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A PLAY IN ONE ACT

BROOK ASHLEY (GODDAUGHTER) AND TALLULAH BANKHEAD

TIME:

The present. Mid-day in a New York summer.

CAST:

The actress TALLULAH BANKHEAD (1902–1968). Tallulah’s famous voice sounds like a bass foghorn burbling through a barrel of warm molasses. That voice, along with her beauty and acting talent, has made her a stage, screen, radio, and television star for five decades. Her off-stage capers include prodigious alcohol consumption, a legion of straight and bisexual adventures, as well as a fiercely vocal opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee and all forms of racial discrimination. Tallulah can outlast, outtalk, and, most often, intellectually surpass any company she finds herself in. Early in her career, Tallulah was draped with the mantel of “gay icon,” and she has worn it proudly ever since. She is a vortex spinning with the energy of dramatic gesturing, political commentary and nonstop theatrical anecdotes. Unlike the contemporaries with whom she is sometimes conflated—Crawford, Dietrich, Davis, Garbo—Tallulah is approachable, maternal, and always witty. Slim, and possessing great gams, Tallulah is surprisingly small but most definitely not elfin. Honey blond hair falls to her shoulders, and her constantly mobile mouth is defined in a deep crimson lipstick the color of Tiptree’s Little Scarlet strawberry jam.

TALLULAH’s godchild, BROOK ASHLEY. Brook’s mother starred with Tallulah in The Little Foxes, and her father was Tallulah’s attorney and occasional lover. She grew up spending long stretches of time in Tallulah’s household, observing the panoply of guests and semipermanent residents. Brook has now lived longer than Tallulah, which is a statistic she finds somewhat disquieting. She was a young college student when Tallulah joined (as Noël Coward dubbed it) the “feathered choir.”

DOLORES, TALLULAH’s four-pound Maltese. Dolores has long, silky fur covering her eyes, and it is sometimes challenging to tell which end one is looking at. She remains either at Tallulah’s side or in her arms, rather like a living Judith Leiber clutch bag.

TEDDY, a waiter. Male, lithe, and slender. He moves with the grace of a dancer.

SETTING:

The interior of Sardi’s Restaurant in Manhattan’s Theatre District. Red leather banquettes line the periphery of the room, and brightly colored caricatures of assorted Broadway actors are stacked up the walls almost to ceiling height.

OPENING:

A spotlight shines on the corner banquette, illuminating MISS BANKHEAD, who is dressed in a beige shantung silk suit accessorized with a large strand of pearls. The perfectly tailored outfit is a custom design from the early 1960s and remains timelessly elegant. DOLORES, her tiny Maltese, is tucked in her left elbow, and that same hand holds a lit Craven A cigarette, from which TALLULAH inhales deeply. TALLULAH is looking stage left toward Sardi’s glass entry door, as it is pushed open by her godchild, BROOK ASHLEY. BROOK is wearing a classic, if unimaginative, New York summer outfit of slim black pants, a crisply ironed long white shirt, David Yurman cable bracelets, and black ballet flats. Background noises of street chatter, sirens, and horns are carried in on a warm blast of subway-scented air (exhaust, urine, pavement, and old hot dog water) before the door closes firmly behind her. BROOK crosses the stage to TALLULAH’s table as MISS BANKHEAD speaks without pausing between sentences.

TALLULAH

Hello, darling! I see you got my invitation. God, what a frightful trip. I think the Celestial Concierge routed me through the hinterlands of Uzbekistan. When I died, they gave me a lovely cloud-filled ascendancy with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir belting Handel’s Messiah. This little return visit was closer to traveling backward in one of those ancient pneumatic tubes that Loveman’s department store in Birmingham used for cash payments. And I swear I heard Florence Foster Jenkins screeching “Un Bel Di” in the background.

