The Theater: One-Woman Show

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Tallulah herself is responsible for circulating many of the spiciest tales. When Elsa Maxwell noted that her leading man in The Dancers did not seem very convincing in his love scenes, Tallulah lowered her sultry lids and purred: "Perhaps not on the stage . . ." When it seemed that a certain man was trying to snub her at London's Savoy, legend has it that she called: "Hello, dahling, I'm sorry you don't recognize me with my clothes on." Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, the expert on sex statistics, recently tried to get an interview with her, but the matter was dropped when Tallulah agreed "on condition that I can ask you the same questions." Visiting the White House on the heels of a group of reformed women prisoners, she made Franklin Roosevelt roar with laughter at her first words to him: "We'll get along swell. You like delinquent girls."

Young Jezebel. She likes to run around her Manhattan hotel suite or "Windows," her twelve-room house in Bedford Village, N.Y., with no clothes on, and has to be prompted by friends when callers arrive. She also enjoys the bug-eyed shock on the faces of strangers when she pretends to be a dope fiend. (She sprays her temperamental throat with a doctor's prescription that includes cocaine.) Once, for the benefit of a visiting innocent, she took a Benzedrine pill (a drug she uses regularly), mashed it on wax paper with a rolling pin and asked for a nail file. Then, sprinkling the powder on the file and sniffing it, she said: "This is really the only way it's effective, dahling."

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 as she is now."

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 you.' "

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 and princes."

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.)