crazy like a fox

Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968)

Died on this day: debauched, bourbon-saturated wild woman of American stage and screen, the inspiration for Disney villainess Cruella de Vil AND Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950), (and the inspiration for legions of drag queens), that sophisticated lady with the soul of a hillbilly who once declared “I am the foe of moderation, the champion of excess” - Miss Tallulah Bankhead (31 January 1902 – 12 December 1968)! Later in life, when - in the words of her biographer Denis Brian - violently ravaged gardenia Bankhead looked “as though life had thrown her against a wall and she’d just covered up the scars with rouge and lipstick”, a fan stopped her on the street to ask, “Aren't you Tallulah Bankhead?” “I'm what's left of her, darling,” she responded. In 2024 I screened Bankhead’s final film – the underrated British-made horror flick Die! Die, My Darling! (1965) – at my monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club, and everyone present was mesmerised by her. Pictured: portrait of Bankhead in 1962.

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