Today is the 121st birthday of Tallulah Bankhead. She was a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed broad who’s brilliance may very well have been in being Tallulah Bankhead. She is what the world needed: a smart, quick-witted shit-kicker that made us laugh uncomfortably at her brave observations and truths. Watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat if you get a chance. The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.
NAME: Tallulah Brockman Bankhead
OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Theater Actress
BIRTH DATE: January 31, 1902
DEATH DATE: December 12, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH: Hunstville, Alabama
PLACE OF DEATH: New York City, New York
REMAINS: Buried, Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Chestertown, MD
HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME 6141 Hollywood Blvd (motion pictures)
BEST KNOWN FOR: Tullulah Bankhead was an American stage and film actress, popular from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Born to a prestigious family (her father became a prominent congressman), she made her Broadway debut in 1918 and achieved fame on the London stage in The Dancer (1923). Her vivid presence and throaty voice contributed to her singular performances in the hit plays The Little Foxes (1939), The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), and Private Lives (1946). She made films such as A Woman’s Law (1928) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944) but remained primarily a stage performer. Her final stage appearance was in The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1964).
Say anything about me, darling, as long as it isn’t boring.
Tallulah Bankhead died in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia, complicated by emphysema and malnutrition, at 7:45 A.M. on December 12, 1968, aged 66. She was buried in Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Chestertown, Maryland. Her last coherent words reportedly were “Codeine… bourbon.”
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Tallulah Bankhead has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6141 Hollywood Blvd.
Rock star Suzi Quatro portrayed Bankhead in a musical named Tallulah Who? in 1991. The musical was based on a book by Willie Rushton. Quatro co-wrote the music with Shirlie Roden. The show ran from 14 February to 9 March at The Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, UK and received favourable reviews.
Valerie Harper starred as Bankhead in Looped, which originated at The Pasadena Playhouse. It opened on Broadway on March 14, 2010 at the Lyceum Theatre, and closed on April 11, 2010.
It’s the good girls that keep diaries. Bad girls never have the time.
Other actresses to portray Bankhead include Eugenia Rawls (in her one-woman stage show “Tallulah, A Memory”), Kathleen Turner (in Sandra Ryan Heyward’s one-woman touring show “Tallulah” in the late 1990s), Carrie Nye (on television in The Scarlett O’Hara War) and Helen Gallagher in an off-Broadway musical, Tallulah!
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
The Daydreamer (Jun-1966) [VOICE]
Die! Die! My Darling! (21-Mar-1965)
Main Street to Broadway (13-Oct-1953) · Herself
A Royal Scandal (26-Mar-1945)
Lifeboat (11-Jan-1944) · Constance Porter
Stage Door Canteen (24-Jun-1943) · Herself
Faithless (15-Oct-1932) · Carol Morgan
Devil and the Deep (12-Aug-1932)
The Cheat (28-Nov-1931)
My Sin (26-Sep-1931)
Tarnished Lady (2-May-1931)
Waldina 