TALLULAH BANKHEAD AND TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
RETURN TO PALM SPRINGS
Unwanted Laughter by Marty Martin plays for one night only, November 9, 2024, at 7pm, as a fundraiser for Temple Isaiah’s LGBTQ+ Twice Blessed Program, the Museum of Ancient Wonders relocation fund, and the LGBTQ+ World History Museum.
Directed by Randy Brenner, this three-character, two-act play, features the region’s most talented and skilled actors: Yo Younger as Tallulah, Jason Mannino as Tennessee, and Phylicia Mason as Tallulah’s understudy Sandy.
In the summer of 1956, a potentially historic production of Tennessee Williams’ classic drama A Streetcar Named Desire starring the irrepressible Tallulah Bankhead is on the rocks. Her portrayal as Blanche Dubois draws laughter from the audience during the play’s most sensitive scenes. Desperate, a special rehearsal has been called for the hard-drinking, savagely competitive pair to solve the problem. Unfortunately, it isn’t faring any better, as together, these bitingly hilarious old friends face the brutality of aging after a lifetime of excess in what could prove to be their last bid for triumph.
Although the play occurs at the legendary Coconut Grove Theater in Miami, Florida, Tallulah and Tennessee were not strangers to Palm Springs. From the 1920s and throughout the 1950s, Alla Nazimova, Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, William Haines, Liberace, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Cary Grant, and Eartha Kitt, to mention a few escaped the rigors of the studio system’s strict contractual Morals Clause to live authentically behind the verdant walls of their estates and bungalows.
In the context of A Streetcar Named Desire, Unwanted Laughter promises hilarious wit and heartbreaking insights into the lives of two of America’s legendary thespians during a time of sexual repression and legal jeopardy.
Unwanted Laughter
Temple Isaiah Lieberman Chapel
332 W. Alejo Road in Downtown Palm Springs
November 9, 2024, at 7pm
for tickets ($25), visit LGBTQ World History Museum
$30 at the door
$125 VIP tickets include a post-performance reception with the cast
Actress Tallulah Bankhead as Blanche du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
(Photo by Ray Fisher/Getty Images)
Tennessee Williams defends Tallulah Bankhead in The New York Times, March 4, 1956.
To the Drama Editor:
To the considerable and lively controversy about Tallulah Bankhead as Blanche DuBois, in the recent City Center revival of my play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” I would like, “just for the record,” as they say, to add my personal acknowledgment, praise and thanksgiving for what I think is probably the most heroic accomplishment in acting since Laurette Taylor returned, in the Chicago winter of 1944-45, to stand all her admirers and her doubters on their ears in “The Glass Menagerie.”
I have loved all the Blanches I’ve seen, and I think the question of which was the best is irrelevant to the recent revival. Several weeks ago, on the morning after the opening in Coconut Grove, Miami, Fla., the director and I called on Ms. Bankhead in her boudoir where this small, mighty woman was crouched in bed, looking like the ghost of Tallulah and as quiet as a mouse. I sat there gravely and talked to her with the most unsparing honesty that I’ve ever used in my life, not cruelly, on purpose, but with an utter candor. It seemed the only thing that could save the situation.
If you know and love Tallulah as I do, you will not find it reprehensible that she asked me meekly if she had played Blanche better than anyone else had played her. I hope you will forgive me for having answered, “No, your performance was the worst I have seen.” The remarkable thing is that she looked at me and nodded in sad acquiescence to this opinion.
Contrary to rumor, I never stated publicly, to my sober recollection, that she had ruined my play. What I said was phrased in barroom lingo. I was talking to myself, not to all who would listen, though certainly into my cups. But that morning, after the opening, Tallulah and I talked quietly and gently together in a totally truthful vein.
She kept listening and nodding, which may have been an unprecedented behavior in her career. The director and I gave her notes. I went back that night, and every note she was given was taken and brilliantly followed in performance. I left town, then, because I knew that I had hurt her deeply (though for her good) and that she would feel more comfortable without me watching her work.
I doubt that any actress has ever worked harder, for Miss Bankhead is a great “pro,” as true as they make them. I think she knew, all at once, that her legend, the audience which her legend had drawn about her, presented an obstacle which her deepest instinct as an artist demanded that she conquer, and for those next three weeks she set about this conquest with a dedication that was one of those things that make faith in the human potential, the human spirit, seem far from sentimental, that give it justification. Think for a moment of the manifold disadvantages which I won’t name that beset her in this awful effort! She had only two weeks rehearsal.
When the play opened at the City Center, this small, mighty woman had met and conquered the challenge. Of course, there were few people there who had my peculiar advantage of knowing what she’d been through, and only a few of her critics appeared to sense it. To me she brought to mind the return of some great matador to the bull ring in Madrid, for the first time after having been almost fatally gored, and facing his most dangerous bull with his finest valor, a bullfighter such as Belmonte or Manolete, conquering himself and his spectators and his bull, all at once and together, with brilliant cape-work and no standing back from the “terrain of the bull.” I’m not ashamed to say that I shed tears almost all the way through and that when the play was finished I rushed up to her and fell to my knees at her feet.
The human drama, the play of a woman’s great valor and an artist’s truth, her own, far superseded, and even eclipsed, to my eye, the performance of my own play. Such an experience in the life of a playwright demands some tribute from him, and this late, awkward confession is my effort to give it.