Tallulah Bankhead facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Tallulah Bankhead
Bankhead in 1941
Born	Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (1902-01-31)January 31, 1902 Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.
Died	December 12, 1968(1968-12-12) (aged 66) New York City, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Saint Paul's Churchyard Kent County, Maryland, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1918–1968
Spouse(s)	John Emery ​ ​ (m. 1937; div. 1941)​
Parent(s)	William B. Bankhead (father)
Relatives	John H. Bankhead (paternal grandfather) John H. Bankhead II (paternal uncle) Walter W. Bankhead (cousin)

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was an American actress. Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead also appeared in several prominent films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). She also had a brief but successful career on radio and made appearances on television. In all, Bankhead amassed nearly 300 film, stage, television and radio roles during her career. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981.

Early life

Tallulah Bankhead aged 15 (second from left), with grandfather John H. Bankhead (far left), father William B. Bankhead (second from right), and elder sister Eugenia Bankhead (far right) circa 1917

"Sunset", the Bankhead house in Jasper, Alabama, where Tallulah and her sister grew up

Speaker of the House William B. Bankhead welcomes his famous daughter to his office in 1937

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was born on January 31, 1902, in Huntsville, Alabama, to William Brockman Bankhead and Adelaide Eugenia "Ada" Bankhead (née Sledge). "Tallu" was named after her paternal grandmother, who in turn was named after Tallulah Falls, Georgia. Her father hailed from the Bankhead-and-Brockman political family, active in the Democratic Party of the South in general and of Alabama in particular. Her father was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1936 to 1940. She was the niece of Senator John H. Bankhead II and granddaughter of Senator John H. Bankhead. Her mother, Adelaide "Ada" Eugenia, was a native of Como, Mississippi, and was engaged to another man when she met William Bankhead on a trip to Huntsville to buy her wedding dress. The two fell in love at first sight and were married on January 31, 1900, in Memphis, Tennessee. Their first child, Evelyn Eugenia (January 24, 1901 – May 11, 1979), was born two months prematurely and had some vision difficulties.

The following year, Tallulah was born on her parents' second wedding anniversary, on the second floor of what is now known as the Isaac Schiffman Building. A marker was erected to commemorate the site, and in 1980 the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Three weeks after Bankhead's birth, her mother died of blood poisoning (sepsis) on February 23, 1902. Coincidentally, her maternal grandmother had died giving birth to her mother. On her deathbed, Ada told her sister-in-law to "take care of Eugenia, Tallulah will always be able to take care of herself". Bankhead was baptized next to her mother's coffin.

William B. Bankhead, devastated by his wife's death, descended into bouts of depression. Consequently, Tallulah and her sister Eugenia were mostly reared by their paternal grandmother, Tallulah James Brockman Bankhead, at the family estate called "Sunset" in Jasper, Alabama. As a child, Bankhead was described as "extremely homely" and overweight, while her sister was slim and prettier. As a result, she did everything in her efforts to gain attention, and constantly sought her father's approval. After watching a performance at a circus, she taught herself how to cartwheel, and frequently cartwheeled about the house, sang, and recited literature that she had memorized. She was prone to throwing tantrums, rolling around the floor, and holding her breath until she was blue in the face. Her grandmother often threw a bucket of water on her to halt these outbursts.

Bankhead's famously husky voice (which she described as "mezzo-basso") was the result of chronic bronchitis due to childhood illness. She was described as a performer and an exhibitionist from the beginning, discovering at an early age that theatrics gained her the attention she desired. Finding she had a gift for mimicry, she entertained her classmates by imitating the schoolteachers. Bankhead claimed that her "first performance" was witnessed by none other than the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur. Her Aunt Marie gave the famous brothers a party at her home near Montgomery, Alabama, in which the guests were asked to entertain. "I won the prize for the top performance, with an imitation of my kindergarten teacher", Bankhead wrote. "The judges? Orville and Wilbur Wright." Bankhead also found she had a prodigious memory for literature, memorizing poems and plays and reciting them dramatically.

Tallulah and Eugenia's grandmother and aunt were beginning to find the girls difficult to handle. Their father William, who was working from their Huntsville home as a lawyer, proposed enrolling the girls in a convent school (although he was a Methodist and her mother an Episcopalian). In 1912, both girls were enrolled in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattanville, New York, when Eugenia was 11 and Tallulah was 10. As William's political career brought him to Washington, the girls were enrolled in a series of different schools, each one a step closer to Washington, D.C. When Bankhead was 15, her aunt encouraged her to take more pride in her appearance, suggesting that she go on a diet to improve her confidence. Bankhead quickly matured into a southern belle. The girls were not really tamed by the schools, however, as both Eugenia and Tallulah went on to have a lot of relationships and affairs during their lives. Eugenia was more of an old romantic as she got married at 16 and ended up marrying seven times to six different men during her life, while Tallulah was a stronger and even more rebellious personality, who sought a career in acting, and showed no particular interest in marrying, although she did marry actor John Emery in 1937, a marriage which ended in divorce in 1941.

