Tallulah Bankhead Day – June 15 1940 (& remembering 1931’s The Cheat)

In order to drum up some attendance figures the New York World’s Fair of 1939-1940 named various days after celebrities of the time and encouraged their fans to come along….Noel Coward got a day….as did Tallulah Bankhead – on June 15 1940. So, as a fan of Talluluah, I want to record this auspicious day in the calendar and the only thing I can think of is (apart from her 1920s forays into Limehouse for opium and cocaine – see my post on that here) is to recall the 1931 (pre-Hays Code) movie The Cheat.

Tallulah herself saw the movie as ‘banal’, though the New York Times liked it. Tallulah is seriously sexy and the movie is a must for those interested in Orientalist tropes in American movies – it’s basically an entire movie of them! It’s a Harry Hervey script (he of Shanghai Express and the broadway adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Rain – see my posts on Hervey here and here). Bankhead spends much of the movie in a Chinese dress of some Hollywood concoction – she certainly looks great; stylistic accuracy is less certain. You can watch the film on Youtube here .

Talluluah in her “Chinese costume” with Irving Pichel (in  “Japanese costume”)

Tallulah on the telephone in her costume!

Tallulah with some Chinese dolls