Margie Boule To Perform as Tallulah Bankhead in “Looped”

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Byron Beck, GoLocalPDX Features Editor

Margie Boule

Margie Boule is getting ready to perform as Tallulah Bankhead in “Looped” at The Sanctuary. It will be quite the meeting of two incredible personalities.

Bankhead was an American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and reputed libertine. Bankhead was also known for her deep voice, flamboyant personality and support of liberal causes. She loved to say “dah-ling.”

Boule is a well-known local television and print personality best known for her work as a columnist for The Oregonian and as a television host of KATU’s AM Northwest. Boule is also known for her acting and singing talent and support of liberal causes. And she is a "dah-ling" to anyone who has ever had the pleasure of meeting her.

On stage at The Sanctuary, beginning September 3, Boule will portray Bankhead in Triangle Production’s Northwest premiere of “Looped” billed as a “comedy about a fading star.” GoLocalPDX talked to the very busy Boule who is balancing her Looped rehearsals with doing an AM talk radio show. Here’s what she had to say about both Bankhead and Boule.

Margie Boule as Talllulah Bankhead in "Looped."

How did you find out about this particular show and what drew you to the part?

(Triangle Productions Executive Director) Don Horn called me, asked if I'd heard of "Looped" (I hadn't), and sounded me out about whether I might be interested in playing a 63-year-old Tallulah Bankhead. I was.

Can you tell us the premise of the play and what point in her life we are seeing her on stage at Triangle?

The play is based on an actual event that occurred in the 1960s, when Tallulah was 63, hardly working any more, and deep into addictions to alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. She'd just finished shooting her first film in 20 years, and was called to a recording studio to re-record, or "loop", a single line of dialogue that wasn't clear on the audio recording. She showed up late, drunk, stoned, obstreperous, wildly funny, and lonely. It took eight hours to record the single line. Unbeknownst to Tallulah, a sound engineer recorded the entire eight hours. Forty years pass. New York playwright Matthew Lombardo hears about the recording, obtains it,then takes the eight hours down to a 90 minute play, "Looped."

Is it hard for you to get into the over the top character of "Tallulah" and at the same time show there was a real human being under all of her artifice?

Yes and no. It's not hard to get into the over-the-top character, because I remember seeing Tallulah on TV when I was a child in the 1950s and 60s, and because I've studied literally dozens of videos and audio tapes of her performances in films, on TV, and on radio. She really was a cartoony version of herself when she was making appearances on such shows as the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, or variety shows starring Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, and others. Showing her as a human being was made easier by reading three biographies and her own autobiography. She had a tragic and debauched life, and you can see it in her face and her attitude as she nears the end of her life.

Do you consider ever what she was doing as a performer as an early form of drag?

I hadn't thought of that. I just think she was too insecure to "be herself" in public settings, and as the years went by and audiences reacted with laughter and acceptance when she played the character of Tallulah, she embraced it, used it, finally exaggerated it, and had trouble setting it aside. Her ultra-sexy banter, her recognizable vocal tics, and her display of stereotypical feminine wiles made her an easy target for female impersonators.

Do you consider her a sexual revolutionary on the cutting edge of human rights or just a horny bisexual who didn't give a hoot about who knew what she did in her private life?

After doing months of research about her life, I consider her an adult survival of extreme sexual abuse at the hands of her father. I found two interviews in which she admitted her father began sleeping with her when she turned 13. She escaped him by running off to New York City at age 15, where she proceeded to have dozens of affairs with women in particular, and men more publicly. I think the molestation made her hypersexual, as it was the first time she'd had the attention of her father. (Her mother died shortly after her birth, and she and her sister were farmed out to relatives and then sent to boarding schools until Tallulah was 13.) She craved attention and love, and sex was the only way she'd ever received it. So she became an actress and a libertine. And she was very good at both.

What do you think of how we treat older performers, especially women, in the arts and culture?

I'm sure you don't even need to ask, to know what my opinion is about this. Older women are nearly invisible in popular culture. I read about a study, released just a few weeks ago, that said in the last 10 years women only starred in 20 per cent of films produced by Hollywood. Almost none of them were older women. And since women are the persuaders who pick the movies couples attend, Hollywood is shooting itself in the foot by catering to the fantasies of men, who in films are nearly always paired with much younger women. It's a little better in New York theater. But in Portland, theater directors routinely cast younger women in parts that older women played on Broadway. I myself have twice played women in their eighties, while I was 62 and 63, respectively. I'm hoping a bunch of local playwrights will write plays about 90-year old women, so I can still have an acting career in my 70s!

Do you have empathy for Ms. Bankhead and what she went through or do you think she brought it on herself with booze and drugs and was doomed from the start?

I have huge empathy for this woman, and I respect her. She used booze and drugs to treat her emotional pain. Her addictions were a way to cope with the damage done to her as a child. I respect the fact she was honest about who she was, how she behaved, and with whom she slept, in an age of Hollywood when every other bi-sexual or homosexual I can think of lied, bribed, or pretended, in order to appear to be straight.

What do you think about the term "fading star" that is used in the tagline for the play? Do you think they would ever use that if the show was about a man?

Such a good question, Byron! I don't think I have ever heard that term used to describe a man. But it fits Tallulah at this point in her life. In fact, her star had faded so much it was barely visible in the night sky, by the time she got looped and staggered into the recording studio.

For many of us you are one of the most recognized people/names in Oregon: aka the "Margie Boule" of television and Oregonian fame. Do you miss being on tv and in print?
I don't miss being in the public eye at all. I had enough exposure to last a lifetime, long before I stepped out of the local spotlight. But I am still staying busy. I host talk radio shows for KPAM, the AM talk/news station. (It's no longer a right-wing format; it's strictly news talk now.) I also do three to five plays a year. I'm still fighting the concept that I'm "only" a performer in musicals; I've actually done more plays than musicals in the last ten years, but I still find a number of local directors surprised that I can do more than songs-and-dances. It's funny. When I lived in Seattle, before moving to Portland, I was known as a straight actress. And then I moved to Portland and struggle to be accepted by local companies in shows without a pit orchestra.

What does this role mean to you?

I relish the chance to inhabit such a fascinating character. The preparation has been far greater than for any other role I've ever played. Tallulah was brought up in the South, but effected a (bad) British accent after she became involved in acting. So her vowels are half-Southern, half-British. She speaks in a unique way, EMphasizing CERTAIN SYllables and WORDS in a sentence, dropping her pitch at the end of many sentences, growling, barking, laughing her odd, forced laugh. And then she gets drunk, so you have to add slurring, and then she snorts cocaine, so you have to speed up her slurring. And then, she slips into Blanche DuBois from Streetcar...so I've had to study that role, too. I feel as if I'm jugging six balls in the air, all while trying to remember two hours of dialogue. And it's challenging and frightening and unbelievably fun!

I do want to add that working with Don Horn and David Sargent, my co-actor in this play, has been truly wonderful. David is such a good actor, so sensitive and open to exploring the relationship, and Don really "gets" Tallulah, and has been supportive and reassuring every step of the way.

And how do you plan to follow it up?

I don't have plans yet for the rest of the year, so please tell all local theater companies and directors...I'm available, dahling.

Details: Looped, The Sanctuary, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-239-5919. 7:30 pm Thurs.-Fri., 2 pm, Sun. Sept. 3-26. www.trianglepro.org