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Died. Tallulah Bankhead, 65, the iridescent and irrepressible empress of show business, whose gravel-throated cry of "Daaahling!" was part of the language for nearly half a century; of pneumonia; in Manhattan. Beautiful and honey-blonde, the daughter of a wealthy Alabama Congressman, Tallulah could count only three genuine hits in a career that encompassed literally scores of plays and movies: Broadway's The Little Foxes (1939) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) and Hollywood's Lifeboat (1944). Yet even to the flops she brought the kind of fierce power and impish delight that captivated friend and foe alike. Tennessee Williams called her a cross between a tiger and a moth, and her performance offstage was the true measure of the actress. Lavish beyond redemption, garrulous beyond recall, Tallulah chain-smoked, talked and caroused like a longshoreman. She was known to romp around her apartment in the nude drinking planter's punch—and sometimes greeted friends at the door in the same state of undress. Tallulah refused to remember anyone's name (she once introduced a friend named Olive as "Martini"), liked to break up stuffy parties by doing cartwheels or tossing the other ladies' shoes out the window. She was married only once—briefly, to Actor John Emery—but took a legion of lovers and gleefully admitted: "I'm as pure as the driven slush." Columnists were forever sniping at her and getting blasted right back. "Are you ever mistaken for a man on the phone?" Broadway Gossip Earl Wilson asked her. "No," she rasped. "Are you?" Yet some of her best lines were about herself. "They used to shoot Shirley Temple through gauze. They ought to shoot me through linoleum," she said, while making up for a movie late in her career. Jezebel was the image she reveled in, and when a friend reminded her that Jezebel was thrown to the dogs, Tallulah replied: "Yes, but first she rode with kings and princes."