Outrageous, outspoken, and uninhibited, Tallulah Bankhead was an actress known as much for her vices -- cocaine, alcohol, hysterical tirades, and scandalous affairs with both men and women -- as she was for her winning performances on stage. In 1917, a fifteen-year-old Bankhead boldly left her established Alabama political family and fled to New York City to sate her relentless need for attention and become a star. Five years later, she crossed the Atlantic, immediately taking her place as a fixture in British society and the most popular actress in London's West End. By the time she returned to America in the 1930s, she was infamous for throwing marathon parties, bedding her favorite costars, and neglecting to keep her escapades a secret from the press. At times, her notoriety distracted her audience from her formidable talent and achievements on stage and dampened the critical re-sponse to her work. As Bankhead herself put it, "they like me to 'Tallulah,' you know -- dance and sing and romp and fluff my hair and play reckless parts." Still, her reputation as a wild, witty, over-the-top leading lady persisted until the end of her life at the age of sixty-six.
From her friendships with such entertainment luminaries as Tennessee Williams, Estelle Winwood, Billie Holiday, Noël Coward, and Marlene Dietrich, to the intimate details of her family relationships and her string of doomed romances, Joel Lobenthal has captured the private essence of the most public star during theater's golden age. Larger-than-life as she was, friends saw through Bankhead's veneer of humor and high times to the heart of a woman who often felt second-best in her father's eyes, who longed for the children she was unableto bear, and who forced herself into the spotlight to hide her deep-seated insecurities.
Drawn from scores of exclusive interviews, as well as previously untapped information from Scotland Yard and the FBI, this is the essential biography of Tallulah Bankhead. Having spent twenty-five years researching Bankhead's life, Joel Lobenthal tells her unadulterated story, as told to him by her closest friends, enemies, lovers, and employees. Several have broken decadelong silences; many have given Lobenthal their final interviews. The result is the story of a woman more complex, more shocking, and yet more nuanced than her notorious legend suggests.

Tallulah!: The Life and times of a Leading Lady

Arts & Photography

Lobenthal, Joel

Photography & Video

It Books

In the golden age of American theater, no celestial body shone more dazzlingly than Tallulah Bankhead. Outrageous, outspoken, and totally uninhibited, she was an actress known as much for her offstage vices as for her onstage roles—the cocaine and alcohol, the blistering tirades, and her scandalous affairs with both men and women. In Tallulah!, author Joel Lobenthal has captured the private essence of this most public of Broadway stars, the irrepressible diva who enjoyed intimate relationships with the top entertainment luminaries of her day, from Tennessee Williams and Noël Coward to Marlene Dietrich and Billie Holiday. Here also are the close and personal details of her family life and doomed romances, drawn from scores of exclusive interviews, and previously untapped information from Scotland Yard and the FBI. This is the definitive biography of Tallulah Bankhead, a woman even more complex, more nuanced, and more shocking than her notorious mythology suggests.

Tallulah!: The Life and Times of a Leading Lady

Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet State. She studied with Agrippina Vaganova, the most revered and influential of all Russian ballet instructors, and in 1950, she joined the Mariinsky (then-Kirov) Ballet, where her lines, shapes, and movements both exemplified the venerable traditions of Russian ballet and propelled those traditions forward into uncharted and experimental realms. She was the first of her generation of Kirov stars to enchant the West when she danced in Paris in 1956. But dancing for the establishment had its downsides, and Osipenko's sharp tongue and marked independence, as well as her almost-reckless flouting of Soviet rules for personal and political conduct, soon found her all but quarantined in Russia. An internationally acclaimed ballerina at the height of her career, she found that she would now have to prevail in the face of every attempt by the Soviet state and the Kirov administration to humble her. In Alla Osipenko, acclaimed dance writer Joel Lobenthal tells Osipenko's story for the first time in English, drawing on 40 interviews with the prima ballerina, and tracing her life from Classical darling to avant-garde rebel. Throughout the book, Osipenko talks frankly and freely in a way that few Russians of her generation have allowed themselves to. Her voice rises above the incidents as unhesitating and graceful as her legendary adagios. Candid, irreverent, and, above all, independent -- Osipenko and her story open a window into a fascinating and little-discussed world.

