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i J_j into the ?╟≤ past of Tallulah Bankhead, the Zip- what-is-it ot show business, you will find that once the English'-thought her the world's finest dramatic actress. Youvml'find that she knocked New York's drama critics %or anpop in The Skin of Our Teeth and you will discover there are critics who feel she and not Jeanne Eagels was the perfect Sadie Thompson. Sb?· w&s an idol of the legitimate th,d^i| ter?╟÷/'whateve^ the heck that is," in her worffi-jf, and she had audiences at her feet. Bored, hfi_fe, profane Tallulah. Meditating all this, it was virtually astonpffmg the other nigiit to thread my way throu^pethe tables of the darkened Copa room of thej&ands hotel back into her dressing room?╟÷and djpcover that, having disposed of the dinner show inrflptlfuiy and successful fashion, she was shaking1 M:e two leaves. I've never seen anyone quite so nervous in my life. T?║|e business of making her night club debut, while she kidded onstag| ahout it?╟÷"I'm just a shill for a gambling joint" (which, in truth>4?·f'what it "i amounted to)?╟÷had scared her stiff and she said so in just those| words. She had kicked off her shoes and was swathed in alwhit^ wrapper, and she sat there taking gulps of champagne and thanking people who kept dropping in to tell her how wonderful shevwafe. "You're kind," she told them, tensely, "but to tell the truth, I was lousy. "Never in all the years I was on the stage did I ever find myself in that predicament of wondering what the next line was. But tonight I did. When I was doing that Dorothy Parker monologue, A Telephone Call, my mind drew a complete blank. I did it all right? I'll never know how." y * * * * THIS IS A PROVOCATIVE, EARTHY, LUSTY TOWN and it fits Tallulah Bankhead like a skintight dress. Actually?╟÷what in the name of anything was she doing here, shilling for a gambling joint ? Why ? She looked up candidly. If there's one thing that the Bankhead is, it's candid. She may be vulgar at times, loud at others, a lady rarely and on-key in her singing never?╟÷but she never is dull, she frequently is pleasant and she always is candid. "For $25,000 a week, that's why," she said. Then she shook her head impatiently at herself. "No, no; it's really $20,000?╟÷but everybody lies about those things, don't they ? Anyway, I'm doing it for the money." This, of course, is probably.the only place on earth where she could make $20,000 a week in these days; even Miami Beach isn't hurling ^around those $15,000 salaries that guys like Milton Berle once allegedly made. However, in Las Vegas now, the night club acts are the absolute tops in America?╟÷Joe E. Lewis, Jan Murray, Jane Powell, John Payne, Lou Holtz, and, in the recent past, Van Johnson, Ezio Pinza, et al. The answer is simple. They get five, 10, 20 thousand?╟÷and it might as easily be 50. Their function is partly to entertain, but mostly to draw in the cash customers, who, when the show is over, drift out to the wheels and the craps tables. * * * * IT WAS A LITTLE SAD to see her work the other night. I've never been a great Bankhead fan, but she was an actress of stature and she did some good things in the theater. However, she began kicking the gong around when she did Noel Coward's classic museum piece, Private Lives, in what amounted to burlesque, and then she slid as if on a toboggan into radio and TV and became, roughly, a clown. A good one, too. In her saloon act here, Tallulah interrupted the risque jokes and the buck-and-winging briefly to do this serious, touching Parker monologue. She hurried through it too swiftly and she didn't do it as well as she had at rehearsal in the afternoon?╟÷but she did do it well enough to bring the saloon to swift and silent attention, and when she was through, I just scratched my head and wondered again?╟÷ why? Why here? However, I stopped wondering, so priggishly, when I remembered that all of us?╟÷and I'm no exception?╟÷have sold our souls.at one time or another. All of us but the saints, a^Jhejy are, in this world of humans, only a handful indeed.