Who was Tallulah Bankhead?
Decades after her heyday in the 1920s and
1930s, self-described “ambisextrous” stage and screen star Tallulah
Bankhead is as famous for her bad-girl antics as for her acting
talent.Bankhead was born to a prominent political family in Huntsville,
Alabama, on January 31, probably in 1903 (the year is subject to debate);
her mother died shortly thereafter from childbirth complications. Seeking
to keep his two unruly daughters out of trouble, her father, a U.S.
Congressman, sent them to convent schools, but these proved conducive
venues for Bankhead’s first sexual experiences with other girls.
Though plump and plain as a child, Bankhead
blossomed as an adolescent; at age 15, she won a movie magazine beauty
contest with a prize of a small film role. Chaperoned by an aunt, she took
up residence at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, a favored haunt of
the Broadway elite. There, Bankhead was seduced by renowned actress Eva Le
Gallienne and met Estelle Winwood, an older English actress who would
become a life-long friend and sometime lover. Bankhead also counted among
her liaisons British student Napier Alington and jazz great Billie
Holiday, but she turned down a casting couch invitation from John
Barrymore.
Breakthrough acting success eluded Bankhead
in New York, and in 1923 she moved to London on the advice of an
astrologer. There, she quickly achieved fame, especially among young
working-class women. Over the next eight years she appeared in two dozen
West End plays, which were wildly popular with fans, if not always
acclaimed by critics. Documents declassified in 2000 revealed that the
British intelligence service investigated her—groundlessly, it turned
out—for allegedly seducing a group of Eton schoolboys.
Bankhead earned considerable income, but
spent profligately; by the end of the decade, she was broke and accepted a
contract offer from Paramount Studios. In Hollywood, she hosted parties at
her mansion that were said to have “no boundaries,” and she attended
shindigs at lesbian actress Alla Nazimova’s lavish Garden of Allah
estate. An emergency hysterectomy due to advanced gonorrhea did little to
curb her omnivorous sexual appetite. “My daddy warned me about men and
booze,” she famously quipped, “but he never mentioned a word about
women and cocaine.” Bankhead had flings with Gary Cooper
and—allegedly—with Marlene Dieterich, but Greta Garbo apparently
spurned her advances. Upon meeting Joan Crawford, who was then married to
Douglas Fairbanks Jr., she remarked, “I’ve had an affair with your
husband. You’ll be next.”
Though Bankhead often bragged about her
sexual conquests, many believed she exaggerated for the sake of publicity.
Indeed, her comments suggested that she did not particularly enjoy sex.
“The conventional position makes me claustrophobic,” she once said,
“and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.” Regarding
Bankhead’s orientation, long-time companion Patsy Kelly—one of the
first actresses to come out as a lesbian— said “mostly it depended on
Tallulah’s mood... When she’d get caught up with a man, she’d go
quite hetero on us.”
Bankhead married once, to actor John Emery
in 1937, but they divorced four years later with no children. She then
bought an estate in Westchester County, where she lived for extended
periods with Winwood and with Kelly. She also surrounded herself with
numerous pets and her “caddies”—young men who mixed her drinks, lit
her constant cigarettes, and sometimes provided sexual services. Following
in her father’s footsteps, she became increasingly involved in politics,
campaigning for Democratic candidates and supporting both anti-Nazi and
anti-Communist causes.
Bankhead disliked movie acting, and her
larger-than-life style was better suited to the stage than the screen.
After making several unsuccessful Hollywood films, she returned to acting
on Broadway and with national touring companies, receiving critical
acclaim for her performances in The Little Foxes (1939) and The Skin of
Our Teeth (1942). Though bitterly disappointed at being passed over for
the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, she still took on
occasional movie projects, including her most famous role as a shipwrecked
journalist in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944).
In the early 1950s, Bankhead emceed The Big
Show, a popular variety program on NBC Radio; when radio gave way to
television, she appeared as a guest on shows such as The Lucy-Desi Comedy
Hour. She also starred in a one-woman Las Vegas nightclub act and wrote a
best-selling autobiography. But as Bankhead aged, her years of hard
drinking and drug use caught up with her, and she became a caricature of
her former self. Many of her gay male fans failed to take her efforts
seriously, laughing through her performance as Blanche DuBois in a 1956
revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Before her death from pneumonia in 1968,
Bankhead’s final roles were intentionally absurd, including turns as a
demented mother in the British horror flick Fanatic (1965)—retitled Die!
Die! My Darling! in the United States—and as the Black Widow on the
Batman television series. When producer William Dozier explained his
vision for the latter role, she reportedly replied, “Don’t talk to me
about camp, dahling, I invented it!”
Liz Highleyman is a freelance writer and
editor who has written widely on health, sexuality, and politics. She can
be reached care of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth or at PastOut@qsyndicate.com.
For further reading:
Bret, David. 1997. Tallulah Bankhead: A
Scandalous Life (Robson Books).
Lobenthal, Joe. 2004. Tallulah! The Life
and Times of a Leading Lady (HarperCollins).
McLellan, Diana. 2000. The Girls: Sappho
Goes to Hollywood (Robson Books).
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