Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-05-02
LONDON MAKES WARM FRIEND
OF MISS TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Alabama Representatives
Actress-Daughter Like
Stranger to U. S.
Garrick Theater Patronage
Attests Quality of Her
Histrionic Wares.
BY WARD MOREHOUsE.

Special Dispatch to The Star.
LONDON, May 2.-Bankhead's the
name, given name, Tallulah, Jasper
is her home town, and that's in Ala
bama. The theater's her profession
and for seven years she's been ex-
patriate. She's been the subject of
encomium and innuendo; she's had
enormous success and whooping fail
ure. In this land of the quid, the
guinea and the bob, all persons who
know that there's such thing as
the theater know also that there's
an actress named Tallulah. Britain
has the Thames, Blackfriars Bridge,
the Oxford Cambridge boat race, the
annual daffodil show-and 1t has Tai
lulah.
Miss Bankhead, then, is news. Hence
my letters and kilograms to her and
finally my visit to No. Farm street.
Some say that Tallulah has acting
greatness; others vow that she isn't
an actress at all. and never could be.
Perhaps there aren't any great actresses
in the present-day English theater.
But I'm not concerned here with
Tallulahs hiStrionic genius. or her lack
of it. I'm merely striving to submit
a consideration of her as force in
Londons theatricals. And in the
provinces. Don't forget the provinces,
God forbid.) And if she isn't force
I'd like to know who is.
Gallery Girls Worship.
For 10 days now I've been in Lon
don and I've heard her name men,
toned by everybody from the dowager
marchioneSs of something or other to
the motorman of a tWo-decker tram
way car; l saw chockful gallery sit
tense and breathleSS as she went her
tragic way through Dumas stacy and
mechanical La Dame Aux CameliaS,"
and l watched the gallery girls cheer
her, claw ct her, stampede her, as she
fought her way to her waiting car after
a Thursday matinee. Policemen had
to clear the sidewalk.
Did the gallery girls behave in this
fashion when Duse played the Dumas
tragedy? Or when Bernhardt played
it? And now La Dame Aux Camelias"
is being taken to the provinces. Those
poor provindes! It's when Tallulah
goes a-touring, I'm told, that the good
people of this nation lose every shred
of their Anglo-Saxon poise. They for
get all else in their hysteria to see an
Alabama girl act play, be it new or
old, good or bad. Why, this season
they'll probably forget the hard things
they've been saying about Mr.. Snowden
and his budget.
Fifteen plays Tallulah's done since
she quit New York and Broadway and
the Algonquin and fled to London on
the Thames Con money borrowed from
friend of Representative Bankhead
her father, after appearing in New
York in a forgotten something by Mar
tin Brown called 1.-The Exciters." Fiji
teen plays she's performed before the
audiences of Britain. The producers
here have had a habit of tossing to her
pieces in which the first ladies Of the
American stage have done with success
in New York.
Her Is London Plays.
"ThisIl be great for Tallulah in Lon
don," has been the way they put it, anc
our Miss Bankhead-obediently al
times, rebelliously at others-has come
before her British public in "TheJ
Knew What They Wanted" (perhap:
| u Il. k1ans 49,