Tullah’s back in town
She’s inordinately proud of her body, for ample reason. As she slid into a booth at the St. Francis’ Medallion Room, she ran her hands over her Pucci dress and purred in her rich Hungarian accent: “I’m wearing nothing under this dress, darling. NOTHING.” I took her at her word. She raised the skirt almost to the point of no return to beam “Look at these legs. Drum majorette legs, no?” Yes. She is a strikingly beautiful woman of indeterminate age: “I don’t believe in the youth cult — I don’t want to be 20. You can’t be 20 for 40 years, but you can be 40 for 20 years.” She ordered a glass of soda water: “I don’t take alcohol, smoke or drink coffee, but I do get awfully warm.” She pulled the back of her dress up behind her delectable bottom, as old gaffers across the way dropped their teeth. “Feel of my skin, darling,” she commanded. “Is like a baby’s, no?” Uh — yes.
You can always tell when Tullah Hanley is back in town. The office phone never stops ringing. “Tullah was in our club last night — she got up on the table and danced!” “You should have seen Tullah over at the Oakland Museum. She pinned up her dress into a micro-mini and danced with all the young people. It was a dull affair till she got there, and then, oh my!” “Tullah came to my party last night. She arrived topless, wearing a dress about 7 inches long — under a mink coat, of course. She turned everybody on.”
While all these things are true, they tell you less than nothing about Tullah Hanley. She is more than a beautiful face with body to match (her neck has none of the telltale rings that give away a woman’s age as surely as the rings tell the age of a tree). Behind the defiantly uptilted chin there is a sharp intelligence: “My late husband put me on a pedestal. We loved each other dearly, but it was a mistake. It is harder to make love on a pedestal than standing up in a hammock.” Behind the flamboyance, the apparent delight in shocking “proper” people, lies a generous heart. I don’t think “proper” San Franciscans have yet awakened to the fact that this one-time “exotic Turkish dancer” (code for belly dancer) is giving this city one of the most lavish gifts in its history: 211 paintings and sculptures from her late husband’s $8 million collection of art treasures.
It is difficult to evaluate the magnitude of this gift, which runs a dizzying gamut of great names. Given the present state of the art market, $3 million would probably be a conservative estimate — “But who counts, darling?” she said gaily. “Actually, I’m rather disappointed in myself. I thought I was more shrewd and grasping than that, but here I am giving it away. I simply fell in love with San Francisco, and I adore the de Young Museum. Home is where the art is, and the de Young will be my home away from home.” As the Edward and Tullah Hanley Memorial Gift to the Public, the collection goes on display at the de Young in October.
“People say Tullah was a stripper. It’s a lie. I never wore enough clothes to take off!” What she was was a 25-yearold exotic dancer (see code) in Buffalo when she met Thomas Edward Hanley of Bradford, Pa., a Harvard-educated heir to a modest gas and oil fortune. “He was a big Boy Scout when we met, and he remained a big Boy Scout to the end.” And it’s easy to see how he fell in love with this dazzling creature. There were no Tullahs in Bradford, as there were no American millionaires in Hungary, where she was born. They had 20 happy years together (he died last April at 75), living in a ramshackle house, spending almost all their money buying great paintings that covered every inch of wall space.
The publicity that attended this stunning revelation had its inevitable aftermath. The following year, thieves broke into the Bradford home of the Hanleys and stole paintings valued at $1.34 million — a $450,000 Cezanne and a $500,000 Picasso, plus works by Renoir, Boucher, Goya, Degas, Rodin and Modigliani. (They were recovered intact a week later in a rural area of Pennsylvania and no arrests were made). How did the thieves plan to dispose of these masterpieces, so “untouchable” as to be almost impossible to sell? They had planned to blackmail insurance companies into paying for their return — until they made a startling discovery. The paintings were not, are not and never have been insured.
Lunch over (a tiny piece of steak), Tullah prepared to head for the de Young Museum, where she has an unexpected fight on her hands. “When I gave my pictures,” she said, “I didn’t realize that the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor are discussing a merger. Now they want to put part of my collection in one museum, part in the other — and I will not stand for it, darling. The Edward and Tullah Hanley Collection must remain together, always.” “Will you threaten to take back the pictures, then?” “Oh no, darling,” she said. “I have already given them. A promise is a promise.” She swept out of the room, leaving in her wake the “proper” people buzzing about “that woman” who is doing more for San Francisco than they ever will.