Bankhead was also childhood friends with American socialite, later novelist, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, the wife of American author and expatriate F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Career

Beginnings in New York (1917–1922)

Bankhead as a teenager c. 1917

Bankhead c. 1917

At 15, Bankhead submitted her photo to Picture Play, which was conducting a contest and awarding a trip to New York plus a movie part to 12 winners based on their photographs. However, she forgot to send in her name or address with the picture. Bankhead learned that she was one of the winners while browsing the magazine at her local drugstore. Her photo in the magazine was captioned "Who is She?", urging the mystery girl to contact the paper at once. Congressman William Bankhead sent in a letter to the magazine with her duplicate photo.

Arriving in New York, Bankhead discovered that her contest win was fleeting: she was paid $75 for three weeks' work on Who Loved Him Best and had only a minor part, but she quickly found her niche in New York City. She soon moved into the Algonquin Hotel, a hotspot for the artistic and literary elite of the era, where she quickly charmed her way into the famed Algonquin Round Table of the hotel bar. She was dubbed one of the "Four Riders of the Algonquin", consisting of Bankhead, Estelle Winwood, Eva Le Gallienne, and Blyth Daly. At the Algonquin, Bankhead befriended actress Estelle Winwood. She also met Ethel Barrymore, who attempted to persuade her to change her name to Barbara. Bankhead declined, and Vanity Fair later wrote "she's the only actress on both sides of the Atlantic to be recognized by her first name only."

In 1919, after roles in three other silent films, When Men Betray (1918), Thirty a Week (1918), and The Trap (1919), Bankhead made her stage debut in The Squab Farm at the Bijou Theatre in New York. She soon realized her place was on stage rather than screen, and had roles in 39 East (1919), Footloose (1919), Nice People (1921), Everyday (1921), Danger (1922), Her Temporary Husband (1922), and The Exciters (1922). Though her acting was praised, the plays were commercially and critically unsuccessful. Bankhead had been in New York for five years, but had yet to score a significant hit. Restless, Bankhead moved to London.

Fame in Great Britain (1922–1931)

In 1923, she made her debut on the London stage at Wyndham's Theatre. She appeared in over a dozen plays in London over the next eight years, most famously in The Dancers and at the Lyric as Jerry Lamar in Avery Hopwood's The Gold Diggers. Her fame as an actress was ensured in 1924 when she played Amy in Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted. The show won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize.

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

While in London, Bankhead bought herself a Bentley, which she loved to drive. She was not very competent with directions and constantly found herself lost in the London streets. She would telephone a taxi-cab and pay the driver to drive to her destination while she followed behind in her car. During her eight years on the London stage and touring across Great Britain's theatres, Bankhead earned a reputation for making the most out of inferior material. For example, in her autobiography, Bankhead described the opening night of a play called Conchita:

In the second act. ... I came on carrying a monkey. ... On opening night, the monkey went berserk. ... (he) snatched my black wig from my head, leaped from my arms and scampered down to the footlights. There he paused, peered out at the audience, then waved my wig over his head. ... The audience had been giggling at the absurd plot even before this simian had at me. Now it became hysterical. What did Tallulah do in this crisis? I turned a cartwheel! The audience roared. ... After the monkey business I was afraid they might boo me. Instead I received an ovation.

Career in Hollywood (1931–1933)

Lobby card for Faithless

Devil and the Deep 1932 ad in The Film Daily

Bankhead returned to the United States in 1931, but Hollywood success eluded her in her first four films of the 1930s. She rented a home at 1712 Stanley Street in Hollywood (now 1712 North Stanley Avenue) and began hosting parties. Bankhead's first film was Tarnished Lady (1931), directed by George Cukor, and the pair became fast friends. Bankhead behaved herself on the set and filming went smoothly, but she found film-making to be very boring and did not have the patience for it. After over eight years of living in Great Britain and touring on their theatrical stages, she did not like living in Hollywood. Although Bankhead was not very interested in making films, the opportunity to make $50,000 per film was too good to pass up. Her 1932 movie Devil and the Deep is notable for the presence of three major co-stars, with Bankhead receiving top billing over Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, and Cary Grant; it is the only film with Cooper and Grant as the film's leading men although they share no scenes together. Later in 1932, Bankhead starred opposite Robert Montgomery in Faithless.

