Manhattan Adult Entertainment: Chestertown soul back on Broadway
Bankhead, who conceded that she was not an ace student and had particular “trouble with algebra,” told The New York Times in a 1951 interview: “My father said if you know your Shakespeare and Bible and can shoot craps, you’ve got a liberal education.”
Bankhead joined the repertoire company at the Lyceum Theater in Baltimore in 1922, and the next year left for England, where she became a national sensation in a number of plays such as “The Green Hat,” “Fallen Angels,” “The Gold Diggers,” and “They Knew What They Wanted” before heading to Hollywood to make pictures in 1931.
Bankhead, whose film career was less than stellar until 1944, when she appeared as a foreign correspondent in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat,” returned to the stage, gaining fame playing the prostitute Sabrina in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Regina in Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” and appearing in the 1948 revival on Broadway of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.”