Talullah Bankhead: Ambisextrous Wonder of the World
By Mike Marino

What Tallulah wants...Tallaluh gets! When it comes the unrepressed sexual antics of Hollywood's heavenly hymens you can bank on Tallulah Bankhead to lead the carnal circus parade. Glitz, glamour and genitalia defined this iconic revolutionary who has been linked to many of Hollywoods leading men...and ladies...today it's the age of the Volvo..but then it was the age of the Vulva....and Bankhead's was turbo charged to say the least when she slammed it into gear. It was the Golden Bankhead Age of Hollywood, Gentlemen and Genitalia..

Tallulah was a product of the deep south...born in 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama..her lineage included some of the most powerful political families who ruled the roost in the cotton pickin' South. She was sent to a Catholic convent school to ensure she would grow up prim and proper, but eventually all that pent up Catholic school repression would dentonate with power of an atomic bomb.

By the tasty jailbait age of 15 she won a magazine beauty contest, and was allowed to go to New York looking for modeling and stage work. Show biz was in her blood. She did land some bit parts in small films in a growing industry that was in it's celluloid infancy. Talullah was growing up fast and along with ehr first period it was time to toss the training bra aside as she was forming and blossoming like a sexual garden out of control. Her exhibitionism that was growing daily put her in the same orbit as the literati and the gliterati that was New York at the time, super charging it's collective galaxy with cocaine and marujuana. One of my favorite lines of hers regarding cocaine was pure Bankhead..."Cocaine isn't habit-forming and I know because I've been taking it for years."

Other famous quips involve a rape comment made by a guest at a party. In typical Bankhead, she replied "I was raped in our driveway when I was eleven. You know darling, it was a terrible experience because we had all that gravel." Golden ain't it? Damn she was fast and her wit was a finely tuned blade that cut through the bullshit like a Samurai wielding a sward high on war...and maybe opium.

She also had a sexual appetite of Godzillian proportions. Men, women, two-somes, three-somes, it was sex, pure and simple, and not limited by the numbers of partners at any given or any one time. Three was NOT a crowd. She was an experimenter of superior Kama Sutra talents. "I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic. And the others give me either stiff neck or "lockjaw”, she said.Once at a party, Bankhead met Chico Marx approach. Chico opened the conversation with "Miss Bankhead, I really want to fuck you." She replied, "And so you shall.”

Broadway and the Great White Way was paved with gold for this golden girl in 1918, and by 1923 she was va va vooming and wowing the crowds in London across the big pond. By 1925 her “star” was illuminating both sides of the Atlantic as well as both sides of the man/woman sexual galaxy.

Althoug she was a brilliant actress and won awards, she was most known for her quips and sexual antics. She would have sex with anyone on either side of the gender fence if she found them attractive (and few turned her down!) Hell, would you?

After her conquest of the British Empire, Tallulah Bankheaded it back to America in 1931 where she bombed out in Hollywood. Not defeated, and not one to get depressed about it, she pulled out the sexual corks and she began hosting parties at her rented home...it is said there were no rules...no boundaries...the sky or the bed in this case, is the limit. Her sexual antics were similar to those of Mary Astor..the prim and proper actress best known for her role in the Maltese Falcon who below the “libarian” persona had a vagina that could bend William Burroughs “steely dan” dildo into a pretzel.

Tallulah was not happy in Hollywood, although her fortunes were begining to turn around, she missed the excitement and eroticism of Europe. Eurpoeans are much more liberated than their American counteparts. But she was now making money...real money at $50,000 per picture and played opposite of the leading Hollywood men of the times. One of her big hits was Devil and the Deep with Gary Cooper and Cary Grant She later said, "Dahling, the main reason I accepted was to fuck that divine Gary Cooper!"

She was also sexually active with a veritable vaginal who's who of Hollywoods leading ladies including Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, and reportedly did Billie Holiday, and had a long time affair with actress Patsy Kelly. So was she bi-sexual? Not according to her. She claimed she was “ambisextrous”!!!

There was a curious investigation of her by Englands MI5 in the 1920's. MI5 is the British spy agency..think 007. She was investigated, mainly based on rumor that she had seduced up to half a dozen public school boys into taking part in “indecent and unnatural acts”. Were it to be true...Oh those lucky school boys!

Tallualh also loved to pull pranks and shock her friends by showing up nude at parties...doing cartwheels while not wearing panties..By the 1950's, her star was beginnign to fade and she began drinking heavily and taking vast quantities of sleeping pills. She also was still performing but mainly now on the new medium of television as well as some radio and some Broadway stage work as well.

Her last films was a Brit B-flick horror film released in the US as Die, Die My Darling and she was also The Black Widow in the Batman TV series. Tallulah died in 1968 in Manhattan or as she would have referred to as MANhattan at the age of 66. She has a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

Talullah was an original in every respect, talent that would not be eclipsed, a wit unmatched, and one hell of a vagina for all seasons...and all sexes. She was not the Virgin Mary by any stretch of the vulva's imagination,but she could eat a man...and a woman alive and still have room for plateful of underaged dessert!