Return to Broadway (1933–1938)

Bankhead in 1934

Bankhead in 1940

Returning to Broadway, Bankhead worked steadily in a series of middling plays which were, ironically, later turned into highly successful Hollywood films starring other actresses. 1933's Forsaking All Others by Edward Barry Roberts and Frank Morgan Cavett was a modest success for Bankhead, running 110 performances, but the 1934 film version with Joan Crawford was one of that year's bigger financial and critical successes. Similarly, Bankhead's next two short-lived plays, Jezebel by Owen Davis and Dark Victory by George Brewer Jr. and Bertram Bloch, were both transformed into high-profile, prestigious film vehicles for Bette Davis.

Bankhead continued to play in various Broadway performances over the next few years, gaining excellent notices for her portrayal of Elizabeth in a revival of Somerset Maugham's The Circle. However, when she appeared in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra with her then-husband John Emery, the New York Evening Post critic John Mason Brown memorably carped "Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra – and sank."

From 1936 to 1938, David O. Selznick, producer of Gone with the Wind (1939), called Bankhead the "first choice among established stars" to play Scarlett O'Hara in the upcoming film. Although her 1938 screen test for the role in black-and-white was superb, she photographed poorly in Technicolor. Selznick also reportedly believed that at age 36, she was too old to play Scarlett, who is 16 at the beginning of the film (the role eventually went to Vivien Leigh).

Critical acclaim (1939–1945)

Regina and Sabina

Bankhead as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1939)

Her brilliant portrayal of the cold and ruthless, yet fiery Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939) won her Variety magazine's award for Best Actress of the Year. Bankhead as Regina was lauded as "one of the most electrifying performances in American theater history". During the run, she was featured on the cover of Life. Bankhead and playwright Hellman, both formidable women, feuded over the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland. Bankhead (a strong critic of communism from the mid 1930s onwards) was said to want a portion of one performance's proceeds to go to Finnish relief, and Hellman (a communist who had defended the Moscow Trials of 1936, and was a member of the Communist Party USA in 1938–40) objected strenuously, and the two women did not speak for the next quarter of a century, eventually reconciling in late 1963. Nevertheless, Bankhead called the character of Regina in Hellman's play "the best role I ever had in the theater".

Bankhead earned another Variety award and the New York Drama Critics' Award for Best Performance by an Actress followed her role in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, in which Bankhead played Sabina, the housekeeper and temptress, opposite Fredric March and Florence Eldridge (husband and wife offstage). About her work in Wilder's classic, the New York Sun wrote: "Her portrayal of Sabina has comedy and passion. How she contrives both, almost at the same time, is a mystery to mere man." She also clashed with Elia Kazan on The Skin of Our Teeth and during rehearsals of Clash by Night she called the producer, Billy Rose a "loathsome bully" who retorted, "How could anyone bully Niagara Falls?"

Lifeboat

Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) with Henry Hull

Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) with Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull, Bankhead, John Hodiak, Mary Anderson and Canada Lee

In 1944, Alfred Hitchcock cast her as cynical journalist Constance Porter in her most successful film, both critically and commercially, Lifeboat. Her superbly multifaceted performance was acknowledged as her best on film and won her the New York Film Critics Circle award. A beaming Bankhead accepted her New York trophy and exclaimed: "Dahlings, I was wonderful!"

Renewed success (1948–1952)

Bankhead appeared in a revival of Noël 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 close friend from the 1920s through Bankhead's lifetime.

In 1950, in an effort to cut into the rating leads of The Jack Benny Program and The Edgar Bergen and 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" Bankhead as its host, in which she acted not only as mistress of ceremonies, but also performed monologues (often written by Dorothy Parker) and songs. Despite Meredith Willson's Orchestra and Chorus and top guest stars from Broadway, Hollywood, and radio, The Big Show, which earned rave reviews, failed to do more than dent Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen's ratings. The next season, NBC installed her as one of a half-dozen rotating hosts of NBC's The All Star Revue on Saturday nights.

Late career (1952–1968)

Bankhead wrote a bestselling autobiography Tallulah: My Autobiography. (Harper & Bros., 1952) that was published in 1952. Though Bankhead's career slowed in the mid-1950s, she never faded from the public eye. Her highly public and often scandalous personal life began to undermine her reputation as a terrific actress, leading to criticism she had become a caricature of herself. Bankhead continued to perform in the 1950s and 1960s on Broadway, radio, television, and in the occasional film, even as her body got more and more frail from the mid 1950s up until her death in 1968.

