83 Facts About Tallulah Bankhead

1.

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an American actress.

2.

Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead appeared in several prominent films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.

3.

Tallulah Bankhead had a brief but successful career on radio and made appearances on television.

4.

Tallulah Bankhead was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981.

5.

Tallulah Bankhead was a member of the Tallulah Bankhead and Brockman family, a prominent Alabama political family.

6.

Tallulah Bankhead supported foster children and helped families escape the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

7.

Tallulah Bankhead struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction; she reportedly smoked 120 cigarettes a day and talked openly about her vices.

8.

Tallulah Bankhead openly had a series of relationships with both men and women.

9.

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was born on January 31,1902, in Huntsville, Alabama, to William Brockman Bankhead and Adelaide Eugenia "Ada" Bankhead ; her great-great-grandfather, James Bankhead was born in Ulster, Ireland, and settled in South Carolina.

10.

Tallulah Bankhead's father hailed from the Bankhead-and-Brockman political family, active in the Democratic Party of the South in general and of Alabama in particular.

11.

Tallulah Bankhead's father was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1936 to 1940.

12.

Tallulah Bankhead was the niece of Senator John H Bankhead II and granddaughter of Senator John H Bankhead.

13.

Tallulah Bankhead's 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.

14.

Tallulah Bankhead was prone to throwing tantrums, rolling around the floor, and holding her breath until she was blue in the face.

15.

Tallulah Bankhead was described as a performer and an exhibitionist from the beginning, discovering at an early age that theatrics gained her the attention she desired.

16.

Tallulah Bankhead claimed that her "first performance" was witnessed by none other than the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur.

17.

The girls were not really tamed by the schools as both Eugenia and Tallulah Bankhead went on to have a lot of relationships and affairs during their lives.

18.

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 Bankhead was a stronger and even more rebellious personality, who sought a career in acting, was into lust in her relationships even more than love, and showed no particular interest in marrying, although she did marry actor John Emery in 1937, a marriage which ended in divorce in 1941.

19.

At 15, Tallulah 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.

20.

Tallulah Bankhead learned that she was one of the winners while browsing the magazine at her local drugstore.

21.

Congressman William Tallulah Bankhead sent in a letter to the magazine with her duplicate photo.

22.

Tallulah Bankhead 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.

23.

Tallulah Bankhead was dubbed one of the "Four Riders of the Algonquin", consisting of Bankhead, Estelle Winwood, Eva Le Gallienne, and Blyth Daly.

24.

Three of the four were non-heterosexual: Tallulah Bankhead and Daly were bisexuals, and Le Gallienne was a lesbian.

25.

Tallulah Bankhead met Ethel Barrymore, who attempted to persuade her to change her name to Barbara.

26.

In 1919, after roles in three other silent films, When Men Betray, Thirty a Week, and The Trap, Tallulah Bankhead made her stage debut in The Squab Farm at the Bijou Theatre in New York.

27.

Tallulah Bankhead soon realized her place was on stage rather than screen, and had roles in 39 East, Footloose, Nice People, Everyday, Danger, Her Temporary Husband, and The Exciters.

28.

Tallulah Bankhead had been in New York for five years, but had yet to score a significant hit.

29.

Tallulah Bankhead was not very competent with directions and constantly found herself lost in the London streets.

30.

For example, in her autobiography, Tallulah Bankhead described the opening night of a play called Conchita:.

31.

Tallulah Bankhead returned to the United States in 1931, but Hollywood success eluded her in her first four films of the 1930s.

32.

Tallulah Bankhead rented a home at 1712 Stanley Street in Hollywood and began hosting parties that were said to "have no boundaries".

33.

Tallulah 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.

34.

In 1933, while performing in Jezebel, Tallulah Bankhead nearly died following a five-hour emergency hysterectomy due to gonorrhea, which she claimed she had contracted from either Gary Cooper or George Raft.

35.

Tallulah 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.

36.

Selznick sent Kay Brown to Tallulah Bankhead to discuss the possibility of Tallulah Bankhead playing brothel owner Belle Watling in the film, which she turned down.

37.

Tallulah Bankhead was said to want a portion of one performance's proceeds to go to Finnish relief, and Hellman objected strenuously, and the two women did not speak for the next quarter of a century, eventually reconciling in late 1963.

38.

Nevertheless, Tallulah Bankhead called the character of Regina in Hellman's play "the best role I ever had in the theater".

39.

Tallulah Bankhead appeared in a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives, taking it on tour and then to Broadway for the better part of two years.

40.

Tallulah Bankhead was director Irving Rapper's first choice for the role of Amanda in the film version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.

41.

