Trial by Stage Whisper

MANNERS & MORALS

When the producer of Skin Of Our Teeth was hesitant, back in 1942, about enlarging the stage of Manhattan's Plymouth Theater for Actress Tallulah Bankhead, she took instant action. Crying that he was an "incompetent little madman," she seized a stagehand's screwdriver, stomped down from the stage, and began dismantling seats in the first rows. Last week Tallulah was making a similar imprint of her vigorous personality on the judicial processes of the State of New York.

She had been hard at it, as a matter of fact, ever since she stormed into the D.A.'s office in Manhattan last year to complain that her maid had been raising her checks. District Attorney Frank Hogan noted irascibly that she had waited for months after the alleged crimes before saying a word, and had done so then, as far as anyone could tell, only to show she wasn't afraid of the maid. Tallulah turned on the anti-Tammany D.A. instantly. "Who is this Mr. Hogan?" she roared. "I'll blast the lid off his Tammany Hall!"

And Vivisection? By the time the trial began in Manhattan last week, Tallulah and the D.A.'s office had made an uneasy truce. Mink coat carelessly draped, she listened approvingly as the prosecution outlined the charge: that the maid, a grey-haired, motherly-looking ex-burlesque performer named Evyleen Ramsay Cronin, had enlarged the sums for which Miss Bankhead made out many checks, and by so doing had committed larceny to the extent of $4,284.

But when the defense attorney rose, Tallulah began to vibrate; theatergoers who watched fully expected her to pull a small, pearl-handled revolver from her handbag and, with a triumphant and scornful baritone cry, shoot both counsel and defendant. The maid, defense counsel contended, had been forced to forgery because Tallulah had borrowed money from her for "marijuana, cocaine, booze and gigolos." Tallulah, moreover, had beaten the defendant "unmercifully," often crying, "I'll give you cancer of the breast!" as she did so.

"I expect to prove all this in the trial," counsel thundered.

"And," rasped Miss Bankhead furiously in a hoarse stage whisper, "I expect to disprove it." She blinked back tears, but her interruptions continued. One hoarse aside: "The next thing they'll have me doing is vivisecting my dog without an anesthetic." The defense attorney protested to the court: "She is making facial expressions and sounds ..." Tallulah rose: "I coughed, Your Honor," she said. "I have a bronchial condition . . ." She added loudly: "Thank God my blessed daddy isn't alive to hear this vilification."

Unintimidated. To augment her attempts to take part in, or better yet, run the trial, she took to walking into the corridor to make rebuttal statements to reporters. "I am disgusted with the tactics of the defense attorney," she said. "But ... I cannot be intimidated by blackmail." Finally the judge gently detached her from the proceedings by ordering all witnesses to stay out of the courtroom.

Tallulah retreated to an anteroom, complained loudly of the heat. Her attorney obligingly threw up the windows. A blast of frigid air blew in. A portly and important guard closed them hastily. "I asked that those windows be opened, darling!" said Tallulah. "My dear lady," said the guard, "it isn't what you want around here . . ." She whirled and advanced. "But it is what I want," she bellowed. "I'm here as a state's witness, not as a criminal!" The guard retreated and Tallulah waited balefully to be called to the courtroom to testify.

The defense attorney had complained bitterly that there were "two trials going on in this courtroom"--one run according to the rules and one "conducted by Miss Bankhead." Miss Bankhead aimed to simplify things when she was called to testify. At week's end she was still waiting, but she had made two things seem clear: 1) if a judicial system could put her on the stand and survive, it was good for a thousand years, and 2) if it didn't put her on the stand, it was probably in imminent danger of an attack with a screwdriver, too.

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