CAMP Memories: Rehoboth's Gay History

Still Searching for the Tallulah Connection

To this day, there are yellowing posters at the Rehoboth Art League advertising a one-woman show featuring an actress paying homage to stage, screen and gossip column legend Tallulah Bankhead. But what’s the real Tallulah connection?

Back in 2000, one of our history columns noted that “lore has it that the Dupont property, which sat ocean front at Silver Lake, was where it all began. According to one Rehoboth resident, it seems that Louisa Dupont Carpenter, while married to a prominent businessman, was a flamboyant and very independent woman who enjoyed the lesbian lifestyle. An aviatrix and adventurer, Carpenter was a great friend of the Broadway and Hollywood star Tallulah Bankhead. Louisa, Tallulah and many of their male friends gathered in Rehoboth in the late 1930s and 40s at the family estate between Silver Lake and the Atlantic Ocean.”

In a recent conversation with unofficial Rehoboth historian Evelyn Dick Thoroughgood, we learned more.

“Oh, yes,” recalls Evelyn, “Louisa D’A Carpenter entertained many Hollywood celebrities in the 1930s at the Carpenter compound. She was a very attractive woman who was gay. She had no children herself, but she adopted a son, Ronny Carpenter.”

Evelyn’s uncle, T.R. Dick was a caretaker at Isabell Dupont Sharp’s estate adjacent to the one where many of the rich and famous gathered. “My brother and I existed on the periphery of great wealth,” Evelyn says with a smile.

Louisa was a humanitarian and a philanthropist, says Evelyn, “and we knew that all these famous people were visiting, but we never saw them. We knew they were here, but that was it.”

Evelyn also recalls that while there was no airport here during the Depression era, the area that is now Robinson Road across Silver Lake used to be a huge open field-and it was very close to the Carpenter compound. Small airplanes (“Piper Cubs” says Evelyn) used to land, bringing the Hollywood set to town.

But now the mystery deepens. Evelyn says she’s also been told that a home in Henlopen Acres (37 Pine Reach) used to belong to Tallulah herself. A family who recently sold the property noted that their grandparents bought the home from Tallulah-and there were clippings and photos of Tallulah in the attic to prove it. “There were only a few houses there back then,” says Evelyn, of the lower part of Henlopen Acres, “and the area was known as Pig Pen Pond because of its location on former farmland.”

A press release of a few years ago from the Delaware Liberty Fund, noted that a party was to be held in Henlopen Acres at the former home of actress Tallulah Bankhead and Louisa Dupont Carpenter.” Now that’s pretty specific. What we do know for sure is that Tallulah and Louisa were not just buddies at the beach. When Tallulah published her autobiography in the 1950s her publisher held a book party for her at the Pen and Pencil Club in New York. In a 1972 book about Tallulah by Brendan Gill, (in which, by the way, he dealt very frankly about her sexuality) he writes “Tallulah was at her noisy worst at parties of this sort. She was expected to get drunk and sing and shout and talk dirty and exchange broad insults and broader compliments and so she did.”

A New York Daily News article two days later noted “It was a champagne supper given for the actress-author -midnight Saturday until 5:30 a.m. yesterday.” The article noted “that among the guests were “Tallulah’s little sister Eugenie, with a close friend Louisa Carpenter Dupont.”

”Well,” says Evelyn, “in Louisa’s time, we vaguely knew that she was gay, but nobody talked about it. You just didn’t.”

The final clue in our search for Tallulah’s Rehoboth connection came directly from Tallulah herself. In her will, which was published in Brendan Gill’s book, it notes, among other bequests, “To Louisa Carpenter, my pink shell brooch with gold and diamonds.”

Anybody interested in doing a title search on the Henlopen Acres house?????

Can you tell us more about these and other Gay Rehoboth memories? Rehoboth residents and visitors wishing to contribute their recollections, photos or printed matter may contact Fay Jacobs at Camp Rehoboth or CampoutReho@aol.com. We’d love to hear from you!