TALLULAH takes a breath, stands up from the table, and pulls BROOK toward her with her free right arm. DOLORES lets out a small yip of welcome as the three of them embrace. Sitting back down, TALLULAH looks inquisitively at her godchild and asks with concern,

TALLULAH

Are you in mourning? Why are you wearing black in July?

BROOK

It’s just what people wear now, but you’re right—it’s a bit dreary. I miss the bright prints from the sixties. (continuing, a bit hesitantly) Tallulah, we’re talking as if you . . . umm . . . have just been on a brief vacation. There was a note in my mailbox—no stamp or return address—in your unmistakable handwriting asking me to show up at Sardi’s today. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since you . . . ?

TALLULAH

Passed over? Kicked the bucket? Bought the farm? No, not really.

BROOK

I was just a child!

TALLULAH (dryly)

I had noticed a few changes.

BROOK (speaking rapidly)

Can you stay for a while? Do you know what’s been happening in the world since you left? Would you like a drink?

TALLULAH

No, I can’t. . . . Somewhat . . . God, yes! (Touching the arm of a passing waiter, TALLULAH leans into his face and offers a gigantic smile.) Darling, a bourbon on the rocks, please. Brook will have her usual, and would you be an angel and light my cigarette?

The waiter brings a lighter out of his pocket, takes the cigarette from TALLULAH’s fingers, and raises it to his own lips. After a few puffs to see that it’s lit, he hands it back to TALLULAH.

BROOK (astounded)

But that’s how you always liked your cigarettes lit! Mouth to mouth. How did he know that, and why is Sardi’s allowing smoking?

TALLULAH

Oh, that’s darling Teddy. He hitched a ride down with me and Dolores. There’s someone here he needs to meet up with—an issue that never got resolved before the plague of the 1980s took him out. Yes, I know about all that. We welcomed so many beautiful young men in those terrible days. As for the smoking, do you see anyone else in the restaurant noticing us? It’s a bit of spiritual wizardry that gives us some privacy, and I do not want some tourist from Keokuk asking me for Bette Davis’s autograph.

TEDDY arrives with a bourbon for TALLULAH and a Shirley Temple for her godchild. BROOK, with an amused glance at TALLULAH, picks the bouquet of maraschino cherries out of her ginger ale and deposits them on a butter plate. TALLULAH turns to TEDDY to order lunch.

TALLULAH (to TEDDY)

Teddy, we’ll both have the smoked salmon to begin with, then the Jumbo Shrimp Sardi in Garlic Sauce. It seems to have disappeared from the menu, but would you please ask the kitchen to make the Profiteroles Au Chocolat circa 1966? Brook always adored them. Dolores will have a small plate of finely chopped chicken breast with a spoonful of melted butter drizzled over it. Thank you, darling.

BROOK

Tallulah, I never got to say goodbye. I wanted desperately to let you know how much I loved you. You were so much larger than life that I couldn’t imagine you slipping away like an ordinary person. Did you know that your obituary made the front page of the New York Times?

TALLULAH

No, darling, I didn’t. My, my.

BROOK

May I ask what brought you back? I’ve always felt that you were still a part of me, that the extraordinary childhood you gave me left a bit of your DNA in my heart. Could the furniture and paintings you willed to me have been a connection as well? I sit in the dining chairs that Syrie Maugham designed when you were the toast of London in the 1920s and imagine your dear friends from that era—Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia—settling their rumps into the same seats. One of the cushions is sprung, and I assume that was Churchill’s doing. Sometimes I trace the cigarette burns on your bedside table with my finger, and it conjures all the scorch marks that tracked your movements through my childhood. When I was very small and lying on your carpet with Dolores, I pretended that the pattern of cigarette burns across the living room marked the trail of an exotic animal.

