Word: tallulah
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When TIME'S Lester Bernstein and Researcher Jean Sulzberger turned up at Actress Tallulah Bankhead's country home recently for a 3 p.m. pre-cover story (TIME, Nov. 22) interview, Tallulah, "up and dressed," met them at the door and began to talk. After 20 breathless minutes she suddenly stopped her torrential discourse and said: "Now, ask me another question." Says Miss Sulzberger: "We hadn't even opened our mouths...
Three hours later they came away feeling as if they had been through a small Alabama "nawther." It had been a tough struggle even to get their questions asked. With scarcely a break in her marathon monologue, Tallulah had danced the Charleston for them, played piano, told jokes, done imitations and a few ballet turns, tossed off some mint juleps, fed them shrimp and mushrooms and showed them the house. She had discussed her artesian well ("We had to dig 260 feet, and we finally hit 25 gallons a minute"), her health ("I have the arteries of a girl...
Occasionally too transfixed by Tallulah's performance to make notes, TIME'S representatives also had to contend with her pet bird, a light blue budgereegah named Gaylord, who swooped gleefully around the living room, made pinpoint landings on their shoulders, pecked at their pencils, cigarettes and Bernstein's shoelaces...
...wanton. But she lacks the stability and discipline to keep her gift under control over a long period. Her performances fluctuate more than most after the opening night. Says a friend: "The longer she plays in something, the less you see of the play, the more you see of Tallulah." She has turned Private Lives into a one-woman show-at once the triumph of a personality and the surrender of an actress. Says she: "I'm Tallulah in this play, and I'm not a bit ashamed...
...Tallul'ah, an Indian word of unknown origin (it may mean "terrible"), came to her by way of her maternal grandmother from Tallulah Falls in northeastern Georgia. The falls are now dammed, but, appropriately, there is a Tallulah Power Plant...