Bankhead Quotes & Sayings

Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat. — Tallulah Bankhead

If I were well behaved, I'd die of boredom. — Tallulah Bankhead

They aren't making mirrors like they use to. — Tallulah Bankhead

Codeine . . . bourbon. — Tallulah Bankhead

I owe Bankhead a gift; she made a director out of me. — Elia Kazan

I have been tight as a tick! Fried as a mink! Stiff as a goat! — Tallulah Bankhead

I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery. — Tallulah Bankhead

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. — Tallulah Bankhead

I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right. — Tallulah Bankhead

My heart is as pure as the driven slush. — Tallulah Bankhead

Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. — Tallulah Bankhead

A frozen daiquiri of a scorching afternoon is soothing. It makes living more tolerable. — Tallulah Bankhead

[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me. — Tallulah Bankhead

No man worth his salt, no man of spirit and spine, no man for whom I could have any respect, could rejoice in the identification of Tallulah's husband. It's tough enough to be bogged down in a legend. It would be even tougher to marry one. — Tallulah Bankhead

And when the mood took her to fall for the handsome young lawyer Will Bankhead, she happily threw over the man to whom she was already engaged. — Judith Mackrell

My progress reminded me of the horses in The Whip. They raced at the limit of their speed directly toward the audience. But they raced on a treadmill which canceled out their progress. — Tallulah Bankhead

I've had a man and I've had a woman, and there's got to be something better. — Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah [Bankhead] is always skating on thin ice. Everyone wants to be there when it breaks. — Mrs. Patrick Campbell

I saw stars like Helen Hayes, Maurice Evans, Tallulah Bankhead and Cornelia Otis Skinner. It was enchanting. I knew that was the world I wanted to be in. — Sada Thompson

Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time. — Tallulah Bankhead

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. — Tallulah Bankhead

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience. — Tallulah Bankhead

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once. — Tallulah Bankhead

Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds. — Tallulah Bankhead

Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny, in which case I definitely said it. — Tallulah Bankhead

I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late start without me. — Tallulah Bankhead

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman. — Tallulah Bankhead

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education. — Tallulah Bankhead

Do you know what my ambition is in life? To be without ambition. As far back as I can remember I've been absolutely hag-ridden. I'd like to attain the state of mind that the Indians call Nirvana. That, for me, would happen if I were free of ambition. — Tallulah Bankhead

Don't think this has taught me a lesson ! — Tallulah Bankhead

Acting is a form of confusion. — Tallulah Bankhead

Working on television is like being shot out of a cannon. They cram you all up with rehearsals, then someone lights a fuse and - .BANG! - there you are in someone's living room. — Tallulah Bankhead

In my lifetime I've been to bed with men, women, and odd pieces of furniture. — Tallulah Bankhead

I remember Tallulah (Bankhead) telling of going into a public ladies' room and discovering there was no toilet tissue. She looked underneath the booth and said to the lady in the next stall, 'I beg your pardon, do you happen to have any toilet tissue in there?' The lady said no. So Tallulah said, 'Well, then, dahling, do you have two fives for a ten?' — Ethel Merman

I'm not at my best when I moralize or philosophize. Logic is elusive, especially to one who so rarely uses it. — Tallulah Bankhead

I have three phobias ... : I hate going to bed, get up and hate hate being alone. — Tallulah Bankhead

My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine. — Tallulah Bankhead

Acting is the most insecure of all the trades, the most risky. In their professional lifetime most actors rehearse longer than they play, spend more time traipsing from office to office in search of jobs than they rehearse and play combined. — Tallulah Bankhead

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum. — Tallulah Bankhead

I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity. — Tallulah Bankhead

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. — Tallulah Bankhead

There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare and I think you'd better put Shakespeare first, darling. — Tallulah Bankhead

There is less in this than meets the eye. — Tallulah Bankhead

Acting is a form of confession. — Tallulah Bankhead

I'm not childless, darling. I am childfree. — Tallulah Bankhead

I have been absolutely hag-ridden with ambition. If I could wish to have anything in the world it would be to be free of ambition. — Tallulah Bankhead

Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand. — Tallulah Bankhead

I'd like to kiss you, Darling, but I just washed my hair. — Tallulah Bankhead

Wracked with a hangover I do my muttering over a Black Velvet, a union of champagne and stout. Don't be swindled into believing there's any cure for a hangover. I've tried them all: iced tomatoes, hot clam juice, brandy peaches. Like the common cold it defies solution. Time alone can stay it. The hair of the dog? That way lies folly. It's as logical as trying to put out a fire with applications of kerosene. — Tallulah Bankhead

All my life I've been terrible at remembering people's names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive. — Tallulah Bankhead

Don't be taken in by the guff that critics are killing the theater. Commonly they sin on the side of enthusiasm. Too often they give their blessing to trash. — Tallulah Bankhead

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I'd make all the same mistakes - only sooner. — Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah [Bankhead] never beat about the bush - she'd gossip about you in front of your back! — Patsy Kelly

(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car. — Tallulah Bankhead

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives. — Tallulah Bankhead

My heart is pure as the driven slush. — Tallulah Bankhead

[On being asked in her later years if she were Tallulah:] I'm what's left of her, dahling. — Tallulah Bankhead

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. — Tallulah Bankhead

There have only been two geniuses in the world - Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare. — Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah [Bankhead] never bored anyone, and I consider that humanitarianism of a very high order indeed. — Anita Loos

If you know your Bible and your Shakespeare and can shoot craps, you have a liberal education. — Tallulah Bankhead

I have three phobias which, could I mute them,would make my life as slick as a sonnet,but dull as ditch water:I hate to go to bed,I hate to get up and I hate to be alone ... — Tallulah Bankhead

The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after. — Tallulah Bankhead

In the theater lying is looked upon as an occupational disease. — Tallulah Bankhead

I'm as pure as the driven slush. — Tallulah Bankhead

I have enemies I've never met - that's fame. — Tallulah Bankhead

I've been called many things, but never an intellectual. — Tallulah Bankhead

Bette [Davis] and I are good friends. There's nothing I wouldn't say to her face - both of them. — Tallulah Bankhead

It's unlikely I'll ever submit to a psychiatrist's couch. I don't want some stranger prowling around through my psyche, monkeying with my id. I don't need an analyst to tell me that I have never had any sense of security. Who has? — Tallulah Bankhead

A Republican. A Republican. That's worse than being a goddamned Communist! — Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah [Bankhead] was the foremost naughty girl of her era but, in those days, "naughty" meant piquant, whereas values have so changed that now, in the 1970s, it generally means nauseating. — Anita Loos

Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know, I've been using it for years — Tallulah Bankhead

I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic, and the others either give me a stiff neck or lockjaw. — Tallulah Bankhead

Say anything about me, darling, as long as it isn't boring. — Tallulah Bankhead

There's less here than meets the eye. — Tallulah Bankhead

It's the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time." - Tallulah Bankhead — Debbie Macomber

Drink reacts on its practitioners in conflicting ways. One brave can knock off a quart of Scotch and look and act as sober as Herbert Hoover. Another, after three Martinis, makes two-cushion carroms off the chaise lounge as he attempts to negotiate the bathroom. — Tallulah Bankhead

Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia. — Tallulah Bankhead

They say it's the good girls who keep diaries. The bad girls never have the time. Me, I just wanna live a life I'm gonna remember even if I don't write it down. — Tallulah Bankhead