In 1953, Bankhead was enticed into appearing in a stage act at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. She was paid a generous $20,000 per week for her appearances, reciting scenes from famous plays, reading poetry and letters that had the audience in stitches—and she even sang a bit. Las Vegas critics bet she would flop but she was a smash, and she came back to the Sands for three years.

Last years on stage

In 1956, Bankhead appeared as Blanche DuBois (a character inspired by her) in a revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). Williams had wanted Bankhead for the original production, but she turned it down. Tennessee Williams himself (they were close friends) called her Blanche "the worst I have seen", accusing her of ruining the role to appease her fans who wanted camp. She agreed with this verdict, and made an effort to conquer the audience which her own legend had drawn about her, giving a performance two weeks later of which he remarked: "I'm not ashamed to say that I shed tears almost all the way through and that when the play was finished I rushed up to her and fell to my knees at her feet. The human drama, the play of a woman's great valor and an artist's truth, her own, far superseded, and even eclipsed, to my eye, the performance of my own play." The director remarked that her performance exceeded those of Jessica Tandy and Vivien Leigh in the role. However, the initial reviews had decided the production's fate, and the producer pulled the plug after 15 performances.

Bankhead received a Tony Award nomination for her performance of a bizarre 50-year-old mother in the short-lived Mary Coyle Chase play Midgie Purvis (1961). It was a physically demanding role and Bankhead insisted on doing the stunts herself, including sliding down a staircase banister. She received glowing reviews, but the play suffered from numerous rewrites and failed to last beyond a month. Her last theatrical appearance was in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963), a revival of another Williams play, directed by Tony Richardson. She had suffered a severe burn on her right hand from a match exploding while she lit a cigarette, and it was aggravated by the importance of jewelry props in the play. She took heavy painkillers, but these dried her mouth, and most critics thought that Bankhead's line readings were unintelligible. As with Antony and Cleopatra, the nadir of her career, she only made five performances, and in the same unhappy theater.

New media

Her last motion picture was in a British horror film, Fanatic (1965). Fanatic was released in the U.S. as Die! Die! My Darling! For her role in Fanatic, she was paid $50,000. Her last appearances on television came in March 1967 as the villainous Black Widow in the Batman TV series, and in the December 17, 1967, episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour comedy-variety TV series, in the "Mata Hari" skit. She also appeared in NBC's famous lost Tonight Show Beatles interview that aired on May 14, 1968. Sitting behind the interview desk and beside Joe Garagiola, who was substituting for an absent Johnny Carson, she took an active role during the interview, questioning Paul McCartney and John Lennon. George Harrison and Ringo Starr were not present and were in England at the time, as noted during the interview.

Personal life

Bankhead was famous not only as an actress, but also for her compelling personality, and witticisms such as, "There is less to this than meets the eye." She was an extrovert, uninhibited and outspoken. She said that she "lived for the moment".

Bankhead was an avid baseball fan whose favorite team was the New York Giants. This was evident in one of her famous quotes, through which she gave a nod to the arts: "There have been only two geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare. But, darling, I think you'd better put Shakespeare first."

Marriage

Bankhead married actor John Emery on August 31, 1937, at her father's home in Jasper, Alabama. Bankhead filed for divorce in Reno, Nevada, in May 1941. It was finalized on June 13, 1941. The day her divorce became final, Bankhead told a reporter, "You can definitely quote me as saying there will be no plans for a remarriage."

Bankhead had no children. She was the godmother of Brook and Brockman Seawell, children of her lifelong friend, actress Eugenia Rawls and husband Donald Seawell.

Death

230 East 62nd Street, New York, New York

Bankhead moved into 230 East 62nd Street in the late 1950s, and then to a co-op at 333 East 57th Street (unit #13E).

Bankhead died at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan on December 12, 1968, at age 66. The cause of death was pleural double pneumonia. Her pneumonia was complicated by emphysema due to cigarette smoking and malnutrition, but it may also have been exacerbated by a strain of the flu which was endemic at that time. Her last coherent words reportedly were a garbled request for "codeine ... bourbon".

Despite claiming to be poor for much of her life, Bankhead left an estate valued at $2 million (equivalent to $16,830,622 in 2022).

On December 14, 1968, St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chestertown, Maryland held a private funeral; Bankhead was buried at St. Paul's cemetery.

On December 16, 1968, St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in New York City held a memorial service for Bankhead.

