Tallulah’s back in town, still famous for her infamy

Here's an excerpt from a New York Times article on Tallulah Bankhead and a new play based on her irreverent persona:

Tallulah Bankhead, the sandpaper-voiced actress who pronounced darling “dahling” and threw in a few extra syllables to boot, made only about a dozen movies, a number of them silent. Though she triumphed onstage, at least two generations have been born since her name last graced a marquee. And her appearances on television, mostly as herself, can be found on YouTube but have never inspired so much as a DVD package.

Yet Bankhead has been the subject of no fewer than six stage shows, the latest of which, “Looped,” begins previews on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater on Friday. What is it about the star that makes her such an enduring object of fascination, despite the skimpy electronic record? Certainly traces of her celebrity remain. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore named a daughter Tallulah. Bankhead was partly the inspiration for Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. And fans of dozens of drag queens, including Jim Bailey and the Dueling Tallulahs, are well aware of her. But unless they caught her only hit film, Hitchcock’s Lifeboat from 1944, few people under 50 are familiar with her work.

Bankhead’s infamy offstage and off screen is one reason for her staying power. Even in a business used to excess, she could be considered a true theater rebel: uninterested in a movie career, she was a hodgepodge of thrilling talent, ego, drunkenness, bisexuality and drug use. And she spoke openly about her life at a time when every misstep or extra pound wasn’t emblazoned on television and the Internet as it was happening.

“Daddy warned me about men and alcohol,” she once said. “But he never warned me about women and cocaine.”

Were she alive today, Bankhead would probably film her outlandish behavior herself.

“I think she had such a sense of humor about it all,” said Valerie Harper, who stars as Bankhead in “Looped,” written by Matthew Lombardo. “She was sort of her own reality TV show. She was always off script. She was painfully honest, often to her own detriment.”

The rest of the article can be read here.