Word: tallulah
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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During her Broadway apprenticeship, back in 1918, Tallulah was regarded as a "most beautiful girl." Her hair came down to her knees, thick as a cloak. She had not begun to drink or smoke. ("I was a completely good girl in those days.") "But she was never simple," says Actress Estelle Winwood, one of her oldest friends. "She was as sophisticated then...
After her first year in New York, Tallulah persuaded her father that she could get along without her chaperon, Aunt Louise. "I couldn't stand Aunt Louise's snoring," she says. "I told Daddy: 'If you believe the things people say about me, I'll believe the things your political enemies say about...
Socially, young Tallulah went like a house afire, but her stage career languished in flop after flop. She dreamed of London. Every year she and Estelle Winwood would call on an old Scottish woman named Mrs. Bunce, who told fortunes in a Manhattan brownstone. Mrs. Bunce's routine was to open a Bible and poke a needle into it for an omen. One year, probing for Tallulah's future, the needle stuck on the name Jezebel. "Oh, that's terrible," said Estelle. "Jezebel was thrown to the dogs." "Yes," throbbed Tallulah, "but first she rode with kings...
Flappers & Cartwheels. The next year, Tallulah got to England, and became an immediate sensation. As a cigarette-smoking, short-skirted vamp, she was a hit in her first play. The part she played set the style for a series of underdressed, sexy roles, including a drunk flapper, a chorus girl, an artist's model, a trollop, and a few unfaithful wives. (She also found time to play Camille...
Throughout her London success, few critics considered Tallulah very seriously as an actress. But her looks were really something. Cecil Beaton called her "... A wicked archangel with . . . carven features . . . Her eyelashes, like a spreading peacock's tail, weigh down the lids over her enormous snake-like eyes . . . She is cadaverously thin ... the most easily recognizable face I know and ... the most luscious . . . cheeks like huge acid pink peonies . . . eyelashes built out with hot liquid paint to look like burnt matches . . . Her sullen, discontented, rather evil rosebud of a mouth is painted the brightest scarlet . . . shiny as ... strawberry...