Happy Birthday, Talullah Bankhead

That very well may be my favorite image in Image History.

It’s from a scene in the extremely disturbing (even by modern standards) 1931 film The Cheat. Her character takes an upsetting phone-call during a costume party, where she un-ironically wears a rocket-blast headdress. The best part of the scene is that she is so upset, and the situation so urgent, that you forget the headdress. The phone call is played totally straight.

The Cheat is the movie where she is BRANDED on the breast – as though she were cattle – by a kimono-wearing psychopath.

Because that’s what sometimes happens in life.

An unforgettable actress with not too many film credits to her name, but a legend far surpassing her credit list. The stories about her are legion. Her stage credits are lengthy. She appeared in many Tennessee Williams’ productions, playing a series of his iconic heroines. She got some really bad reviews. She worked her ass off, in the face of very public humiliation. Her colleagues, in general, had a hell of a hard time working with her. She drove Tennessee Williams crazy. Elia Kazan despised her.

I recently posted an excerpt from her extremely entertaining autobiography, where she discusses her rabid devotion to the New York Giants.

It’s not every actress who would allow herself to be photographed drinking champagne out of her own shoe.

From Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia:

Tallulah Bankhead’s vocal judgement during a self-consciously advanced production of a play by Maeterlinck: “There’s less in this than meets the eye.”

That makes me LAUGH. How often do we say that about a work that proclaims its importance in artsy self-conscious ways? Bankhead nailed it.