Tallulah at The Bankhead Review at Tallulah's

04 Jun 2025 -

Despite the fact that she made relatively few movies, Tallulah Bankhead is a legend among gay men. Sky Gilbert loved her so much he named his cabaret after her. And now, to put a cherry on top, Raymond Helkio has created The Bankhead Review at - where else? - Tallulah’s Cabaret. A sparkling evening in celebration of the great star, it featured both a screening of her most famous movie Lifeboat and a performance by Amanda Roberts as Tallulah herself.  

Raymond worked hard to create a party atmosphere, with generous amounts of popcorn and free admission. I sat at a table with my old friend David Bateman and several others. I thought I’d put the table to a test. “I’ll bet none of you can even name one other Tallulah Bankhead movie,” I declared. “Die! Die! My Darling!” said David, immediately blowing a hole in my theory. 

Lifeboat is one of Hitchcock’s bold experiments. The entire thing is set on a lifeboat adrift at sea with nine passengers. The plot, such as it is, finds the characters in a lifeboat right after their ship is torpedoed by nasty Nazis. One of the people on board the lifeboat is the Nazi captain, who always has something up his sleeve. Aside from Tallulah, sultry and smoky-voiced, there’s hunky John Hodiak, whose brawny bare chest sports many shitty tattoos. At one point, Tallulah uses her lipstick to add a tattoo of her own, a rather horny moment. There’s also a dead baby and an amputation. It's lots of fun, and the whole audience was enjoying it up until some idiotic employee of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre thought it was okay to stop the screening in order to make an irrelevant announcement. 

After the screening Amanda Roberts took to the stage in a fetching ensemble and lip-synced to recordings of Tallulah singing songs. It gave me ample time to recall a favourite Bankhead legend, that she hosted an entire Hollywood party completely in the nude. Tallulah, who fucked and consumed everything she could, lived a crazy life. Perhaps that’s why gay men love her - that, and her remarkable name. 

Raymond hopes to continue the series, with a rebrand. There’s not much point in further Bankhead Reviews, as she only made about 20 movies and the others aren’t that much fun to watch. Instead, he wants to screen other ‘gay’ classics. Next up, the always watchable Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, written by Tennessee Williams and starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Talk about gay subtext. If nothing else, The Bankhead Project was one of the most fun nights out I’ve had in a while. Thanks, Ray.