Tallulah Bankhead Had One of Hollywood's Great Jewelry Collections

Tallulah Bankhead gets some of the best lines in Ryan Murphy's new Netflix series, Hollywood "The Patricia Corbett book on Verdura talks about Verdura crawling Soho pubs with Tallulah around 1930 She loved his irrepressible, brittle wit which was a match for hers," Haag emailed after watching a few episodes of the new series.

"In the early 1930s they both spent time together in Hollywood Verdura had arrived with Nicky de Gunzburg and he joined the expatriate boheme at the Garden of Allah - his best friends being Tallulah and film writer Anita Loos," Haag told me "Tallulah took her pub crawls to New York and she and Verdura were a fixture in the new emerging and very glittering cafe society in the late 30s and 40s".

Tallulah ventured into television with The Big Show in 1950-which she hosted and performed in-and Verdura was by her side when she celebrated her television debut at an all-night champagne bash "Pinned to her gown was her Verdura Lion's Paw shell brooch from what she called her 'tragedy fund' of jewels Two years ago I met her great niece in Montecito and she brought me a picture of an older Tallulah wearing the same brooch at her wedding.

How fun to see how much she loved it," Haag recalls Bankhead collected other pieces designed by her party partner-in-crime Fulco Di Verdura. . Source