Final Rest Stops: The Hilariously Colorful And Outspoken Actress Tallulah Bankhead Sleeps Away Eternity In Cemetery Near Chestertown

When Broadway and Hollywood actress Talullah Bankhead swept into a room with her rouged lips, encased in her trademark full-length fur coat, and leaving a wreath of smoke in her passage from an ever-present cigarette and mouthing in her steamboat whistle baritone husky voice, the word “Dahling,” she owned that space, and everyone in it.

In a 1964 interview with the Associated Press, Bankhead explained why she referred to everyone as “Dahling.”

“Because all of my life I’ve been terrible at remembering people’s names,” she said. “I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.”

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead, daughter of William Brockman Bankhead, who was speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1936 until his death in 1940, and Adelaide Eugenia “Ada” Sledge, was born in 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama.

Her mother died three weeks after her birth, and after her father fell into depression and alcoholism, she and her sister Eugenia were largely raised in Jasper, Alabama, near Montgomery, by their paternal grandmother.

Her childhood friends included Zelda Zayre, who married F. Scott Fitzgeald, and Sara Haardt, who became the wife of H.L. Mencken in 1930.

She also spent time in Washington, where she attended the Convent of the Visitation, which once was on the site of the present-day Mayflower Hotel.

Rebellious as a child and known for her grand mal tantrums and resistance to authority, Bankhead moved from one fancy finishing school to the other.

In her 1952 autobiography “Tallulah,” she explained the sound of her voice was the result of bouts of chronic laryngitis.

Early on, she had a gift for acting and mimicry and when she was 15, she arrived in New York where she took a bit part in “Who Loved Him Best” for $75 a week.

Her father was not pleased about her career choice but changed his mind when Bankhead’s grandfather said, “Let her go on the stage. She’s not worth a damn for anything but acting.”

In a 1951 interview with The New York Times she admitted that she had not been a stellar student — she found algebra particularly troublesome — but “My father said if you know your Shakespeare and Bible and can shoot craps, you’ve got a liberal education.”

In 1922, she came to Baltimore when she joined the repertoire company at the Lyceum Theater, and the next year, departed for England, where she became a national sensation in a number of plays including “The Green Hat,” “Fallen Angels,” “The Gold Diggers,” and “They Knew What They Wanted.”

Bankhead then went to Hollywood in 1931 to break into pictures, but after living for eight years in England which she found life most agreeable, she didn’t adapt to Hollywood.

So much so, when she met legendary producer Irving Thalberg, she asked, “How do you get laid in this dreadful place?” to which he replied, “I’m sure you’ll have no problem. Ask anyone.”

She found the process of moviemaking tedious and boring but did like what it paid, in her case, $50,000 per film.

In 1932, she shared top billing with Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton and Cary Grant in “Devil and the Deep,” explaining the only reason she accepted the part, “Dahling, the main reason I accepted the part was to f—k that divine Gary Cooper!”

Bankhead’s father warned her when she lived in New York at the Algonquin Hotel where she was a member of the famed Roundtable of wits that included Alexander Woolcott, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, among others, about drinking and men.

In her autobiography she admitted to drinking planter’s punches for breakfast, but added, “In all my years in the theater, I’ve never missed a performance because of alcoholic wounds…. I’m the foe of moderation, the champion of excess.”

She added: “He didn’t say anything about cocaine and women. Cocaine isn’t habit forming, and I know because I’ve been taking it for years.”

Bankhead made no secret of her bisexuality which was well-known, and described herself as being “ambisextrous.”

Also known for her Dorothy Parkeresque bon mots and witticisms, she once said, “I’m as pure as the wind-driven slush,” and made bawdiness into a high art form.

While her film career was less than stellar, Bankhead returned to the stage gaining fame playing the prostitute Sabrina in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Regina in Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” and in the 1948 Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives”

In 1939, this brought her character Regina to Baltimore’s Ford’s Theater. Some years earlier, she told a reporter that Baltimore was “the most American of cities.”

“Baltimoreans have the happy knack of carrying on their business for the fun of it — and that is the only way to achieve real fullness of life,” she said.

In 1944, she returned to Hollywood and starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat,” where she played foreign correspondent Constance Porter, who finds herself amongst a group of survivors in a lifeboat that had been torpedoed by a U-Boat, including a German seaman played by Walter Slezak.

It was well-known that Bankhead had an aversion to wearing underwear and this became a major distraction, so much so that Slezak complained to Hitchcock, who replied that he wasn’t sure if this was a problem for “the wardrobe department, makeup, or hairdressing.”

As late as 1963, she again played Ford’s in Tennessee Williams’ play “The Milk Train doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,” which was her final Broadway show.

During the 1950s and 1960s she performed on radio and television and had a brief role in the 1960s TV series “Batman.”

Her sister Eugenia had settled on a farm near Rock Hall, where Bankhead often visited.

The two sisters who shared an undying capacity for public outrageous behavior, enjoyed shopping, and “turned heads wherever they went,” reported The Baltimore Sun in a 1993 article.

Bankhead, who lived in a four-story townhouse on E. 62nd Street in New York City, died Dec. 12, 1968.

She died from pneumonia and emphysema brought on by her penchant for cigarettes.

She once boasted that she smoked 120 cigarettes a day along with a steady consumption of bourbon.

A private funeral was held at St Paul’s Episcopal Church on Sandy Bottom Road near Chestertown, where Bankhead never set foot.

Her sister who arranged for the burial plots, joined her there in 1979.

Burial was in a quiet corner of the church cemetery where hopefully for the ages, Bankhead is enjoying celestial bourbons, smoking cigarettes all the while wrapped in her fur coat.

Her stone is simply engraved: “TALLULAH BROCKMAN BANKHEAD — January 12, 1902-December 12, 1968.”

It’s been reported that admirers still drop  by the 1712 red-brick church to visit the actress’ grave and leave bottles of bourbon and other mementos reflective of her life.