Alla Osipenko: Beauty and Resistance in Soviet Ballet

Humor & Entertainment

Oxford University Press

A gorgeously illustrated look at the profound influence that classical ballet and the ballerina have had on high fashion Ballerina: Fashion’s Modern Muse is a revelatory, irresistible treat for dance aficionados and fashionistas alike. Couturiers such as Balmain, Balenciaga, Chanel, Schiaparelli, Charles James, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent designed ballet-inspired dresses and gowns, many featuring the boned bodices and voluminous tulle skirts of classical tutus. And ready-to-wear designers such as Claire McCardell found inspiration in ballet leotards and other practice clothing, creating knitted separates, bathing suits, and wrap dresses. Written by fashion and ballet experts, the book is illustrated with archival photography by such masters as Richard Avedon, Edward Steichen, Irving Penn, Man Ray, and Cecil Beaton, along with newly commissioned photography of contemporary ballerinas wearing ballet-influenced couture.

Ballerina: Fashion’s Modern Muse

Mears, Patricia

Harden, Rosemary

Jacobs, Laura

Pritchard, Jane

Graphic Design

Vendome Press

Karen Kilimnik

Published on the occasion of the first major museum survey of Karen Kilimnik's work, a traveling exhibition with stops in Philadelphia, Miami, Aspen and Chicago, this chic but scholarly catalogue is the most substantial on the artist to date. It highlights an important American artist whose work objectifies mass-cultural desire with glittering poignancy and includes a nuanced selection of 15 years worth of collage-based activity in the realms of painting, drawing, photography, sculptural installation and object-making, as well as new work. Fully illustrated at 180 pages, it features an essay by exhibition curator Ingrid Schaffner which analyzes the development of the artist's work and its historic contexts as well as four contributions from authors who address a theme or image within the work. Thus, cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum addresses gossip; dance historian Joel Lobenthal writes on ballet; Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Dominic Molon, focuses on influence; and Artforum Senior Editor Scott Rothkopf considers Kilimnik's titles. Includes a complete bibliography and an illustrated exhibition chronology. Called "sharp and witty" and "long overdue" for major recognition by The New York Times' Holland Cotter, Kilimnik is an important international artist with an extensive publication and exhibition history. Born in Philadelphia in 1955, she studied architecture at Temple University and continues to live in the region. Since 1991, her work has been represented by 303 Gallery in New York. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Ireland, and White Cube, London. In 1992, ICA Philadelphia presented Kilimnik's first museum show as part of its "Investigations" series.

Koestenbaum, Wayne

Rothkopf, Scott

Molon, Dominic

Schaffner, Ingrid

History & Criticism

Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania

Surveys the exuberant fashions of the sixties, discusses the social background of the period, and looks at the famous models and designers

Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties

Abbeville Pr

Dancing on Water is both a personal coming-of-age story and a sweeping look at ballet life in Russia and the United States during the golden age of dance. Elena Tchernichova takes us from her childhood during the siege of Leningrad to her mother's alcoholism and suicide, and from her adoption by Kirov ballerina Tatiana Vecheslova, who entered her into the state ballet school, to her career in the American Ballet Theatre. As a student and young dancer with the Kirov, she witnessed the company's achievements as a citadel of classic ballet, home to legendary names--Shelest, Nureyev, Dudinskaya, Baryshnikov--but also a hotbed of intrigue and ambition run amok. As ballet mistress of American Ballet Theatre from 1978 to 1990, Elena was called "the most important behind-the-scenes force for change in ballet today," by Vogue magazine. She coached stars and corps de ballet alike, and helped mold the careers of some of the great dancers of the age, including Gelsey Kirkland, Cynthia Gregory, Natalia Makarova, and Alexander Godunov. Dancing on Water is a tour de force, exploring the highest levels of the world of dance.