TALLULAH (tossing her tawny mane of hair, savoring a sip of bourbon, and settling back in the banquette)

What brought me back? As best as I can make it out, this brief visit with you is rather like Carousel without the score. It wasn’t the furniture, although I’m thrilled you’re still using it. No, it was you. I felt I never finished raising you completely. Did I set the right examples, or was I too self-centered to have had a child entrusted to me? God, even up there we still worry about these things. We are allowed one trip back for a final wrap-up, soul cleansing, whatever you want to call it. Frankly, I wasn’t even certain if you would show up today.

BROOK

Oh, Tallulah, there isn’t a day that I don’t think about you. You taught me everything I know about fair play, liberal politics, and the New York Giants. I’m sorry, I hate baseball, but everything else stuck. I didn’t even mind being the only child in kindergarten with an “All the Way with Adlai” button, because you showed me how to fight for what I believed in.

DOLORES gives a slight squeak of indignation, and TALLULAH raises the Maltese so that they are face-to-face. TALLULAH kisses DOLORES’s black gumdrop of a nose and addresses the tiny bit of fluff with mock severity.

TALLULAH

Yes, Dolores, Brook’s point about the omnipresent cigarettes has been noted, and I’ve already apologized to you profusely for that slight conflagration you were involved in.

BROOK (looking from DOLORES to TALLULAH)

Tallulah, does Dolores actually speak to you?

TALLULAH

Of course. It’s one of the greatest benefits we get up there. Dolores has a divine sense of humor. She once pointed out that since dogs have been bred for every conceivable purpose—from truffle searchers to hand muffs—it wasn’t too farfetched to consider her destiny as an ashtray to a legend.

BROOK

What was that “slight” conflagration she referred to?

TALLULAH

Oh God, it was the night that the New York Daily News immortalized with the headline “Tallulah Is Hospitalized. Hospital Is Tallulahized.”

DOLORES watches intently, as TALLULAH continues.

TALLULAH

According to Dolores—and do remember this is her version—she and I went to bed that night without any other company except for my lit cigarette and a few speckled sleeping pills. As she phrases it, sometimes it was a bit “sauve qui peut” for a tiny dog when I had athletic companionship in bed, and she was delighted to have me to herself. I, of course, was only wearing my cropped cashmere sweater—you know how I loathe underwear. Dolores and I were both sleeping soundly when her very efficient nose detected that the tips of her fur were smoldering. She let out a heart-piercing “YIP!” and I woke up screaming, “Oh God, Dolores is on fire!” I grabbed a pillow and began beating at the flames in the dark, somehow managing to shatter the ceramic bedside lamp, which carved an impressive slice out of my arm. Dolores says that I bellowed basso profundo like a rutting musk ox, which seems a wild exaggeration, but it was certainly loud enough to alert the staff. They raced downstairs to save me—darling Robert, who sometimes brought you home from dancing class, arrived in the nude—and then an ambulance, the police, the fire department, and the press were suddenly swarming through the house. It was profoundly disorienting, and perhaps I was a bit dramatic in refusing medical attention, but I only wanted to be certain Dolores was unharmed. They prised her out of my grasp and an adorable fireman pronounced her perfectly fine as the medics—absolute thugs—escorted me to the hospital under extreme duress.

TEDDY the waiter arrives with the first course, and TALLULAH motions for him to grind the pepper mill until her smoked salmon is obscured under a thick layer of grit indistinguishable from an asphalt road patch. DOLORES sneezes over TALLULAH’s plate, and TEDDY puts an eggcup of steak tartare in front of the little dog, whispering, “Compliments of the chef, sweetheart.”

TALLULAH finishes her appetizer, takes a long swig of bourbon, accepts another cigarette from TEDDY, and leans in closely as she takes BROOK’s hand.

TALLULAH

Brook, darling, this show is running a bit late, and you know I’ve always had impeccable theatrical timing. I need to find out if, God forbid, I damaged your impressionable psyche while you were under my care. Did the—how do I put this—unconventional and sometimes rather flexible gender situations you observed with me and my guests confuse you? Was it an amusing French farce with the cast flitting between various bedroom doors, or was it a Hieronymus Bosch night terror?