Tallulah Bankhead was absolutely natural, so moving, so touching without even trying.

42.

In 1953, Tallulah Bankhead was enticed into appearing in a stage act at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.

43.

Around this time, Tallulah Bankhead began to attract a passionate and highly loyal following of gay men, some of whom she employed as help when her lifestyle began to take a toll on her, affectionately calling them her "caddies".

44.

Tallulah Bankhead played herself in the classic episode titled "The Celebrity Next Door".

45.

Lucille Ball was reportedly a fan of Tallulah Bankhead and did a good impression of her.

46.

Tallulah Bankhead refused to listen to the director and she did not like rehearsing.

47.

In 1956, Tallulah Bankhead appeared as Blanche DuBois in a revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

48.

Tallulah 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.

49.

Tallulah Bankhead received glowing reviews, but the play suffered from numerous rewrites and failed to last beyond a month.

50.

Tallulah Bankhead 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.

51.

Tallulah Bankhead took heavy painkillers, but these dried her mouth, and most critics thought that Bankhead's line readings were unintelligible.

52.

Tallulah Bankhead had come from her hotel wearing a mink coat slung over a pair of lounging pyjamas, and she leaned heavily on my arm as I supported her to the lift.

53.

Tallulah Bankhead's eyes were still fine, and there was still beauty in the bone structure of her face beneath the wrinkles and ravages of hard living.

54.

Tallulah Bankhead's hands shook, and when she wished to go to the loo she had to ask Monica Chapman to accompany her to help her with her clothing.

55.

Tallulah Bankhead called the B-movie horror flick "a piece of shit", though her performance in it was praised by critics and remains popular as a cult film and with her fans.

56.

Tallulah Bankhead appeared in NBC's famous lost Tonight Show Beatles interview that aired on May 14,1968.

57.

Tallulah Bankhead was an avid baseball fan whose favorite team was the New York Giants.

58.

Tallulah Bankhead supported civil rights and strongly opposed racism and segregation.

59.

In Democratic primaries and campaigns of later years, Bankhead supported Estes Kefauver in 1952, Adlai Stevenson II in 1956, John F Kennedy in 1960, Lyndon B Johnson in 1964 and Eugene McCarthy in 1968.

60.

Tallulah Bankhead married actor John Emery on August 31,1937, at her father's home in Jasper, Alabama.

61.

Tallulah Bankhead filed for divorce in Reno, Nevada, in May 1941.

62.

Tallulah Bankhead had no children, but she had four abortions before she had a hysterectomy in 1933, when she was 31.

63.

Tallulah Bankhead was the godmother of Brook and Brockman Seawell, children of her lifelong friend, actress Eugenia Rawls and husband Donald Seawell.

64.

An interview that Tallulah Bankhead gave to Motion Picture magazine in 1932 generated controversy.

65.

Tallulah Bankhead immediately telegraphed her father, vowing never to speak with a magazine reporter again.

66.

Tallulah Bankhead was at the top of the list with the heading: "Verbal Moral Turpitude".

67.

In 1934, Tallulah Bankhead had an affair with the artist Rex Whistler who, according to his biographer Anna Thomasson, lost his virginity to her at the age of 29.

68.

Tallulah Bankhead moved into 230 East 62nd Street in the late 1950s, and then to a co-op at 333 East 57th Street.

69.

Tallulah Bankhead died at St Luke's Hospital in Manhattan on December 12,1968, at age 66.

70.

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

71.

Tallulah Bankhead is regarded as one of the great stage actresses of the 20th century, acclaimed for her natural eloquence and dynamism.

72.

Tallulah Bankhead 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".

73.

The critic Brooks Atkinson was more candid: "Since Miss Tallulah Bankhead lived as she wanted to, there is no point in deploring the loss of a talented actress".

74.

Decades of sustained interest in Tallulah Bankhead eventually realized itself in a renewed appreciation for her body of work.

75.

Tallulah Bankhead 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.

76.

Tallulah 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.

77.

Tallulah Bankhead was one of the original members of the American Theater Hall of Fame inducted upon its establishment in 1972.

78.

Tallulah 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.

79.

At the Algonquin Hotel, Tallulah Bankhead left prominent impressions upon playwrights such as Zoe Akins and Rachel Crothers.

80.

Tallulah Bankhead 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".

81.

The Tallulah Bankhead Theater was named in honour of her.

82.

Tallulah Bankhead left a lasting impact on American culture despite modern audiences being unfamiliar with the stage performances for which she was most acclaimed.

83.

Tallulah Bankhead remains far more prominent in the public imagination than contemporary Broadway actresses of her caliber, and due to her unique personality and often self-destructive behavior.