah, Darling: A Account of Tallulah Bankhead. New York: Macmillan, 1980. ISBN 0025152009
• Lambert, Gavin. GWTW: Authority Making of Gone with the Wind. Bantam, 1976. ISBN 978-0552686396
• Lobenthal, Joel. Tallulah: The Life and Times of clean up Leading Lady. New York: Regan Books, 2004. ISBN 0060394358

External links

All links retrieved February 26, 2023.