William Brockman Bankhead

William Brockman Bankhead 1874-1940, U.S. Representative from Alabama (1917-40), b. Lamar co., Ala. Chairman of the House rules committee (1934-35), Democratic floor leader (1935-36), and Speaker of the House (1936-40), he was one of the outstanding New Deal legislative leaders. The Cotton Control Act of 1934 was largely the work of Bankhead and his brother, Senator John H. Bankhead . He was also interested in monetary legislation and was considered one of the ablest parliamentarians in the House.

Bankhead, Tallulah Brockman (1903–68), American actress, a strikingly attractive woman with a deep husky voice, whose off-stage notoriety for some time prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. She made her first appearance in New York in 1918, and in 1923 was seen in London playing opposite Gerald Du Maurier. In 1925 she achieved a great success as Julia Sterroll in Coward's Fallen Angels. She remained in London until 1930, when she was seen in the younger Dumas's The Lady of the Camellias, and in 1933 returned to New York, having in the meantime appeared in a number of films. Among her later parts were Sadie Thompson in Maugham's Rain (1935), Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939), and Sabina in Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). She also played the Queen in Cocteau's The Eagle Has Two Heads (1947). Before and after the last, however, she was seen in her most popular role, Amanda Prynne in Coward's Private Lives (1946–50). She also appeared in revivals of two plays by Tennessee Williams: as Blanche Du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1956) and as Mrs Goforth in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1964).