Dancing on Water: A Life in Ballet, from the Kirov to the ABT

Tchernichova, Elena

Northeastern University Press

At eighty-seven, Patricia Wilde remains a grande dame of the ballet world. As a young star she toured America in the company of the Ballet Russe. In her heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, she was a first-generation member and principal dancer of New York City Ballet during the uniquely dramatic Balanchine era―the golden age of the company and its hugely gifted, influential, exploitative, and dictatorial director. In Wilde Times, Joel Lobenthal brings the world of Wilde and Balanchine, of Tanaquil Le Clercq, Diana Adams, Suzanne Farrell, Maria Tallchief, and many others thrillingly to life. With unfettered access to Wilde and her family, friends, and colleagues, Lobenthal takes the reader backstage to some of the greatest ballet triumphs of the modern era―and some of the greatest tragedies. Through it all Patricia Wilde emerges as a figure of towering strength, grace, and grit. Wilde Times is the first biography of this seminal figure in American dance, written with the cooperation of the star, but wide-ranging in its use of sources to tell the full and intertwining stories of the development of Wilde, of Balanchine, and of American national ballet at its peak in the twentieth century.

Wilde Times: Patricia Wilde, George Balanchine, and the Rise of New York City Ballet

ForeEdge

Red Star, White Nights: The Life and Death of Yuri Soloviev is a biography of one of history's greatest dancers, who ended his own life in a snow-bound Russian dacha in 1977 at the age of thirty-six. The book is also a personal memoir by Lisa Whitaker, who befriended Soloviev when he toured Australia in 1969. And it is autobiography, too, describing Whitaker's travels to Russia after Perestroika to find his family and uncover the mystery of his fate. Soloviev was a government-decorated icon in the USSR, and an international star as well. On tour with the Kirov, he was idolized by audiences and critics. In words and more than one hundred photos, many never before published, his phenomenal talent lives again. The book is the culmination of decades of research, during which the authors interviewed Soloviev's family, friends, and colleagues to peel back layers of accrued myth and reduction. Soloviev's suicide was his response to both personal and institutional repression, a bombshell hurled at Soviet officialdom. Soloviev's psychology reflected the stringency of the Soviet system and the individual vagaries of a turbulent family. Red Star, White Nights is informed by Whitaker's experience in Russian research and Lobenthal's many accounts of Russian culture and ballet. The book weaves together Soloviev's story with multiple epochs of Soviet history: the 1917 revolution, Stalin's purges of the 1930s, World War II, the "thaw" of the 1950s and '60s, the stagnation of the '70s. Preserved on video, Soloviev's talent continues to astound, while his life and death continue to haunt. Red Star, White Nights illuminates the many facets of this most enigmatic of ballet stars.

Red Star White Nights: The Life and Death of Yuri Soloviev

Biographies & Memoirs

Whitaker, Lisa

Arts & Literature

Ballet Review Books

Outrageous, outspoken and uninhibited, Tallulah Bankhead was an actress renowned as much for her vices - cocaine, alcohol and scandalous affairs with both men and women - as for her ferocious performances on stage. Born in 1902, Tallulah's theatre career began at the age of 15, when she left her established, conservative Alabama family and fled to New York City, taking up residence at the infamous Algonquin hotel and becoming a fixture of the Algonquin Round Table. At 19, Tallulah pulled strings to engineer a move to London, where she stayed for the next eight years. Her deep voice and flamboyant style made her the most popular star of the West End stage - and captured the attention of Paramount movie executives, who brought her back to the States to try her luck in Hollywood. But Tallulah's personality did not shine as brightly on screen; although she made a total of 18 movies, for the most part she returned to her first love, the stage; a live audience would always show gratitude. She was famous for throwing wild three-day parties, bedding her favourite actors and actresses - and neglecting to keep any of it from the press. Tallulah died of pneumonia in 1968 in her beloved New York City.

Tallulah : The Life and Times of a Leading Lady

Aurum

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