Credits

Stage

Filmography

Radio appearances

Legacy

Bankhead is regarded as one of the great stage actresses of the 20th century, acclaimed for her natural eloquence and dynamism. She excelled in both serious and comedic roles, and for over two decades, she was among the most celebrated actresses in Broadway or London's West End, praised in the superlative "perhaps the greatest actress this country has ever produced". For the most part, Bankhead was lauded even in her failed vehicles, and she was considered by critics to be a rare and unique talent. At the height of her career, she was a "living legend", Broadway's most original leading lady. Her eccentric personality was an asset to her career rather than a hindrance, but as years of hard living took their toll, her highly publicized and often scandalous private life began to undermine her reputation. Obituaries on her passing reflected on how far she had fallen from her former grandeur, à la John Barrymore. The critic Brooks Atkinson was more candid: "Since Miss Bankhead lived as she wanted to, there is no point in deploring the loss of a talented actress". However, the legend which had ruined her career made her an enormously popular icon in both the theatrical and especially the gay community. Decades of sustained interest in Bankhead eventually realized itself in a renewed appreciation for her body of work.

Awards and honors

Among Bankhead's awards were a New York Drama Critics Award for Best Performance by an actress in The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942, as well as a Variety award in The Little Foxes and Skin. She was nominated for a Tony award for her performance in Midgie Purvis, and won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress in a Film for her work in Lifeboat. Bankhead was the first white woman to be featured on the cover of Ebony magazine, and was one of the very few actresses and the only stage actress to have a cover on both Time and Life. In 1928, she was honored as one of the 10 most remarkable women in London. A resolution honoring her achievements was passed in the Alabama Legislature. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Bankhead has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6141 Hollywood Blvd. Bankhead was (posthumously) one of the original members of the American Theater Hall of Fame inducted upon its establishment in 1972.

In theatre

Bankhead earned her greatest acclaim for two classic roles she originated: Regina in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes and Sabina in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of our Teeth. At the Algonquin Hotel, Bankhead left prominent impressions upon playwrights such as Zoe Akins and Rachel Crothers. Crothers later wrote the play Everyday for Bankhead, and Akins patterned the character of Eva Lovelace in her play Morning Glory on Bankhead. She became good friends with Tennessee Williams, who was immediately struck upon meeting her, describing her as "result[ing] from the fantastic crossbreeding of a moth and a tiger". Williams wrote four female roles for her, Myra Torrance in Battle of Angels, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Princess Kosmonopolis in Sweet Bird of Youth, and Flora Goforth in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. A song in the 1937 musical I'd Rather Be Right, "Off the Record", contains the line "I'm not so fond of Bankhead, but I'd love to meet Tallulah". The Bankhead Theater (Livermore Performing Arts Center) has her namesake.

In art

A collection of 50 portraits of Bankhead in her London years is housed in the United Kingdom's National Portrait Gallery. Augustus John painted a portrait of Bankhead in 1929 which is considered one of his greatest pieces. Frank Dobson also sculpted a bust of Bankhead during her London period. The Library of Congress houses numerous works of Bankhead.

Biographies

Many books have been written about Bankhead's life. In chronological order, they are:

• Bankhead, Tallulah. Tallulah: My Autobiography. Harper & Bros., 1952.
• Gill, Brendan. Tallulah. Holt, London: Rinehart & Winston, 1972.
• Israel, Lee. Miss Tallulah Bankhead. New York: Putnam Pub Group, 1972.
• Tunney, Kieran. Tallulah: Darling of the Gods. New York: Dutton, 1973.
• Rawls, Eugenia. Tallulah, A Memory. University of Alabama Press, 1979.
• Brian, Denis. Tallulah, Darling: A Biography of Tallulah Bankhead. New York: Macmillan, 1980.
• Patrick, Pamela Cowie. Tallulah Bankhead: The Darling of the Theater. Huntsville: Writers Consortium Books, 1989.
• Carrier, Jeffrey. Tallulah Bankhead, A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
• Bret, David. Tallulah Bankhead: A Scandalous Life. New York: Robson Books/Parkwest, 1997.
• Lavery, Bryony. Tallulah Bankhead. Bath: Absolute Press, 1999.
• Archibald, Alecia Sherard. Tallulah Bankhead: Alabama's Bad Girl Star. Alabama: Seacoast Publishing, Inc., 2003
• Lobenthal, Joel. Tallulah!: The Life and times of a Leading Lady. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Tributes

A Tallulah Bankhead Tribute was held by the Walker County Arts Alliance in her hometown of Jasper, Alabama, on June 11–15, 2015. A similar tribute was held for a week at the University of Alabama in Birmingham in November 1977.

See also

In Spanish: Tallulah Bankhead para niños