Tennessee Williams: Tallulah Bankhead Was A Star

Dorothy Wilding, 1939.

Interview with Tennessee Williams

Conducted by James Grissom

1982

There are no stars in the theatre any longer. There never will be: the foundation on which our theatre now stands is so antithetical to any constancy of quality or style or substance. It's just neon and noise and a quick buck. I despise it. Every season someone is propped up as 'the new star,' and their tiny twinkle is forgotten in a year or two and they are off in pilot season or biding time in plays so dreary that you forget them as they unravel before you. ....Tallulah [Bankhead] was a star. A real star. She was a star on the stage and on the street. On the contact sheet, in the portrait. In a restaurant or a hallway. She had talent--a great talent, actually--and soon there was no place to put it but various urns of camp some fags had placed before her to display. She turned against herself, yes, but many turned against her before the final degrading years.

Dorothy Wilding, 1934.

Dorothy Wilding, late 1920s.




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