Tallulah!: The Life and Times of a Leading Lady

543 Pages·2008·6.96 MB·English

by  Joel Lobenthal

“The word ‘legend’ gets tossed around so lightly these days that it’s a treat to
bite into the life of a real legend, Tallulah Bankhead, a sacred monster and
scandalizer who tore down the curtain between onstage and off. Idol of drag
queens, first countess of Camp, sexual devourer of men and women alike, she
drags her mink coat through the pages of Joel Lobenthal’s biography with the
bravura that made her a star. It’s all here, the extravagant highs and the lonesome
lows. Tallulah! earns its exclamation mark.”
—James Wolcott, Vanity Fair
“Joel Lobenthal conveys his passion for his subject on every page. . . .
Scrupulous. . . . Insightful. . . . Rewarding. . . . Kudos to Lobenthal for giving
[Bankhead’s] reputation a well-deserved makeover. . . . Move over Helen Hayes,
dah-ling; it’s time that Tallulah Bankhead unseated you as the twentieth-
century’s First Lady of the American Theatre.”
— Washington Post Book World
“[Lobenthal’s] exhaustively researched biography is the definitive, gloves-
off evocation of the life of the brazen stage-and-screen actress so roundly ahead
of her time.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Joel Lobenthal’s big new book . . . offers a tremendous reevaluation of
Bankhead. . . . There is much fun and many randy anecdotes here. . . .A nostalgic
reminder of an era.”
—Liz Smith, New York Post
“In this authoritative account of [her] life, Lobenthal succeeds in providing
ample evidence . . . that Tallulah Bankhead was one of the greatest stars of the
theater.”
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Though Lobenthal doesn’t skimp on the gossip (some of the anecdotes he’s
unearthed will make you reel), he also gives his subject her due as one of the
preeminent stage icons of the twentieth century. . . . Tallulah!offers a wildly
entertaining journey through nearly fifty years of American theater.”
— Time Out (New York)
“Wonderful . . . for anyone who is a real theater buff.”
— Bust magazine

Introduction

Photos

PART I: 1902–1930
Lace Curtains · Debutante · Making Her Way · “I’m a Lesbian. What Do
You Do?” · Madcaps in London · Naps · Risky Behavior · Modern Wives ·
Femme Fatale · Something Different · Skylarking · Sex Plays · Surveillance ·
Betrayals · Constrained by Crinolines · London Farewell
PART II: 1931–1939
Paramount · Hollywood · Gary Cooper and Others · “I Want a Man!” · Back
on Broadway · Disaster · Recovery · Jock · Getting Married · Cleopatra Pissed ·
Serving Time in Drawing Rooms · The Little Foxes
PART III: 1939–1950
Triumph · Tilting Her Lance · Losses · Drama by the Kitchen Sink ·
Multiple Personalities · Chatelaine · Work and Play · Flights of Fancy · Bested
by Brando · Public and Private Lives · Skidding
PART IV: 1950–1968
Mixed Highs and Lows · Stateless · Pearls Before Swine · The Hallelujah
Chorus · The Nadir · Halloween Madness · In Retreat · Last Train · Home to
London · Winding Down
Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Bibliography
Introduction
When I began to research the life of Tallulah Bankhead as a college freshman, little did I realize that
twenty-five years later this book would come to fruition. At that time I wasn’t really sure what kind of
project would eventually result. But after my first research trip to London in August 1978, I became
convinced that there was a need for a new appraisal of Tallulah that would acknowledge her often
paradoxical emotional, sexual, and intellectual dimensions while also studying in depth her fifty-year career
on stage, screen, radio, and television.
Armed with beauty, talent, intelligence, and social pedigree, Tallulah was a woman who lived without
boundaries. She was perhaps the most controversial actress of her time. Her behavior so challenged social
and moral conventions that the public’s reaction to her persona ultimately overshadowed her long and
varied career. The prejudice of Tallulah’s era has been perpetuated in the biographies written to date. The
conventional wisdom is still that her career was fatally compromised by her inability to do more than “play
herself.” But this is actually what most stars seem to do: repeating, with variations, a consistent theatrical
persona. We see this most obviously in film but also in the careers of great stage stars as well. Tallulah may
have blurred the borders, but the criticism of this tendency throughout her career was likely exacerbated by
disapproval of her offstage behavior.
I have attempted to avoid the moralistic tone that characterizes many chronicles of her career. The fact
that Tallulah chose to act in plays that were primarily personal vehicles has been interpreted as almost an
unforgivable sin. But this was again typical of most performers determined to be a success in commercial
theater. While the plays she picked were rarely great, I discovered as I read through many of the
unpublished scripts she had performed that they were more interesting and substantive than they have been
widely portrayed. Today they transmit as fascinating cultural artifacts. And Tallulah’s roles fit a consistent
profile that was emblematically alluring, humorous, autonomous, and unconventional.
Since most of these plays haven’t been staged since her final performance, I’ve attempted to recreate
them. Quotes from these scripts and her reviews evoke her stage work and reveal the widely mixed and
vehement responses she aroused. “The charge that they’re biased and prejudiced is of no consequence,”
Tallulah writes about critics in her autobiography. “Criticism is the distillation of bias and prejudice.”
To some extent, Tallulah’s behavior, inexplicably bizarre as it often seemed, can be traced to the
traumatic circumstances of her youth. Her mother died as a result of complications from her birth, while her
father was depressed and drunk during much of her early childhood. She responded to the baffling and
disruptive events of her childhood with a tyrannical need to control her environment. Tallulah and her sister
were locked in a take-no-prisoners rivalry for their father’s attention; this may in part explain their
compulsively seductive behavior with men. Tallulah became determined to win her family’s admiration by
becoming a theatrical star, thus fulfilling a dream that both her parents had been forced to give up. After her
father’s death, Tallulah clung to and broadcast the notion that he had been her guiding light during his life
and beyond—her autobiography is dedicated “For Daddy.” But rather than simply accept Tallulah’s publicly
expressed version of their relationship, as many writers have seemed to do, I looked directly at the letters
they exchanged, and much to my surprise the truth they contained was a very different one. Tallulah’s
worshipful postmortem surely was motivated in part by guilt over their troubled and in many ways
unresolved relationship.
Attempting to set the record straight is another reason to revisit her now.
Tallulah had many professional failures for a wide spectrum of reasons—not least of which, I am
convinced, was an underlying self-destructiveness fueled by guilt over her role in her mother’s death. Had
she been a different woman, she might have made more of her talent, but the fact remains that Tallulah was
not only one of the most colorful women of her time, she was also one of its most arresting theatrical
personas. Being able to finally chronicle what she did achieve, as well as what she could not, has been as
stimulating for me as I hope it will be to the reader.
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