Conquering The Great White Way

In The Little Foxes (1939)

Tallulah had already selected a property for her return to the New York stage. Forsaking All Others, about a young bride jilted at the altar, was written by Frank Morgan Cavett, one of Tallulah's former cameramen at Paramount. The comedy opened on March 1, 1933 to respectable reviews, but the timing was not good. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression and audiences began to dwindle. Unlike in London, there wasn't a multitude of gallery girls to keep the play open.

Tallulah didn't waste any time jumping into a new project. After beginning rehearsals for Jezebel in August of 1933, she suddenly experienced excruciating abdominal pains and was rushed to a hospital. Her condition worsened and nine weeks later, after considerable bed rest and the halting of Jezebel, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening case of gonorrhea. An emergency hysterectomy had to be performed to save her life. It has been widely speculated that Tallulah got gonorrhea from Gary Cooper. However, she had so many sexual partners at the time that it is impossible to know the truth.

Following her surgery, Tallulah began a slow recuperation. She spent the Christmas holidays in Jasper, Alabama with her family. She pondered her ill-fated luck in New York and decided to resume her career in London once her health improved. Tallulah, never one to stay idle, began to take more pills and drink.

In March of 1934, Tallulah returned to England. She caught up with her old friends and began to look for a suitable play. She had not been there long when her friend Jock Whitney telephoned from New York. He had a wonderful play for her - Dark Victory. Tallulah accepted and returned to New York, but Dark Victory proved to be a major flop (it did, however, make a strong vehicle for Bette Davis on the screen in 1939).

Tallulah continued to appear in a string of mostly unmemorable plays. She did get the chance to do Rain, but it wasn't a hit and even she said that no one could forget Jeanne Eagles in the role a decade earlier.

Tallulah thought that she would never want to work in Hollywood again, but in late 1936 she read that David Selznick would film Gone With The Wind and he was looking for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara. Tallulah knew that "she could play the pants off Scarlett" and began a full-fledged campaign to win the role. She enlisted the help of her family in Alabama, who sent letters and telegrams to David Selznick's office trying to convince him that Tallulah was the only actress who could play Scarlett.

Tallulah's screen test for Gone With The Wind

Selznick agreed to test Tallulah and on December 21, 1936, she made three photographic screen tests in Hollywood. Tallulah was heartbroken when, nearly two years later, Vivien Leigh won the role. She wrote in her autobiography, "I'll go to my grave convinced that I could have drawn the cheers of Longstreet and Beauregard and Robert E. Lee had I been permitted to wrestle with Rhett Butler".

Tallulah's next antic shocked everyone - she announced that she was getting married. She had been mesmerized by actor John Emery when she saw him on stage in Busman's Holiday in Westport, Connecticut. Tallulah met him after the play and invited him to spend the weekend with her. He moved in with her shortly afterward.

Tallulah and John Emery

It was soon obvious that Tallulah's desire to marry was mostly done to placate her father, who had just been elected Speaker of the House. Tallulah and John were married on August 31, 1937 in Jasper, Alabama. When a reporter asked Tallulah why she married, she quipped, "I married for love, darling. Isn't that ridiculous?" She later confessed that she never actually loved him. She thought that the two of them might make a dynamic acting team, but after the disastrous Antony and Cleopatra, that notion looked bleak. In reality, Tallulah was never interested in "settling down" with any man and, after a rocky four years together, the couple divorced in 1941.

Tallulah finally achieved an American stage triumph with The Little Foxes in 1939. The Lillian Hellman classic told the story of the Hubbard family, whose lives are controlled by hatred and greed. Tallulah played Regina Giddens, a cold and self-centered social climber who stops at nothing to gain a foothold in Chicago society, even if it means destroying her family.

As Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes

Tallulah received tremendous praise for her performance and she won the Variety Award for Best Actress of the Season. The play enjoyed a long run (408 performances), followed by a year- long road tour. Tallulah also made a small fortune from the play as she demanded her usual ten percent of the grosses.

Tallulah got along well with the cast of The Little Foxes, especially Eugenia Rawls, who played her daughter in the play. They would become lifelong friends. She did clash, however, with her director, Herman Shumlin and playwright Lillian Hellman. Their differences were a result of their politics. Tallulah was a devout Democrat, anti-Communist and liberal. When Stalin invaded the tiny country of Finland, Tallulah wanted the proceeds from a special performance to go to the Finish Relief Fund. Hellman and Shumlin refused and Tallulah was incensed. She didn't speak to Hellman for twenty-five years and wrote letters to Time magazine criticizing her.

In the fall of 1940, Tallulah lost two people who were very close to her. Her father died on September 15. One month later, she learned that Napier Alington had been killed in action during the Battle of Britain. Tallulah became even more politically active and donated her time and money to anti-Communist causes. She even vowed to stop drinking until Hitler's reign had ended (a vow that she was unable to keep!).

Tallulah scored another stage triumph in November of 1942 when she debuted in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. The play enjoyed a long run and critical success even though it baffled most audiences. Turmoil reigned backstage as Tallulah's temperament grew more hostile. She clashed with most of the actors in the play and many of them would not show up for performances until the very last minute to avoid her tantrums.

Despite Tallulah's increasing working demands and extreme temperament, she enjoyed great professional success during the 1940s. Following The Skin of Our Teeth, Alfred Hitchcock summoned her to Hollywood to appear in his film Lifeboat. It would be her greatest film success, earning her a New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress (she was sadly over-looked for an Academy Award nomination). Many fans today know Tallulah solely from Lifeboat.

She made another impressive stage run with Private Lives in 1948 and later took the play on an equally successful road tour.

Perhaps Tallulah's most self-rewarding experience during this time was her acquisition of a Tudor-style country house in Bedford Village, New York. She named it "Windows" (it had 75 of them!) and spent a fortune decorating, re-modeling, landscaping and installing a huge swimming pool. Life was a constant party at Windows and Tallulah was able to run around in the nude as she liked. She adopted a menagerie of pets and people to share the house with her.

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