Tallulah Bankhead

"On The Little Foxes I begged the producer, Samuel Goldwyn, to let Tallulah Bankhead play Regina because Tallulah was magnificent on the stage. He wouldnt let her. … A great admirer of hers, I wanted in no way to be influenced by her work. It was Willies intention that I give a different interpretation of the part. I insisted that Tallulah had played it the only way it could be played. Miss Hellmans Regina was written with such definition that it could only be played one way. I had to do that part exactly the way Tallulah did it, because thats the way Lillian Hellman wrote it. But I was always sad that Tallulah couldnt record Regina from the theatre, because she was marvelous."

"The most outrageous actress on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line is indisputably Tallulah Bankhead. With a career that spanned fifty years, she appeared in fifty-one plays, eighteen movies, and made countless radio, television and nightclub appearances; but she is best known for "molding her life into a stunning theatrical role," as Notable American Women puts it. Named for Tallulah Falls in her native Alabama, her throaty rasp, golden-blond hair, ripping wit, and absolute scorn for convention conquered everybody she encountered in real life, on screen, and especially on stage where she triumphed brilliantly playing her naturally quick wit and sterling rapport with others. … Nobody, past or present, could beat the stunning beauty, with huge expressive eyes, to a punch line."

"I heard someone calling out "Five minutes, Miss Bankhead." There was a response to the call, and this response was delivered in a voice that, having once heard, I would never stop hearing inside my head as I wrote lines for ladies that somehow resulted from the fantastic crossbreeding of a moth and a tiger. Here was the voice for which I had written the part of Myra Torrance in Battle of Angels, and written it for that voice without ever having heard it except in films. I went backstage after the play that night and she received me in her dressing room with that graciousness that has nothing to do with her Southern origin and genteel breeding but with her instinctive kindness to a person in whom she senses a vulnerability that is kin to her own. I suppose I simply mean that she saw or sensed immediately that I was meeting, for the first time in my life, a great star, and that I was more than just properly awed. I was virtually dumb-struck."

"She was magnificent. There aint nobody like her. In her heyday nobody had a bigger ball. She had that magnificent beauty that is ugly in a funny way. Judith Anderson and Laurette Taylor had it too. They came off being the most beautiful women in the world through an illumination of their own personality. Ive seen Tallulah look absolutely dreadful, then take a shot of ammonia and Coca-Cola and turn into a beauty."

"Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls dont have the time."

"The cynic says "blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." I say "blessed is he who expecteth everything, for he cant always be disappointed."

"I was raped in a driveway when I was eleven. … It was a terrible experience because we had all that gravel."

"I don’t know what I want. Nobody knows — or if they do, they don’t know for long. I mean, you don’t want the same thing long enough for it to be What You Want From Life in capital letters. Well, maybe some people do. Maybe theres a few simple folks — or maybe a few million, I dont know — who fix their hearts, and their minds, and their everlasting souls on a thing, and keep on all their lives hoping for it. Living for it. Wanting It From Life. But these are the people who never get it."

"I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. Thats what I call a liberal education."

"Im as pure as the driven slush."

"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."

"Ill come and make love to you at five oclock. If Im late, start without me."