Home > Tallulah Bankhead

Daughter of William Brockman Bankhead (1874-1940, United States House of Representatives ( Democratic Party representing Alabama) 1917-1940, Speaker Speaker 1936-1940), niece of John H. Bankhead II (1872-1946, United States Senate (D-Alabama) 1931-1946), granddaughter of John H. Bankhead (1842-1920, US Senate (D-Alabama) 1907-1920).

At 15, Tallulah Bankhead won a movie-magazine beauty contest & convinced her family to let her move to New York. She quickly won bit parts, and made her major role debut at 18 in The Squab Farm.

During these early New York years, she became a peripheral member of the Algonquin Round Table and known as a hard-partying girl-about-town. She also became known for her wit, although as screenwriter Anita LoosAnita Loos ( April 26, 1889 August 18, 1981) was an acclaimed American screenwriter, playwright and author. She was born Corinne Anita Loos in Sisson, California, though the family lived in Etna, the second child of Richard Beers Loos ( October 4, 1860- M, another minor Roundtable member said: "She was so pretty that we thought she must be stupid."

In 1923, she made her debut on the LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri stage, where she was to appear in over a dozen plays in the next eight years. Famous as an actress, she was famous, too, for her drinking, drug taking, and many affairs with men and women. By the end of the decade, she was one of the West End 's -- and EnglandEngland is the largest, the most populous, and the most densely populated of the four " Home Nations" which make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). Occupying the south-eastern portion of the island of Great Britain, England's -- best-known celebrities.

She returned to US in 1931 to be Paramount Picture 's "next Marlene DietrichMarie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich ( December 27, 1901 May 6, 1992) was a German actress and singer. Born in Schoneberg, Berlin, Dietrich played the violin before joining an acting school in 1921, making her film debut the following year. After playing in", but Hollywood success eluded her in her first four films of the 30s. Critics agree that her acting was flat and that she was unable to dominate the camera -- and that she was generally outclassed by Dietrich, Carole LombardCarole Lombard ( October 6, 1908 January 16, 1942) was an American actress. She was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She made her film debut at the age of 12 in A Perfect Crime ( 1921) (There has been some speculation that she was actually a, et al.

Nevertheless, David O. SelznickDavid Oliver Selznick ( May 10, 1902 June 22, 1965), was an influential Hollywood producer, best known for producing the epic blockbuster Gone With the Wind ( 1939) which earned him an Oscar. He also produced the famous classic The Third Man. He was born called her the "first choice among established stars" to play Scarlett O'HaraKatie Scarlett O'Hara the main protagonist of the novel Gone With the Wind is a pretty, coquettish Southern belle who grows up on the Georgia plantation of Tara in the years before the American Civil War. Selfish, shrewd and vain, Scarlett inherits the st.

Polled, moviegoers thought otherwise. Her screen test for Gone with the Wind put her out of the running for good -- Selznick decided that she was too old (at 34) for Scarlett's antebellum scenes (One also wonders if the cynical Bankhead could have played "Fiddle-Dee-Dee" Scarlett with anything approaching a straight face).

Returning to Broadway, Tallulah's career stalled in unmemorable plays until she played Regina in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939). Her portrayal won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Performance. More success and the same award followed her 1942 performance in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth.

In 1944, Alfred Hitchcock cast her as journalist and cynic Constance Porter in Lifeboat. The performance is widely acknowledged as her best on film, and won her the New York Screen Critics Award.

Bankhead continued to perform in the 1950s and 1960s, on Broadway, in the occasional film, as a highly-popular radio show ost, and in the new medium of television. Her appearance as herself on The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Comedy Hour in 1957 as "The Neighbor Next Door" -- drunk, according to Lucille Ball -- is a cult favorite as is her role as the Black Widow on television's Batman.

But her career was in decline by the mid-1950s. Her outrageous behavior -- fueled by a two-bottle-a-day consumption of Old Grand Dad -- continued unabated. And behavior that was endearingly wicked in a flapper starlet of the Twenties was wearyingly vulgar in an aging, falling star in the Sixties. Bankhead never faded from the public eye, but was increasingly a caricature of her former self.

Tallulah Bankhead died in New York City of pneumonia arising from influenza, complicated further by emphysema, in December 1968.

She was married only once, to actor John Emery from 1937-1941.