Bankhead

Tallulah died 40 years ago today.

Tallulah Bankhead's acting career was never as successful on screen as it was on stage. After many attempts at a Hollywood hit she saw some of her most significant stage roles performed on screen by Bette Davis. Davis won an Oscar for her part in Jezebel and won an Academy Award for playing Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes, roles that Tallulah had originated.
Tallulah moved to London in 1923 and for the next several years she was the most popular actress in the West End. She took a lot of drugs, chain smoked and would even take her clothes off and chat in the nude. Her voracious sexual appetite included affairs with Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and claims she slept with Barbara Stanwyck.
“My daddy warned me about men and booze but he didn’t say a word about women and cocaine!” she once famously said. In 1950 she became Mistress of Ceremonies for the radio programme The Big Show. Tallulah became the object of the show’s humour, often laughing at her fondness for bourbon, growing old and her diminishing sexual appeal.
On 12 December 1968 Tallulah died of pneumonia in New York leaving a legacy with her famous phrase, “Hello, Dahling”.

Here are some of my favorite Tallulah-isms:
I’m as pure as the driven slush.
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It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
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If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
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I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late start without me.
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They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.
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I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.
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The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.
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Never practice two vices at once.