POWERGRAMS

32 32 Political elite, Tallulah star at Bankhead House Before there was Madonna, the world knew Tallulah. One-word names weren't invented in the 1980s. From the 1930s until the 1960s, Tallulah was synonymous with celebrity. The actress was the daughter of one of the most powerful men in America, William Brockman Bankhead, whose death in 1940 brought President Franklin D. Roosevelt and future-president Harry Truman to his funeral in Jasper. Tallulah Bankhead lived a lot of life in her 66 years on Earth, and, luckily for her adopted hometown, she lived some of it in Alabama. The husky-voiced, flamboyant, frequently honored and mimicked actress is still linked to Jasper, where her father's house is the town's biggest tourist attraction decades after their deaths. Tallulah is still idolized by some, criticized by others – much as in life – a half-century after her death wrought by drinking, drugs and cigarettes. She is the centerpiece of the Bankhead House & Heritage Center. It is the same place where she greeted a reporter nude in the backyard garden. Visitors today can stand where she was married in front of the living room fireplace. Her most famous movie, Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat," runs continuously on a TV upstairs. But Tallulah's notorious life might be trumped in American history by the noteworthy 110-year unbroken string of Jasper men representing Alabama in Washington, D.C. Beginning with Rep. John Hollis Bankhead in 1887, through his son, John Hollis Bankhead II, in the Senate from 1931 until 1946, to his brother – Tallulah's dad – on to John II's son, Walter Will, as well as through Reps. Carter Manasco, Carl Elliot and Tom Bevill, there was always a local man in the U.S. Capitol through 1997. None was more powerful than William B. Bankhead, who was in Congress for 24 years, the last four as Speaker of the House. In 1916, Tallulah's father, Tallulah Bankhead was internationally known star of stage and screen. by Chuck Chandler Photography by Meg McKinney

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