Tallulah Bankhead
British postcard by Picturegoer, no. 297c. Photo: Dorothy Wilding. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
British postcard by Picturegoer, no. 297d. Photo: Dorothy Wilding. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
In the pre-Code film The Cheat, Tallulah Bankhead plays a compulsive gambler who, due to her extensive debts, is branded on her chest by the sadistic man to whom she owes a bundle. You can see the mark near her left shoulder. Interestingly, it's kanji—i.e. Chinese logographic characters used as part of the Japanese alphabet—and it says “I possess.” Well, her cruel creditor doesn't possess her gun, and we have a feeling he'll be sorry he doesn't. The photo is from 1931.
Lifeboat (1944)
Tallulah Bankhead wearing a René design from the movie 'Lifeboat', 1944
Connie Porter + her best friends
by Cecil Beaton, 1931
Tallulah Bankhead on the set of Lifeboat, 1944
For acting, darlings, is the world’s most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.
~ Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead quotes:
If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
I’m as pure as the driven slush.
It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
Here’s a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.
I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That’s what I call a liberal education.
I’ll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I’m late start without me.
Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years.
They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.
Lifeboat (1944) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Tallulah Bankhead drinking champagne from her shoe at the Ritz, London, 1951.
microphone