Tallulah Bankhead

Marlene Dietrich called her ‘The most immoral woman who ever lived’, Cecil Beaton described her as a ‘wicked archangel’ . Born in Alabama in 1903, she became a big star in London in the early 1920′s. Branded ‘an unsafe and unsavory person’ by the Hays commission in the early 1930′s. In this highly entertaining book David Bret tells Tallulah’s story in the only way it could be told: with shocking honesty and wit. What emerges is a vivid portrait of an immoral and wicked woman who was every...Read Full Story

by Jonathan Warman Playwright Matthew Lombardo’s Tea at Five , his one-woman show about Katherine Hepburn, had a charming light touch. If only Looped, his full-fledged play about Tallulah Bankhead, had that touch. I know, one doesn’t automatically think “charming light touch” and Tallulah Bankhead go together, but the woman was as intelligent and complex as Hepburn — which is barely hinted at in Looped . Except, that is, in Valerie Harper’s full-throttle performance as Tallulah. From the...Read Full Story

Wearing a full-length fur coat, a long blue scarf, a chic violet dress and sunglasses, she staggers into a recording studio. Four-letter words fly. And so do the laughs. But then, what did you expect? Tallulah Bankhead always knew how to make an entrance. And so does Valerie Harper, who plays the flamboyant actress in "Looped," a fictional recreation of one of Bankhead's less celebrated moments — the re-recording of some botched dialogue from her last film, a campy 1965 horror fest called...Read Full Story

Lifeboat (1944) Using a story by John Steinbeck as inspiration, Alfred Hitchcock stages a gripping World War II drama by cramming eight survivors of a German torpedo attack into the hull of a tiny lifeboat — among them, a magazine writer (Tallulah Bankhead), a radio operator (Hume Cronyn) and a crazy woman (Heather Angel) clutching the corpse of her dead baby. But the real trouble starts when one of the survivors (Walter Slezak) reveals he’s a Nazi. They certainly don’t make movies like...Read Full Story

New York Daily News Valerie Harper pays tribute to dissolute star Tallulah Bankhead in 'Looped' New York Daily News In "Looped," Matthew Lombardo's whisper-thin but enjoyable comedy starring Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead, the bygone celebrity bad girl is at a recording studio in 1965 doing something unusual for her − she's cleaning up her act. ... Comic talent wasted in Tallulah Bankhead play Reuters A Smidgen of Sympathy for a Diva on the Skids New York Times It's Tallulah, Dahling...Read Full Story