TEDDY places the main course of Jumbo Shrimp Sardi in front of BROOK and TALLULAH and an artfully arranged mound of diced chicken next to DOLORES. The Maltese is the only one of the trio to try her food.

BROOK

Tallulah, everything I experienced in your home was enlightening. I was so young that it was like learning a second language without even trying to. Whatever I saw, whoever was doing the flitting between bedrooms or flirting by the swimming pool—it just seemed natural to me. Remember how you told me to go naked if I wanted to and I spent the summer running around wearing nothing but my favorite woolen hat with the pompom? And the hat was only because Gayelord the parakeet loved to ride on my head. Really, the only moment of gender confusion was the evening Gayelord surprised us all by laying an egg, but we still kept referring to the bird as a “he.”

TALLULAH

Well, that’s a relief! What about the afternoon we stuck pins in the picture of Senator Joe McCarthy? I suppose it could have been construed as an inappropriate activity to indulge in with a four-year-old, but that bastard had destroyed the lives of so many of my dear friends. (wistfully) If my mother hadn’t died at my birth, I might have had better guidelines for parenting. . . .

BROOK

I loved doing that with you! No other child I’ve known has ever been given a hands-on voodoo lesson. Besides, it was part of the continuing message you gave me to fight injustice and oppression. I know you spoke out publicly against McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee at a time when others were denouncing their friends just to save themselves, and I’ve done my best to follow your political path.

TEDDY comes to the table and softly taps his watch twice. TALLULAH nods and kisses TEDDY’s hand before bringing it to her cheek. He clears away BROOK’s and TALLULAH’s untouched plates. The spotlight on TALLULAH and DOLORES begins to dim as TEDDY returns and places a silver serving boat filled with Profiteroles Au Chocolat in front of BROOK. He blows a kiss toward the table as he backs away and exits stage left.

BROOK (anguished)

Tallulah, don’t go yet! There’s so much I want to ask you! Are you happy up there? What do you do?

TALLULAH (faintly)

Do? We act. What did you think we would do, darling? Run around with harps? There’s a perpetual run of Private Lives—Gertrude Lawrence thinks her performance is the definitive one, but I know that Noël prefers mine. He just won’t hurt Gertie’s tender feelings. I had to die to get a decent run in Streetcar, which is rather ironic, as Tennessee wrote it for me, for God’s sake! Now, of course, I have to let dear Jessie Tandy play it on alternate nights.

BROOK (as TALLULAH becomes increasingly transparent)

Do you remember the final lines from your role in Midgie Purvis?

TALLULAH

Darling Brook, did you think I could possibly forget them? Or you?

BROOK reaches out to touch TALLULAH, but there is nothing solid left for her to hold on to. Both TALLULAH and DOLORES are barely visible.

TALLULAH (reciting from Midgie Purvis as she fades from view and into a voice-over)

Do you see those stars up there? When I go I don’t want people standing around quietly saying, “We’ll pretend she’s just stepped out of the room—that’s the way she’d want it.” Well I don’t want it that way! When I die I want there to be caterwauling and wailing. I want one of those stars to go out and NEVER SHINE ITS LIGHT AGAIN!

The scene fades to black as a bright star appears over the spot where TALLULAH was sitting. A moment later, an equally bright but much smaller star pops up in DOLORES’s place. The only other illumination comes from TALLULAH’s abandoned cigarette as it burns a scorch mark on the Sardi’s tablecloth.

CURTAIN

Brook Ashley is Tallulah Bankhead’s goddaughter and spent much of her childhood as a participant and observer in the circus of Miss Bankhead’s New York home. Brook made her Broadway debut at the age of seven. After the performance, Tallulah rushed to Brook’s dressing room, clutched her godchild so fiercely that the hairs on her mink coat went straight up Brook’s nostrils, and proclaimed, “Get out of your costume, darling. We’re going to Sardi’s to celebrate!”