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| First edition, 1952 |
The Committee Room continues its look back at the holiday season bestsellers of sixty years ago.
TCR's last posting discussed
East of Eden by John Steinbeck which was number one on the
New York Times bestselling fiction list. We turn now to non-fiction. At the top of the
Times list was
My Autobiography by the legendary actress
Tallulah Bankhead.
Published by
Harper and Brothers, Bankhead's
My Autobiography settled into the number one spot in October 1952 and stayed there through the Christmas and New Year's 1953 season. Other titles in the non-fiction top ten at this time were
The Sea Around Us by
Rachel Carson, which had been on the list for over a year, and
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
At the time of
My Autobiography's release, Bankhead was fifty years old and experiencing a career boost as one of the hosts of
The All Star Revue, a highly touted television variety show, on NBC. She had moved to television after two years of hosting
The Big Show, a prestigious NBC radio variety program. Bankhead's gift for witty repartee was used to good advantage in variety show introductions though guests on the programs often approached her with trepidation, knowing her unpredictability.
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| Paperback, 1953 |
According to biographer
Denis Brian, Bankhead began tape recording her life story in the summer of 1951 at her Bedford Village, New York home. The transcribed tapes of Bankhead's anecdotal, name-dropping (often of personalities now forgotten) and selectively revealing reminiscences were organized and edited by leading show business press agent
Richard Maney. At the opening of
My Autobiography Bankhead offers a "Citation to Richard Maney for Conduct Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" but doesn't specify what he did.
Born in Alabama in 1902, Bankhead won a beauty contest as a teenager which led to an acting career. In the early 1920s, after a few small roles in the New York theater, she got a part in a British stage production. In London she quickly gained notoriety for her flamboyant, eager to shock behavior off-stage as much as for her acting in plays such as
Sidney Howard's
They Knew What They Wanted.
