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A lot of love for Tallulah Bankhead (1902-68) coming in after tweeting about her yesterday. In honour of the scandalous Ms Bankhead, here’s a thread of her quotes. Enjoy, daaaaahlings.
“Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have the time.”
“The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.”
“My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine.”
“I've tried several varieties of sex, all of which I hate. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic; the others give me a stiff neck and/or lockjaw.”
“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 doing it for years."
"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it."
“Bette [Davis] and I are good friends. There's nothing I wouldn't say to her face - both of them.”
“I'm not childless, darling. I am childfree.”
“In my lifetime I've been to bed with men, women, and odd pieces of furniture.”
“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.”
“No man worth his salt, no man of spirit and spine, no man for whom I could have any respect, could rejoice in the identification of Tallulah's husband. It's tough enough to be bogged down in a legend. It would be even tougher to marry one.”
[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] “I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.”
“I think the Republican party should be placed in drydock and have the barnacles scraped off its bottom.”
“Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand.”
“They aren't making mirrors like they use to.”
“I've had a man and I've had a woman, and there's got to be something better.”
(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) “I thought I told you to wait in the car.”
“I'm as pure as the driven slush.”
“Let's not quibble! I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right."
Tallulah told a friend that her doctor had advised her to eat an apple every time she had the urge to drink. She arched an eyebrow and added, "But really, dahlings, sixty apples a day!"
“Codeine...bourbon...” were
Tallulah’s last coherent words before she died.
Tallulah’s last coherent words before she died.
And there’s a rather lovely compilation of Talulah on screen here
“I don’t know what I want.
Nobody knows — or if they do, they don’t know for long.”
“Fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches.”
