Tallulah Bankhead in 1930s Drama Faithless (1932)

Faithless is a 1932 American romantic drama film about a spoiled socialite who learns a sharp lesson when she loses all her money during the Great Depression.

The film stars Tallulah Bankhead and Robert Montgomery, and was based on Mildred Cram’s novel Tinfoil, which was the film’s working title.

Tallulah Bankhead in Faithless. Photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull, 1932 via

Tallulah Bankhead in Faithless. Photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull, 1932 via

Robert Montgomery & Tallulah Bankhead  publicity still for Faithless, 1932 via

Robert Montgomery & Tallulah Bankhead in Faithless, 1932 via

Portrait of Tallulah Bankhead in Faithless, 1932 via

Famous Flappers of the Roaring Twenties

Flappers were a “new breed” of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.

Flappers had their origins in the liberal period of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.

Zelda Fitzgerald was an American socialite and novelist, and the wife of American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who dubbed her “the first American Flapper”. She and Scott became the emblem of the Jazz Age, for which they are still celebrated via

Clara Bow epitomized the Roaring Twenties’ flapper. At only 25, she retired exhausted by repeated scandals about her presumed sexual life. Photo: Bow in a shiny strapless dress by Eugene Robert Richee, 1926 via

 Coleen Moore was Bow´s “chief rival”. After Bow took the stage Moore gradually lost her momentum. In spring 1924 she made a good, but unsuccessful effort to top Bow in The Perfect Flapper, and soon after she dismissed the whole flapper vogue. Photo: Coleen Moore in “Why Be Good?”, 1929 via

Louise Brooks 1920. She was an American dancer and actress noted as an iconic symbol of the flapper, and for popularizing the bobbed haircut via

Gilda Gray, 1924. She was an American actress and dancer who popularized a dance called the “shimmy” which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions via

Tallulah Brockman, 1922. Bankhead was an American actress of the stage and screen, and a reputed libertine britannica.com

Anita Loos was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes first published in 1925. It was one of several famous novels published that year that chronicled the so-called Jazz Age – including Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Photo: Loos, on page 12 of the April 1922 Photoplay via

Female Portrait Photographs by Carl Van Vechten

Carl Van Vechten (1880 – 1964) was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.

In the 1930s, Van Vechten began taking portrait photographs.

Among the many individuals he photographed were Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead, Theda Bara, Harry Belafonte, Leonard Bernstein,  Karen Blixen, Jane Bowles, Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Ella Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Martha Graham, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Horst P. Horst, Mahalia Jackson, Frida Kahlo, Eartha Kitt, Henri Matisse, W. Somerset Maugham, Elsa Maxwell, Henry Miller, Joan Miró, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Diego Rivera, Gertrude Stein, James Stewart, Alfred Stieglitz, Gloria Vanderbilt, Gore Vidal, Evelyn Waugh, Orson Welles and Anna May Wong.

 

Frida wearing a Tchuantepee gourd by Carl Van Vechten, 1932 via

Tallulah Bankhead by Carl Van Vechten, 1934 via

 Anna May Wong by Carl Van Vechten, 1935 via

Josephine Baker by Carl Van Vechten via

Gertrude Stein by Carl Van Vechten, 1935 via

Lillian Gish by Carl Van Vechten, 1937 via

Theda Bara by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 via

Karen Blixen by Carl Van Vechten, 1959 via

Vintage Photos of Jazz Age Bonne Vivante Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead (1902 – 1968) was born in Huntsville, Alabama. Her father was a member of the Democratic Party and served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1936-1940.

Tallulah started her stage career in the local theater at age 15. At age 16, she won a beauty contest and moved to New York City to try her hand at Broadway. She did not make any headway on the stages of New York, so she pulled up stakes and moved to London in 1923.

For the next several years, she was the most popular actress of London’s famed West End. After starring in several well-received plays, she gained the attention of Paramount Pictures executives and returned to the United States to try her hand at the film world.

Hollywood success eluded her in her first four films of the 1930s so she went back to Broadway were she was succesfull. Later, in 1944, Alfred Hitchcock cast her as cynical journalist Constance Porter in her most successful film Lifeboat. Her performance won her the New York Film Critics Circle Award. A beaming Bankhead accepted her New York trophy and exclaimed, “Dahlings, I was wonderful!”.

Bankhead was also known for her deep voice, flamboyant personality and support of liberal causes. She circulated widely in the celebrity crowd of her day and was a party favorite for outlandish stunts, such as doing cartwheels in a skirt while wearing no underwear or entering a soirée stark naked.

Tallulah Bankhead died at age 66 of pneumonia in her beloved New York City.

Tallulah Bankhead, 1920s via

Tallulah Bankhead via

Portrait of Tallulah Bankhead, 1920’s  via

Tallulah Bankhead via

Old Hollywood Photos by Irving “Lippy” Lippman

Irving Isadore Lippman (1906 – 2006) was born in Edendale, California to Samuel and Celia Lippman, who emigrated from Russia in the late 1800’s. “Lippy,” as he was affectionately called spent 60 years in the film industry beginning as a sixteen-year old assistant camerman on a silent era comedy directed by Fatty Arbuckle in 1922 for $25 per week.

Lippman held various jobs and titles during his tenure in the business from still photographer and film director to cinematographer. He photographed and caught on film such beauties as Mae West, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Claudette Colbert and Barbara Stanwyck

His last service to the industry was as cinematographer on Love Boat in 1982. He died on November 15, 2006 in Woodland Hills, California.

Rita Hayworth (Photo by Irving Lippman, 1938) via

Bette Davis  (Photo by Irving Lippman) via

Miriam Hopkins (Photo by Irving Lippman, 1933) via

Tallulah Bankhead (Photo by irving lippman) via

Fay Wray (Photo by Irving Lippman, 1936) via

 Claudette Colbert (Photo By Irving Lippman, 1933) via

Amazing Party Photos From the 1920s

Lilyan Tashman is the center of attention at the wild party exuberantly staged by Ernst Lubitsch in “So This Is Paris,” screening March 12 at Film Forum, 1926 via

The Bright Young Things, Impersonation Party, 1927: Among the revellers are Cecil Beaton (back left), Tallulah Bankhead (front right), Elizabeth Ponsonby (in black hat), and (front row left) Stephen Tennant as Queen Marie of Romania via

 1920s party via

Andre Kertesz-A Picnic Party in Bois e Boulogne, Paris, 1929 via

Party girls, 1928 via

1920s party via